Massive storks fly overhead with branches to make nests for their newborn.
Two capybaras, the world's largest rodent, rear up on their hind legs and go at each other with teeth bared in a turf fight. Then our guide nuttily grabs a 14-foot anaconda snake by the tail and hauls it out of a swamp so some Italian tourists can touch it. All that, and it's still my first hour on a cattle ranch in Los Llanos, a vast savanna of grasslands and rivers in southern Venezuela where cowboys still ride barefoot atop horses. The region has more species of birds than the United States and Britain combined, with such abundance you can leave the binoculars at home during the peak season, when flocks are so thick they seem like clouds flying overhead. Many ecologists consider the Llanos to be one of South America's most spectacular wildlife attractions.