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Published: September 9th 2012
The show must go on, despite the fact one of our heroes bites the dust for 5 days with a most unfortunate eye injury! As a result of this incapacitation, some of this blog will be skimmed over and only vague second hand accounts of events be given. However, much fun was had post injury, much fun indeed (and no references to LOST this time). In trying to escape the island (or in reality leave of our own free will via boat) a series of unfortunate events did befall me. It was another glorious day, as does befit such a place, and then I go and scratch my eye inadvertently while adjusting my cap. Cue, pain and temporary, monocular vision! One the rather choopy boat crossing back to the mainland the vision began to clear up. Then whislt walking to the bus a gust of wind blew up some grit and a second scratch occurred! You couldn´t make ths up, but it gets worse. The final insult arrives around 12 hours later after two bus journies conclude with us being deposited in to Curitiba at 6am. Due ot the airconditioning of the bus and the abrupt waking (encouraged by the
driving yelling "Cuuuuuurrrrchiiiiibaaaa") my eye was dry and prone to tearing of the cornea, as did promptly happen! After this, I laid low for 3 days and had to visit the Optomologist, who was very lovely and gave me lots of drugs! But since we´d planned to stay here only a few days we had to make some changes. Luckily, Curitiba is a safe city, and not too large, so Eleanor was able to explore the place and enjoy herself while I contented myself with podcasts (Skeptic´s Guide to the Universe & British History), BBC Radio 5 (Swansea beating West Ham 3-0 thank you very much and 606 with Robbie Savage). However, after 4 days Curitiba was well and truly "done" by Ellie and I had come down with Cabin fever!
To alleviate the boredom we headed to the local Churassco, all you can eat buffet of BBQ, salad, sushi and desert. This place was amazing, the waiters brought huge joints of different meat to the table at regular intervals, enticing you to sample the delightful tasty morsels of food. This is not the place to bring a vegetarian, they would recoil at the amount of slaughter
Meat on a skewer
As much of it as you want...that is necessary to keep the roasting pit ticking over. The food here was sublime, a fitting end for such noble beasts, and it was non-stop! The surprising thing is that there is a lack of obese people here in Brazil, even more surprising considering that buses request you to give up your seats for pregnant women, people with disabilities, old folk AND the obese! No chance I´d be giving up my seat for an obese person, they could do with losing the extra calories the exertion of standing up necessitates! Anyway, where was I? Yes, meat good, obesity not.
So, I´m led to believe that Curitiba has much cultural delights chief among them the Botanical Gardens, the Oscar Niemeyer Museum (he´s an architect or something, I wouldn´t know, I didn´t go the place, read the guide book if you´re interested), the market (which I did go to and was awsome, lots of crafts and hand made pieces of work, a great place to lose yourself for a few hours; it´s absolutely sprawling), and the historical centre is also worth a couple of hours to explore. The streets are made of black and white mosaic tiles and
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So pro they've issued squad numbers are much more prominent than in the other cities in Brazil. There may also be an opera house set in to the old quarry, but again I didn´t see it so will have to check!
The coolest part of Curitibe is the tiny orange house nestled in between two sky scrapers, which must have been the inspiration for the Pixar filem "Up" (see photo). Of all the sights, I made Eleanor take me here first!
Once we got the all clear from the doc we headed towards the coast with a little scheduled stop off at Morretes with a planned hike to the top of a mountain, through the jungle, in the national park. We had booked in to our Poussada in Porto de Cima but it was raining. Being the fearless explorers that we are (think Indiana Jones but without the whips), we donned the waterproofs and headed out in to the bleak unknown. Except of course, this being Brazil, the unknown was known, charted and fuly documented in handy map given to us by the tourism people at the bottom of the stone path! The STONE path...not very jungle-like, not even very National Trust-like. Hoever, the
stones were very slippery and added a sense of danger and daring to this hike. It was also bloody steep up this particular track, 4kms before we even got to the real walking. So, after bumbling along for what seemed like forever, but was actually about an hour we came across a train station...in the middle of the jungle...deserted...with an orange tree growing out of one of the buildings (not good oranges, they tasted like lemons, we tried them, that´s an example of how reckless and dangerous we really are). We then had to cross the same trainline 3 times on our way up as it wraps itself like an anaconda around the mountain. You can here the train coming about 30 minutes before they arrive due to the sound reverberating off the valleys and peaks. They also move at the pace of snails, it took one a full 10 minutes to pass us! Once we reached the base of the trek we were told that visibility was so poor (it was torrential at this point) that it was nunsafe and we´d have to go back down. Slightly deflated, very sodden and a bit tired we slogged our way back
The Posada
Moretes...probably one of the coolest places we stayed the entire trip (updated this in Feb '13) down (slippy stones even more trecherous) and we had to climb over one of those bloody trains again!
The next day we managed to find an actual off road path, which took us back to the same trainline! Bloody hell. Trains are cool but this was ridiculous! There is a single restaurant in Porto de Cino. It does a good feijoda and probably the greatest hot sauce ever. A must!
One of the nly places we had scheduled to see on this tour was the Ihle do Mel. This is a tropical paradise island a bit like Grande, but smaller, with a fort and a lighthouse. Tropical islands are warm, dry and full of fun. We decided to go when it was cold and wet! But it fitted the schedule and we had no chance of climbing that bloody mountain any time soon. Arriving in Novo Brazilia we tried to book in to a Poussada that had been recommended, but despite being the only custom on the whole island the owner didn´t want to take our money and turned us away...charming. Her neighbour, Lorrayna, at Poussadinha didn´t, she was awesome and let us stay (an she did my
Ihla de Mel's main port
It's laid back...obviously clothes washing, after I´d done it and hung it up to dry, I can only assume she figured I´d done a bad job and couldn´t stand to see poorly washed clothes sitting on her washing line). She even cooked us an amazing fish stew! Loved this place.
When the weather finally broke the next day and the damp had gone from everything, including our bones, the island was a paradise. We set off to the fort, in search of the honey (Mel is Portuguese for honey), the fort was built in 1700 & something to protect Portuguese shipping and is remarkably well preserved. The walk along the beach was lovely and there were hundreds of crabs scuttling about trying to hide in their holes to avoid being eaten by birds, and us presumably. I tried to teach Ellie how to play lacrosse on the beach and she did quite well but hates being told what to do! We failed to find any honey or beees, or beehives or any honey related artifacts. It may possibly be a ruse or just a poor translation somewhere (less sinister).
On our second day, with the glorious sunshine, we decided to hike
Cycle Surfer
This is just cool to the otherside of the island, circumnavigating around half the coastline and also checking out the lighthouse (built in Glasgow), which seems to just be a tourist attraction now as we didn't see it working at any point. I counted 74 ships on the horion which just seemed a bit ludicrous in this day of air travel. The island is haloed with beaches, and we had to cross 4 to get to our desination. In most cases access to subsequent beaches required a brisk jaunt over a ridge, but on one occassion it required leaping from boulder to boulder while the tide, roaringly, came in. we think we found a mine that had been buried in sand...we didn´t investigate, it´s been there for many years it didn´t need us tampering with it.
After the island, easily escaped this time, and we saw dolphins for a bonus, we ventured back to Morretes to go ungle trekking with a Spaniard name Nicolas, who with his German wife run a very relaxed and wonderful Poussada (Ellie wants to make sure I mention the breakfast, which was amazing). Nicolas loves to go off into the jungle, off piste, by himself and will take
guests of they want to see the "real jungle". Brazilians don´t really do jungle adventures, not really, it all has to be super safe and have real paths! We wandered up rivers and through undergrowth for 5 hours trying to track monkeys with no success, although I got to swing Tarzan-style from some vines! This was an amazing experience and it´s a shame more people don´t take a chance to do this, rather they stick to the places in Rough Guide and miss out on a real gem!
Our final port of call in Brazil was Iguaçu Falls. They are perhaps the biggest in the world, although I may have misremebered that. They are definitely an amzing spectacle to behold. The sheer force of the water coming over the falls was incredible and it created wonderful double rainbows in the valley, where numerous birds take flith, dotting the vista with their swirling presence. The national park on the Brazil side is a bit of a rip off, BR$40 for a bus ride and one pathway, all the other pathways require you to fork out similar sums of cash. It was disaapointing but didn´t take away from the falls themselves. Apparently the Argentine side of the park is much more open with plenty of walking...it has the added danger of pumas too! Foz, the nearby town is pretty nondescript, being as it is just a place for tourists to visit the falls and the nearby Hydroelectri damn (again, a wonder, just man made this time). It generates all of the power for Paraguay apparently fact fans.
So we´re now finished the Brazilian stage of our adventure and it´s on to Argentina, the trip to Buenos Aires will be broken up with a stop off at St. Ignacio Mini and the Jesusit Mission ruins. Brazil has been wonderful but we´re both very excited about the opportunities that await us in the land of silver!
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