Blogs from Paraná, Brazil, South America - page 56

This entry's all about a not-so-famous-but-great-nonetheless place called Curitiba. It's located a bit down and to the left of Rio for the geography students amongst us. Curitiba was described in the Lonely Planet as one of Brazil's urban success stories, and we thought we'd check it out on our way up to Rio via some beaches and other places. We arrived on the 18th of Jan in the early evening, and basically crossed the road from the bus station in order to check into our hotel. This was mainly for convenience, because the next morning we planned to take the "Scenic" train down to a place on the coast called Ilha do Mel (translation :- Honey Island). We got the tickets for the "Scenic" train and headed into town to check out this urban success story ... read more

We got into Puerto Igazu at about noon on Wednesday and caught a 12:40 bus to the falls. I could spend ages describing how unbelieveable they were, but you probably wouldn't believe me....... (that's stupid). Look at the photos instead. We spent most of the afternoon there, got a bus back to Puerto Igazu, grabbed our bags and headed over to Brazil. My Finnish (EU) passport paid off well at the crossing, no $160 visa for me!! Border control actually consisted of the bus driver asking anyone if they needed their passports stamped, we would have missed it if we weren't paying attention. We got the bus at 9pm and got into Curitiba at about 7am in the morning. Clare (a friend from when I worked at Bear Valley Ski Resort in the US) picked us ... read more