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This weekend we went to see the national park Aparados da Serra which is situated in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. According to a travel agency’s employee the park is at most 4 hours by bus from Florianopolis and the trip works as the following: get a bus from Florianopolis to Ararangua which takes at most 3 hours and then get a local bus to the park, which is only one more hour away. Sounds good for a weekend trip!
We got our baggage ready (shorts, t-shirts and other summer clothes) and caught the bus at the Florianopolis main station. After two hours we were still on the bus to Ararangua. After 3 hours we were still on the bus to Ararangua. The only excitement on the bus: a video film and I destroyed one of my shoes (Havaianas or Badelatschen). Not by beating Pedro but by falling on the floor when I tried to talk to the bus driver.After 3 hours and 30 minutes we arrived at 21:00 local time.
So we were looking for our one hour connection to Cambara do Sul where we had reserved two nights at a youth hostel. The bus drivers laughed at us: "There is no connection at that time of day. And it isn’t an one hour but a three hour trip to the village as the road is really difficult and stony". Mhm… So we had only one choice: get a taxi or look for another hostel in the town, get up at 5 to catch the first bus at 6 and pay the other hostel, anyway. We chose the taxi and started negotiating with the taxi drivers.
Finally we found one, who would take us there - for a lot of money for Brazilians and nothing for Europeans. I didn’t like him for that and during the trip I was observing the tachometer all the time to calculate the real, fair price. He didn’t even put on the taximeter. Something was wrong!
Suddenly he slowed down driving muttering something like "what a bad luck" and drove to the right side of the road to stop the car. A police control. My first thought, that they want to stop him for betraying tourists, wasn’t right. There were 5 heavy armed policemen. They made him step out of the car, showing his documents. And they didn’t leave us alone but looked into the car always putting their lights straight into our face and on our hands. Pedro and I looked at each other like "That was the last thing that was missing on this chaotic trip" and laughed at each other. I guess, the policemen didn’t like our happy emotion. He made us step out of the car, too. We had to show our documents and answer to all his questions: who we are, for how long are we here, what are we doing here, etc. In comparison to Pedro, they were almost friendly to me. Pedro had to look into the light of one of the officers all the time. I only had to pack out my whole baggage while one of them was pointing his machine gun at me. And it was a really big one. I felt like in a dream or gangster movie. We put all our clothes out of the bags onto the ground so that they could search for drugs. Of course, there weren’t any. When they found out, they became friendlier. They even started joking in English with me (I understand Portuguese but maybe they only knew the apologises in English because they never use the Brazilian ones). What a scene!
We continued our trip. And it was a really long one. The street was horrible: we had to cross the jungle, the stones of the street where bumping against the car, part of the street was flooded because of the rain from the days before. There weren’t any street lights nor other cars on the road. All the time I was afraid that guerrillas might jump out of the woods and kill us. When we finally arrived at our youth hostel in the middle of nowhere, it was 1 o’clock in the morning. Fortunately, we succeeded waking up the owner of the youth hostel and could fall into our beds.

When we woke up the next morning, we put on our summer clothes for having breakfast. Stepping out of the door, we returned back to the room to put on MORE summer clothes. It was f* freezing! After the breakfast we had to get some money as we spend all the money on the taxi. So we went to the bank, which could be found very easy as there were only 20 houses around. The cash machine didn’t want to accept our cards! So where could we get some money? We went to the lotto seller as they belong to another bank. They said: "Oh no, we don’t take this kind of cards. But try out the PHARMACY! They will surely be able to help you" (does this need medication?). And, unbelievably, they were able to give us the money, but only later in the day when they closed. But, we felt better.

We went back to the hostel and decided to join two Japanese looking Brazilian women and their guide that were staying in the hostel, too. They were prepared as if they were going to war: boots, perfect clothes for everything: sun, rain, wind, (snow?). They even had plastic bags for every little piece of baggage they took with them. What were they thinking to to? And there where we: 3 t-shirts, jogging shoes (Pedro’s with holes) and jeans each. The guide had mercy and lent us two sweaty anoraks. It turned out, that we didn’t need them as the weather was sunny and there wasn’t any rain. We had an excellent day in the mountains with a picnic in a wonderful landscape. When the guide told us the price for the trip we recognized that it was the poor ladies that were paying for the service on our trip. We liked them really, but didn’t say anything. Bad guys!

The last day we made a horse trip around a fazenda (Brazilian land house). I’m riding for many years and could relax easily, but sometimes I was doubting that Pedro would stay on the back of the horse any longer. The horses were really stupid and easy driving but when they came to the parts where they were always told to gallop they did it! And they did it fast! Nevertheless, we both enjoyed and Pedro will try it out again.

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