Curitiba, Churrascarias, and Capybaras

Thida here, up early to tell you all about our wonderful time in Curitiba. Our stay there was particularly special as we stayed with my Uncle Bruce and Aunt Raeann, both working at the international school of Curitiba. Another comfortable 8 hour bus ride, we arrived at the Curtiba bus station at about 6 in the morning. As we didnt want to be knocking on our hosts door too early, we decided to walk to their appartment to kill some time. This ended up taking us 3 hours over many hills (we had assumed curitiba to be flat for some reason), good practice atleast for when we do our trekking in Patagonia.

We had arrived at the appartment, nick named the 20th floor nest, greeted by Raeann, Bruce, and an incredible view over the city. Bruce and Raeann took us to a wonderful Japanese buffet that night (like Soa Paulo, Curitiba is home for a signficant number of Japanese Brazilians). It was a nice change from our new staple diet of rice beans and chips. The next morning we walked through Barigui park not far from the appartment and encountered our first group of Capybaras. Giant hamsters, 140 pound rat, furry sheep, however you want to imagine it, Capybaras are the largest rodents in the world, with its closest relative being the guinea pig. They swim too!

Curitiba is recognised for its sustainable urban planning. What we had heard most about was the city's innovative and highly organised transport system (consisting entirely of buses). We were fortunate enough to be very close to a "tubo station" on one of the BRT lines that have lanes dedicated to buses. For some reason however, we managed to get ourselves very lost in central Curitiba the first couple of days. Fortunately for us, Curitiba has an excellent tourist bus line (and were are double deckard with an open roof, we were warned to to get hit by traffic lights!) Having no shame in looking very touristy, we had visited the wonderful Oscar Neiymer Art Museum (also known as the Eye Musuem due to its shape, designed by the famous Brazilian architect himself).

We later visited and passed by spots dedicated to the cultures of various immigrants of Curitiba such as German Wood Park, The Polish memorial in Pope´s Woods, The Ukranian memorial in Tingui park (also dedicated to the native indians that used to live there) , the Italian neighborhood of Santa Felicidade, and the Arab memorial in central Curitiba. We had also visited the city´s beautiful botanical gardens, wire opera house, and its historical center. We were also treated to an amazing churrascaria by Raeann (A Brazilian steakhouse where various meats from sirlion steaks to chicken hearts are brought to your table every minute until you say stop!)

Due to unfortunate and unpredictable weather in southern Brazil, we had spent a few days longer in Curitiba until it was clear enough for Iguazu falls (who could complain with clean sheets and free internet on the 20th floor!) During our wait, we did a day trip to the river town of Morrettes taking a wonderful panorama train with fantastic views of the mountains of Serra do Mar. Such a wonderful time in Curitiba seeing the sights with the opportunity to catch up with family and see their life in Brazil, it was sad to say goodbye! Thank you Bruce and Raeann for a wonderful time!

Sao Paulo - Friends, Football and Modern Art

All Jack's Picture this time...

 After living a quiet life on the beach for nearly 3 weeks it was a welcome change to get back to the hustle and bustle of a city, and where better than one of the biggest cities on the planet. According to a 2009 UN report*, Sao Paulo is the 3rd largest urban agglomeration in the world, housing over 20 million people, dwarfed only by Delhi and Tokyo. I think it would have been to big to handle if it wasn't for the fact we had our very own local tour guide in the form of Junior (well he's from Campinas, Sao Paulo state which was good enough for us!).

 Junior, a friend Jack and his friends met on holiday in Madrid in 2010, met us at our hostel, which was (on his recommendation) in a good location for the local subway system. Like all good tours we started at the football museum, housed in the Estadio do Pacaembu, which was built in 1940 and hosted several games during the 1950 world cup (although Brazilians don't have fond memories of that tournament). The museum itself was really good, it has a good history of the beginnings of football in Brazil, a library of footage from memorable moments throughout football history, and of course, Pele.

Thida wanted more pictures of her on the blog.

 Next we took a bus to the main street in downtown Sao Paulo, Av. Paulista - no mean feat in itself, and I don't think we'd have managed it without Juniors help -  a wide avenue lined with skyscrapers stretching out for over a kilometer. Here we stopped into MASP, the Sao PAulo museum of art, downstairs was a modern excebition (above and left) and upstairs there was a selection of older paintings and sculptures, from Monet and Van Gough to Constable and Turner.

 After a hard days sightseeing we tucked into some Brazilian snacks (food post pending) and had a few beers in one of the many bars along Av Augusta - one of Paulista's many tributarys. The next day Junior took us down to one of the main parks in Sao Paulo, here we saw the independence monument, and our first Oscar Neimeyer building (Auditorium - Right), as well as the Obelisk of Sao Paulo. Then we headed to the central district to check out a massive indoor market, get some more (amazing) Brazilian food, and get a view of the city from the top of one of its many skyscrapers.

After another busy day, we headed to another bar on Augusta to settle down for the evening. Through out the night we were joined by a steady stream of Junior (and Bruno's) friends until there was a decent sized group of us to drink, chat (mainly about Colgy's drunken antics) and watch Sao Paulo FC play on the bar's big screen. All in all, the few days in Sao Paulo with Junior et al, were defiantly among the best of our time in Brazil so far, not least because we had a very knowledgeable guide and got to spend time with some friendly locals!

 During our last 2 days in the city we were alone, and decided to get to know some of the areas that we had touched upon a little better. We went back to the park and visited the modern art museum, there was some good stuff, mainly in the form of Damien Hurst (who doesn't enjoy his crystal skulls and various farm yard animals suspended in formaldehyde) and also some pretty dodgy stuff - I guess that's modern art for you. One thing we noticed during our wanders was the ubiquity of many painted rhinoceroses around

 the city, a part of a public exhibition called RhinoMania not unlike the CowParade phenomena which (a little research has informed me) has its origins in Zurich in 1998, although I remember it from Manchester, and Thida from the painted cow in her office in London. Our time in Sao Paulo reinforced the impression we have been given of Brazil as leading centre of art and architecture, as much as football and natural beauty - something which we hadn't realized when we planned our trip (although a little research would have shown us) and have been very pleasantly surprised by.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_agglomerations_by_population_%28United_Nations%29

Jack, Junior, Junior's friend (I feel bad as I can't remember his name, but I know he is from the same place as Anderson!) & Bruno!

Paraty

After a week on Ilha Grande we moved 2 hours down the coast to an old colonial town located on the Coasta Verde (Green Coast) called Paraty, with the journey there proving to be a little eventful. As it wasn't too far away, we had the option of taking a local bus or a coach, where the local option would undoubtedly be cheaper. However as we had offered to show some people how to get there we felt bad roaming the streets in search of the local bus and led the way to the coach station, where we found out the price to be R$5 - not a bad price, or so we thought.

Sooner or later a bus arrived and we got on, and were informed that the ticket was in fact R$50! Not having enough money we got off the bus and went to collect our bags, only to be followed by the bus driver who seemed just as annoyed that we couldn't explain ourselves in Portuguese as he was that we had got off the bus after he had written out the tickets. After 5 minutes someone got off the bus and explained to us that the driver was liable to pay the ticket money as he had written out the tickets, we explained that we didn't have enough money to pay for them. The man then offered and insisted that he help us pay for our tickets. Coming from London, we were taken aback by this man's generous offer. Even more shocked when he refused the money we managed to take out once in Paraty and asked that we one day do the same for someone in need. We agreed.... but paid him back anyway!

Once we settled into our hostel, we went to explore the historical center of Paraty. Walking down the cobbled streets (with the only modes of transport being foot or a horse drawn carriage) passing beautiful colonial buildings, we stumbled across and huge tent with some photo exhibitions. We quickly learned that we had arrived just in time for Paraty em Foco- one of Brazil's largest photography festivals.

 

We watched an good open source documentary film about copyright infringement called "RIP: Remix Manifesto", and another which consisted of groups of amazingly colourful photos taken of native Amazonian tribes and their villages. The copyright documentary was particularly interesting as it used Brazil as an example of where ignoring copyrights can have very positive consequences, by far the biggest was the Brazilian government violating drug firm Roche's patent on the AIDS drug Nelfinavir in order to reduce it's cost by 40%.

Aside from the wandering around the photography festival, most of our time was spent walking around town taking pictures and sitting in some of the many restaurants and bars that littered the town. One day, and after a lot of rain, the historic town flooded giving rise to all sorts of reflections from the brightly painted windows and doorways - and you can imagine how all those photographers loved that!

Just some of the 1000's of pictures taken by Thida

 

Costa Verde and Ilha Grande

*Disclaimer*

Well we have been pretty poor over the past few weeks with updating on here, mainly due to a lack of reliable internet access and all the fun we have been having, and maybe a little of laziness thrown into the mix as well! We will try and rectify the situation quickly!

We left Rio and took a bus down the coast to a  place called Angra dos Reis. The road from Rio to Angra heads south traversing the Costa Verde (green coast), treating you to some spectacular views. To the right rows of mountains tower above the road, each one painted green with Atlantic forest, and to the right a mixture of cliffs, pristine beaches, an ocean littered with groups of tropical islands, and bizarely lots and lots of oil tankers - I`m only being so descriptive as we didn`t take any pictures!

Once we reached Angra dos Reis we took a local ferry out to the main town on Ilha Grande, the island itself looks incredible, a piece of the Costa Verde ripped off and placed an  hour and a half out to sea. Once we were there we realised that we had forgotten the name and location of our hostel, but after a long walk around town and a trip to an internet cafe we managed to find it - and as we were the only people there we got a ensuite double room for the price of a dorm, bargin.

I won`t go into a lot of detail about what we did, needless to say on a tropical island we went to the beach a lot, but I will elabourate on a few of our more memorable days out. There are no vehicles aowed on the island (and no roads to drive them anyway) so to get anywhere you have to either walk or catch a boat. The first full day there we took the boat around the island to `the best` beach there, and to be fair it was a very nice 2km strectch of untouched coast with nice sand, a warm sea and (for Jack) not too much sun. The way out the sea was very calm, however on the way back it was choppy to the point where the waves were the same height as our (admitadly quite small) boat, and despite only being 20m from the coast it did provide a little excitent - especially when we started taking on water!

Dodgy boat journeys asside, the lack of vehicles provided the opportunity/motivation to walk through the joungle roads. During which we managed to see some natural pools, a waterfall and monkeys, not to mention some pretty nice beaches!