Welcome to the jungle

With a new found commitment to getting upclose and personal with my dinner, I thought it about time I went to the top of the food chain with some huntin´, shootin´ and fishin´. Well bamboo rod fishing in the wetland jungle of the Pantanal to be more precise.
My fishing expo begins with a 5am alarm call from approximately a thousand birds. Quite a shock for this city girl, but dawn is the busiest time of day in the jungle. I´m about 6 hours drive into the jungle. No phones. No internet. No one to hear you scream... somewhat dramatic, granted, but you get the picture.
We stroll to the river edge by 7am and set off in search of some fish. The Pantanal is swampland and the river is slow and infested with caiman alligators and the reason for the rods - piranha. Piranha arn´t as dangerous as Hollywood has led us to believe, or at least not at this time of year, I´m keeping all extremeties inside the tin can of a boat all the same.
My guide settles us in a corner and we bait our hooks with beef - for those discerning piranha. Soon my line is twitching and I feel a tug from the depths, I bring my rod up to find the beef gone and no fish. I continue to feed the fish in this way for several hours to the distress of my Croccodile Dundee-esque jungle guide. I sit and wait. It´s not all bad, the passing toucans and sound of the kingfishers make for excellent background entertainment. The occassional bellyflop of the alligators is more disconcerting, however.
After lunch, I´m determind to catch something and changing my rod tactics yields a King Fish within minutes and the illustrious piranha has his knashers around my hook shortly after. Neither are good enough for the pan, apparently. We save the gasping, glugging piranha at the back of the boat and a piao fish (I can´t find a translation for this fish, it has a distinctive yellow underside, though) my guide has caught gets three whacks to the face.
We toss the piranha to the alligator and I catch a live David Attenborough special. The alligator crunches all of the bones out of the piranha before swallowing it whole.
Back on shore, Dundee slaps the piao on his oar, produces a long knife from his shorts, scales and guts the fish right there. He washes it in the river and takes it back for the camp cook. The piao arrives at my plate in an hour cut into small steaks, coated in a lightly spiced batter (almost like a southern-fried spice) and deep fried. It´s a flaky white/grey meat fish and has the earthy taste of all river dwelling swimmers. It´s delicious and light, if a little on the boney side, but fish doesn´t get fresher than this.
It´s great to see so closely where your food has come from, it doesn´t get more organic than catching it wild (sustainably and responsibly, one fish fed the whole camp) and a few days around the jungle camp fire and I´m in full hunter-gatherer swing. Now, where´s that spear, I´m gonna get me a wild boar.