Many trip reports on the web cover these areas, but few of them are from independant travellers and don't always give many details, so our purpose is to give the informations that would have been helpfull during our 3 months trip at some of the sites. Reports from Wallace, Grosset, Sangster with good maps , Simpson, where very useful, and we picked up some things from others Babic, Vermeulen Our car was from Localiza, but we didn't book straight to them as we found a cheaper price with more kilometers monthly through the website www.
We drove km. Prices of the hotels are given after bargaining without breakfast as we had our instant coffee and biscuits with us most of the time. During our trip species were seen, and 8 heard only. We found few practical informations about the place, and emailed to the park officer Marcos Da Silva Cunha marcos.
He informed us that a guide was compulsory and that we had to find one in town. From France we had emailed to the guide mentionned in Bradley Davis's report, marcilioturismo hotmail. By car from Brasilia, we headed until Jatai, then took left towards Serranopolis; after this at a village we turned right on an earth road signalled Β« alternative road to Chapado do Ceu Β», we managed to do it with our small car without problem as it was dry, for 30km.
This road is being tarred, but we don't know when it will be finished. Chapada do Ceu has just a few streets and we slept at Hotel Vitor, a good room at 80 Rs with breakfast. The owner called Aluisio who came and we talk about our trip. He asked Rs per day from about 6am to 8pm or 65Rs half day. He took his car and we took ours, bought our food at the village supermarket; he speaks few english but speaks spanish which was OK for us.
He is not specialised in birds but is not bad and knows quite a lot of sounds, and knew where to find the Cone-billed Tanager he had the call but no speaker and the White-winged Nightjar, we saw both of them the 2nd day We saw 2 Tanagers together. Very good birding in general. As all the houses of the station were full we finally camped under a shelter. There is water to drink and hot showers. It is better to have his own gas for cooking, but Aluisio had one.
