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Published: August 13th 2007
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Sunset, skyline and gigantic gerbils
A lone Capivara enjoys the view as the sun sets over Curitiba Since we have been away we have both adopted the idea that whilst we travel through other countrys and invade other people's lives - as long as we are polite, aware and willing to adapt then good luck and good fortune will follow us around - a sort of traveller's karma if you like.
This theory may just be a load of hippy nonsense and I may be being a little over reflective as our trip draws to an end but as the rest of this blog goes to show....someone is smiling down on us.
We first met Adriana and Betina 9 months earlier on a boat trip in Halong Bay and thanks mainly to this website have stayed in touch ever since. And as every month has passed their original offer of a place to stay has remained, so we headed to Curitiba overnight from Iguasu without the worry of having to find a hostel or squeeze on a local bus with all our worldly possesions as they had insisted on picking us up at 7am and taking us to stay at their parent’s house for the entire duration of our stay.
When we arrived at their family’s
Isla do mel
The lighthouse on the island of honey beautiful detatched home we were greeted by a huge fresh breakfast , shown to our own private room and introduced to their parents Gilberto, Lidiane, 2 crazy dogs Wala and Corky and housekeeper Nade. After realising that I wasn’t still on the overnight bus dreaming we took long hot showers in a cubicle bigger than most rooms we have recently stayed in and headed out with our own personal tour guides to see some of the local sights.
Curitiba is one of Brazil’s ’model cities’, it’s clean, safe and full of open spaces. It has a museum in the shape of an eye, an opera house made of wire, enormous mutant gerbils (capivara) which inhabit its many lakes and a crazy guy who cycles around in pair of Speedos called ’Oily Man’.
Adriana and Betina’s tour included all of the above , except the oily man (damn it) and although Curitiba seemed a pleasant enough place by far the highlight of our stay was the ubelievable generosity and hospitality the whole family showed towards us.
After a lavish 3 course lunch on our first day (where we were introduced to Grandparents Reginaldo and Lillian) we were asked if
Surfing for beginners
Wear a tight orange t-shirt, forget how cold the water is, hold your breath and just run. we would like to go and spend the following 2 days on a deserted island in the family’s beach house (erm.....what do you think our answer was?)
So the following morning we boarded a train for the famous and scenic ride through the mountains and rainforest that separate Curitiba from the Atlantic coastline and met up with the girls in a small colonial town called Morretes. Here we continued the Brazilian tradition of a huge lunch at a restaurant overlooking a river where hundreds of tropical birds flocked to feed on the fresh fruit laid out for them by the waiters.
We had already tried and loved Farinha ( a flour made from the root of a local plant) and Feijao (slow cooked black beans) but in Morretes we tried a local speciality called Barreado - a stew of meat cooked for 24 hours in a clay pot, mixed carefully with the Farinha flour and then eaten with sliced fresh banana. Sounds bloody awful I know but let me assure you that this, along with so much of the food we ate during our time in Curitiba, was by far the best we had tasted in South America.
After lunch we drove the short distance to the nearby port where we could have jumped aboard the public slow boat to the island but instead met up with Gilberto and Lidiane at a marina and all squeezed into the family’s speedboat for the short yet bumpy ride to our next destination.
Isla do Mel The first thing you do upon your arrival on the island of honey is roll up your trousers and take off your shoes. No traffic means no roads so the only thing you will find below your feet is either grass, sand, rocks or ocean. It was the very first time either of us had felt sand or sea beneath our feet in South America and even though the weather wasn't fantastic or the sea warm it was great to walk along deserted beaches dolphin spotting and breathing in fresh sea air.
Gilberto and Lidiane first discovered the island in the late 70's before electricity and telephones arrived - but like most places that people ought to know about.....people got to know about it.
But the island's size (only 20km of coastline 3 quarters of which is uninhabited national park)and lack
At home with the Romano's
back row L-R - Reginaldo, Nade, Betina, Gilberto, Adriana
front row L-R - Lidiane, Carla and Lillian of resorts (only 1 'hotel' on the whole island) means it still retains much of the charm that it probably had nearly 30 years ago and we both loved it immediately.
Being the winter meant very few tourists and only weekend and permanent residents, all who knew each other and the Romanos so we got to meet pretty much everyone and got guided tours around their pousadas (small 4-5 room boutique style guesthouses) before ending up at pretty much the only restaurant on the island owned by a very god friend of the family which meant we all ate fresh fish and crab muqueca washed down with Caiparinhas ...it's a hard life!!
Wherever possible we have tried most activities and even though we have failed at most we continue to persevere, so after lunch I followed the girls down to the freezing cold ocean in a tiny bright orange lycra t shirt (they had no spare wetsuits) with a freshly waxed surf board under my arm - and 1 hour later returned to the house having swallowed more waves than I had caught and showing the early signs of hypothermia, adding surfing to the growing list of tried
Every type of bean.....except baked
The black ones on the front row are the Feijao....our staple diet in Brazil and failed activites (scuba diving, salsa dancing, speaking spanish, crocodile spotting etc etc)
On our final night the family arranged a massive BBQ on the beach house's veranda after which we all headed to a local beach bar to have a try and fail at the local forhar dancing. I say fail but to be honest there seemed to be very little method to the dance as a guy just stands in the corner playing the demo track on his casio keyboard whilst anybody with a few drinks inside them just makes up a dance on the spot. It's the sort of activity which is more fun to watch than partake in and the only couple with any pre-planned routine had created a dance best described as 'sexy ice skating'. I could have stayed and watched all night but by 2am my previous day's near drowning had started to catch up with me and so we headed back leaving them to it.
Sunday meant more eating, drinking and relaxing which was great....but also heading back to the mainland, which wasn't so great - but it didn't stop the whole clan continuing to spoil us rotten.
Booking our bus
Capivara
We hadnt expected to see these fellas until the Pantanal. Its like a hamster did it with a pig ticket out of Curitiba was pretty difficult as by this stage we really felt like members of the family and after 11 months of fending for ourselves we had adopted a little too easily to being 'looked after' by our new Mum, Dad and two sisters.
On our final morning I cooked the whole gang a full English, having found half decent bacon and Twinnings tea for a decent brew. In fact the only missing item was the beans as trying to find a tin of baked beans in Brazil is the equivalent of trying to find a vegetarian in Argentina, but it still seemed to go down well, although I am betting a swift return to fresh papaya, muesli and coffee was made the day after we left.
We spent the remainder of our last day at the Grandparents 100 hectare farm playing on their 100 metre zip line and feasting on a massive buffet of cakes and pastries before saying our goodbyes to the sound of the whole family singing a Brazilian goodbye song (cue all linking arms, forming a circle and swaying to the music) and then heading off to collect our bags and drive
Oi from curitiba
Carla, Matt, Adriana and Betina to the bus station.
Waving goodbye to Adriana and Betina made us both feel genuinely sad - which is never a great way to feel, but after the unbelieveable generosity and kindness the whole family had showed us it really was that hard to say goodbye.
But hey, back on the road and back to reality, if a four day adventure in the Brazilian pantanal could ever be called reality.
Muito obrigado Romanos
Paz
MandC
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Trev
non-member comment
Great Friends
How lucky you were too meet such lovely people like Adriana and Betina,they must have gave you more insight into Brazil than you would have experienced in the normal travel mode.If they read this comment as Carla's Dad I would like to thank them and their family for the hospitality and affection shown to you both. This has been an unforgetable episode in your travels along with many others.We have been with you every step of the way and as your journey reaches its conclusion we will be so happy to see you again, yet will miss the anticipation of the graphic descriptions of your travels.Thank you for sharing the experience with us we have thoroughly enjoyed the ride. Love Trev XX