| Curitiba and a train |
[Apr. 27th, 2008|11:46 pm] |
I have decided to finally finish writing my blog about my Brazil trip, after a tirade from my older brother who apparently checked my blog every day for six weeks after I got back to Hawaii. Sorry bro. In addition, the weather is currently terrible and so I can't use the telescope. So, where were we?
Aaah yes. Off to Curitiba, pronounced Cur-ih-chee-bah. Arrived at the airport where I promptly got ripped off for a tourist bus because I couldn't find the regular bus stops. But no matter because "ripped off" meant I paid about 4USD instead of 2USD. The grand plan was to spend one night in Curitiba then catch a train to Paranagua, a small town on the south-east coast, where I would then get a boat to Ilha do Mel. So I arrived at the bus station, found the train station just behind and accidentally bought a regular-person train ticket instead of the tourist ticket. I keep doing that. I think it's because I keep trying to use Portuguese. If I just shouted English very slowly at people I would certainly end up on the tourist coaches.
Mission accomplished, I left the train station in search of my youth hostel. I found it eventually, memorising the location of a shop selling bacon sandwiches along the way. It's been years since I had a good bacon sarnie. I checked in and again realised that if I had only joined Hostelling International I would have saved 50% on the price.
Curitiba is a fairly normal city, on the small side with a lot of nice gardens and parks to explore. Unfortunately I only had about 12 hours in Curitiba and most of those were at night so I only had time for a quick walk through the park next to the hostel and to check out the homeless guys selling jewellery. I did make it back to the bacon sandwich shop where I struggled to make the guy understand what I wanted. Five months later and I'm still not sure what I said incorrectly but, boy, did it take a while to get that sandwich.
The next day I went back to the train station where I joined a bunch of Brazilian families headed to Paranagua for the Sunday. The train was wonderfully colourful and the trip was an instant hit when little packages of free food were handed out. We even had a tour guide on the 4 hour trip, albeit a portuguese-only one. So I had no idea what was going on but it was apparently very funny to the others in the car.
The ride was spectacular with panoramas of lush green valleys stretching back into misty mountains. We wound around steep curves and over precarious bridges with everyone hanging out of the windows. I'm glad I took the trip, a few backpackers I met in the Amazon had said it wasn't worth doing. Lies! All lies! Highly recommended should you find yourself in southern Brazil.
Paranagua is a nice little seaside town that could in fact have been in England if it wasn't for the absence of sticks of rock. Mmm... The weather was also British - rain, rain, rain. So I tried and failed to find a place to buy a boat ticket to Ilha do Mel from and instead headed to the bus station to arrange my ticket to Rio in 2 days. After much miming and many numbers written on pieces of paper I realised I had to buy a ticket to Curitiba from one company, then a ticket from Curitiba to Rio from another company. With this accomplished I returned to the waterfront to find a boat going to Ilha do Mel. Et voila! I saw a boat about to leave with a couple of other backpackers aboard and on I jumped.
And off we went... |
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