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Florianópolis
Posted by Nad on 13 March 2014 at 22:27
This post has the following tags: 2014 Holiday in Brazil
We set off from Cambará do Sul about 9am so we could get up to Florianópolis by early evening. The drive was a bit longer than expected because the routes that Google maps provided us turned out to have very long stretches of rough dirt road on them which we didn't want to risk in our tiny Fiat packed full of baggage and people! So we had to go south out of Cambará instead of north, then turn back north from Terra de Areia about 75km south-east of Cambará. You can see the route that Google gave us in blue on the map below, and marked in red is the route we ended up taking after talking to some locals. We then got into Florianópolis which is about 350km north/north-east of Cambará at about 6:30pm. The weather was misty and rainy all the way up, and Florianópolis itself was pouring and looked like it was seriously set in and the weather forecast says it will be like this for the whole week! Our pousada, Porto Lagoa (located here) was really nice, a well made tidy and spacious wooden house with kitchen and lounge area down stairs and bedrooms up stairs. It's situated close to Lagoa da Conceição east of the middle of the island and is very close to some nice restaurants, cafes, markets and other shops. Actually we highly recommend people stay at this pousada when they come to Florianópolis for the first time because the guy who runs the place, Paulo, speaks reasonable English and knows all the trails and attractions inside out - in fact he designs the maps for many of the tourist establishments! The rain let up a bit later in the evening so we went up the road for some Sushi as there's a nice looking place only 100 metres up our road. It was really good sushi too, better than I've had in years! the chef was really nice too and talked to us a lot to practice his English - he also made lots of nice special dishes for us like a small dish of fish marinated in lemon and a dish of salmon decorated into the shape of a rose and served on fire! (missed the photo of that dish sorry) Amazingly the next morning was perfect blue sky even though the forecast was still saying there would be nothing but bad weather persisting for the whole week :-) so we decided to make the most of it and get down to the beach asap! Paulo, the guy who runs the pousada, recommended some good places we could go during our stay here including a nice local track through the sand dunes to Praia da Joaquina which is one of the main beaches to see in Florianópolis. We could tell it was definitely a local track by the extremely dodgy "bridge" across the swamp to the dunes! The beach was really nice with very fine white and gold sand, massive dunes to jump on, and perfect blue ocean with largish but very safe waves to swim in :-) The north end of the beach was quite populated, but not too bad since we've arrived shortly after the holiday period, but most of the beach was empty and quiet. Today (Saturday) we went to the south of the island. It was a really nice area down there with very quaint little villages right up against the sea (the sea is very calm there since we were on the western side which is facing towards the mainland). It reminded me a lot of Devonport about 30 years ago with all the little old boats on the sand :-) we liked it so much there that Beth and I called up a number we saw on a small 1000m2 section a few streets back from the beach with a run-down little house on it that was for sale, but we didn't entertain that thought for much longer when they told us they wanted at least R$1 million for it!!! We also got some nice shots of a butterfly we haven't seen anywhere else and some cool local graffiti :-) Dad and Mum spotted a couple of tiny monkeys with long bushy tails in the tree outside the pousada, but unfortunately the little things were flitting about too fast for them to get any photos. They were very cheeky too, when Dad was looking up at them they both all of a sudden simultaneously propped their bums up and peed at him!!! We were able to identify them well enough to find out what they were though which is a Black-tufted marmoset, you can see how small they are from the photo we found below of one of them with a bunch of bananas. Later in the day we went for a walk around the town centre and Dad managed to snap a great shot of a fisherman casting his net just as we were walking past. On Monday we got up early so we could get started on a 7km bush walk around the side of the lake before it got too hot. The trail ends at a place with some restaurants we could have lunch at and then take a nice ferry trip back rather than walking in the hot afternoon sun. It was a very pleasant trail with a lot of nice places to stop and enjoy the beach by the side of the lake, small waterfalls, and an old mill house. Unfortunately the heat became too much for Mum after a few hours and we still had a few km to go to get to the end, but luckily just as we thought it best to stop we arrived at "Ponto 13" (the 13th stop of the 19 in total). The guy there was very friendly and advised us that the waterfall further on was very dangerous and we'd be much safer drinking beer at his restaurant! well being a local who had lived there all his life we thought he probably knew best, so we sat down for a beer and a nice meal of prawn muqueca :-) the guy was very down to earth and sat with us at our table talking about local life there, he also showed us some of the model boats he'd carved from the local drift wood - some of them have even been taken back to New Zealand by various visitors over the years! We then caught the ferry back to "Ponto 3" where we'd left the car. Today, Wednesday, is our last full day in Florianópolis :-( we decided to go and check out a trail that sounded not too difficult at the south east end of the island which started at a beach called Solidão. The beach and trail were very nice, the trail passes some small houses where the people still live very simply without any electricity, one cute house had a nice white horse in it which followed us a little way down the trail. The trail ended at another nice beach and a restaurant that we were going to have lunch at, but it was closed! as it turned out it was very fortunate that it was closed though, because after we walked back we found a really awesome restaurant called Ana Maria at the end of the next beach to the north, Pântano do Sul. We had a huge meal of four types of prawns, fish, chips, rice, salad and even a couple of fish balls and a small deep fried crab that only cost about eight NZ dollars each! plus they sold a local type of Guaraná that was so nice that even mum had a few glasses and she normally hates soft drinks! The north end of the beach was a really cute little village that was right on the beach - so much so that the waves were coming in past the parked cars! we also saw a boat on the beach which looked at first like it was named Zenia, but turned out to be Zenir :-) We left Florianópolis on Friday the 21st and set off in a bus 936km west to the Iguaçu falls which is located on the borders of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay which you can see on Google maps here. We had to leave the pousada about midday, but the bus to Foz left at 6pm so we had a few hours to have a look around the city before we left. It was quite a change from what we had come to think of as Florianópolis because the area we'd being staying in the pousada was more like Waiheke island with lots of little cafés and restaurants, beaches, quaint villages and people walking round in their swimming gear often carrying surf boards with them. But the main city area where the bus station was is very much like Porto Alegre with open markets, street performers and a lot of tall high-rises intermingled with older buildings. We wandered around for a bit and ended up relaxing in a nice bar with well priced prawn pastels and nice tap beer, the fish and prawns in the market were well priced too and all caught locally on the island. The shot of the bus below is taken at one of the stops along the way at about 3am, every few hours it stops so people can stretch their legs, have a quick smoke and buy a coffee or snack.

Cambará do Sul
Posted by Nad on 10 March 2014 at 20:59
This post has the following tags: 2014 Holiday in Brazil
We arrived in Cambará do Sul in the late afternoon and unpacked our things into the pousada that Beth had booked a few weeks ago. We had separate double rooms with a shared deck which you can see in the photo below, our room is on the right and Mum & Dads on the left, and the middle door is the hallway. Cambará has a lot of nice waterfalls and canyons which we'll go and look at over the next few days. Cambará is a very small tourist town about 170km north of Canela and Gramado, there's not really much for the locals to do as everything is set up primarily for the tourists, so they're left to find their own entertainment like this young fellow practising his lassoing skills on a wooden cow in the main street... The guy who runs the pousada we're staying at had some pamphlets for the local restaurants and one looked really nice with a speciality of a fish or prawn soup served in a pumpkin. We went there and the place was very nice, but when we looked at the menu and saw that the pumpkin meal was R$90! well that's just highway robbery!!! we got straight up and walked out... but we couldn't find anywhere much better especially since Beth and I are vegetarian, so we ended up having to pay R$25 for a small bowl of soup! (at least it was nice soup though). We got up early the next morning so we could get to the canyons early as the guy who runs the pousada had said that the visibility tends to be better in the mornings. The breakfast served at the pousada was simple but nice with a few different kinds of breads and cheeses, a toasted sandwich maker and some fruit. To drink there was coffee, fresh pineapple juice and a carafe of a nice Brazilian drink consisting of Mamão (large papaya), banana and milk which all go really well together. We then set out for Parque Nacional Aparados da Serra which are the canyons closest to the pousada. Unfortunately visibility was very low, it cost about R$25 in total for us all to enter the park and they warned us that we would likely not be able to see anything, but we went anyway as we really need to get out and stretch our legs. Although it was extremely misty it was a very nice walk and we did get some quite nice pictures and met some nice people too, a couple from Spain and a girl from Russia :-) We got some nice close up shots of this big black vulture too! We asked the guy who runs the pousada (I should know his name by now!) if he knew anywhere we could eat that was more oriented towards locals rather than tourists - even he couldn't disguise his shock at hearing the cost of the soup in a pumpkin! he mentioned a small place on the main road called Regina which we went to and found really nice. It was simple food of Brazilian beans and rice, chips, salad, eggs and a steak for Dad and they had Mums favourite ice tea and espresso for me. It was really reasonably priced at R$13 for ours and R$17 for Dads with the steak and that included more rice, beans or eggs if we felt like more! not only that but when we arrived the restaurant part was closed that night and the women opened it up especially for us! I think we'll go there again tomorrow night :-) Today (Wednesday) we went to Parque Fortaleza which is a bit further away. It was even more misty today, but this place was amazing! the canyons were huge (over 1000 meters deep) and there were no signs or fences or anything there, which is extremely dangerous but made it a truly awesome experience. We found it incredible that we were able to sit right on the edge of a vertical drop over a kilometre high! You had to sit down and shuffle towards the edge to avoid getting vertigo and feeling sick and dizzy! When we got back to the car there were some small Graxaim (Pampas fox) there waiting for us :-) we have these on our land and we hear them calling each other nearby in the forest most nights, but we haven't actually seen them yet so it was nice to see some here today. They're very cute and it looks like they're used to the visitors at the park giving them food scraps, so I thought it would be a nice idea to give some of our granola to one of them...         Nek minute...         Lesson learned: When a place that doesn't even bother to put handrails at the edge of thousand meter cliffs puts signs in the car park telling you not to feed the wild animals, you don't feed the wild animals!

Canela & Gramado
Posted by Nad on 5 March 2014 at 21:29
This post has the following tags: 2014 Holiday in Brazil
The drive to Canela and Gramado from Porto Alegre is about two hours, the first hour is quite boring as it's all through the industrial outskirts of Porto Alegre, but the second hour is a nice drive through natural bush which is very similar to driving through New Zealand native bush. The altitude raises slowly from sea level up to about a thousand metres. The following photo that's almost a compulsory shot is the view from the bridge leaving Gramado on the road to Canela which is about 7km further. On a very clear day you can see hundreds of kilometers into the distance and really get a bit of an idea of the size of Brazil which is almost six thousand kilometers from top to bottom! We rented a nice little pousada in Canela as a base while we visit some of the sites around here over the next week, so we dumped all our stuff there and got an early night. A pousada is something sort of halfway between a hotel and a B&B and are a very popular and cost-effective form of accommodation in Brazil. The next day after a compulsory stop at our favourite cafe (Confeteiria Martha) we decided to show Mum and Dad our land since the weather was good and it could possibly be the only chance to get there in our tiny red car! The quickest route by car is to go via Barragem do Salto which is a dam about 18km from our place (our place is about 35km out of Canela). Driving across the dam can be very dangerous because the road has huge breaks and pot holes in it, and after its been raining the water raises up over the road concealing the uneven surface completely. Dad was quite shocked because the road is never closed even though the water level will sometimes be a metre over the road with a very powerful current making it impossible for even the strongest 4x4's or trucks to cross. We've crossed it in our Lada Niva with about 30cm of water and even that was pretty touch and go! It's a real contrast to the "nanny state" method of governance we're used to in the west. Another similar thing Dad and I find really interesting was the way that buildings are constructed over here, where they form the main structure from concrete using old wood panels nailed together to form molds to pour the concrete into that are held up with tree branches. Bricks then fill up the walls between the concrete supports. This method is used for nearly all buildings from one or two story shops up to huge forty story apartment blocks and allows any construction company to do it without needing cranes to lift heavy prefabricated concrete panels. The little red car made it no problem, but we left it at the top of the road about a kilometer from our house because the last bit of the road is the worst and if there was any rain we wouldn't be able to get it out again, so we hiked down the last bit with all our bags. Mum and Dad were really excited to finally see our place in real life :-) they stayed for one night, but were a bit scared to stay longer as there was some rain and they'd remembered the photos we'd taken of the river rising up and coming only a few meters away from the house! So after some photos of the vege patch and a short walk around our little forest we had some lunch and headed back to our place in Canela again. On Thursday we all got up early to go and visit Arca Verde (Green Ark) which is a rural community about 10km out of São Francicsco de Paula who grow all their own food using permaculture and agro-forestry techniques. They also make their houses with various natural building techniques such as straw-bale, mud & daub and adobe. After that we went to Gramado so Mum & Dad could check out the architecture and culture there which is quite unique within Brazil. The whole place has a very strong German influence as many German settlers arrived there a hundred years or so back. Many people there still have a strong German accent and look quite German too. Beth's Dad had got some of our soil analysed and the results said that it was extremely acidic. Mum and Dad recommended that adding limestone to the soil would help a lot with this, so today (Saturday) we picked up a 50Kg sack and went to the land again to plant some fruits, vegetables and nitrogen-fixers we'd got from Arca Verde and to spread the Lime over the garden beds. This time instead of going via Barragem do Salto (the dam) we went the longer way via Passo do Inferno (Hells pass), Vaca Velha (Old cow) and Lava Pé (wash feet). Even though it's a rough dirt road about 30km long this route with all its crazy names is actually an official numbered highway that the bus goes on! just imagine a bus timetable in New Zealand saying "old cow at 9:45, wash feet at 10:30" :-) This route is also much more scenic with some nice lakes and a big gorge which we stopped at to get a photo - there were also a bunch of Gauchos taking in the scenery and Dad managed to get a sneak shot of them too ;-) We left the little Fiat up the top of the valley again since it probably wouldn't handle the steep slope out again, so we had to come back for the sack of lime. Dad was feeling adventurous and volunteered to take Nivinha through the muddy forest path and up the hill to get it. Here's a shot of Beth looking very concerned about his impetuous decision while she's explaining all Nivinhas quirks to him! But all went well and Dad got us through the mud safely - although he did drive our car into a tree! but Nivinhas such a sturdy Russian car that we were more worried about the poor tree :-) All the vegetables were much bigger and doing quite well, and there was even some colour in the vege patch - a few more tomatoes which we had with lunch and some bright pink flowers which almost have Mums name, they're Zinnias :-) On our last full day in Canela we all went to visit some friends of ours who are renting a place on some rural land in Barragem do Salto (the dam about 18km from our land). They had some other friends visiting too and one of them, Rochelle, had lived in Australia for a couple of years and was keen to meet us and practice some English :-) I took one of my large hacky sacks along as I suspected that it'd be something Rafael would enjoy, and I was right - me, him and another friend, Dennis, played for a couple of hours and I woke up the next morning having a fair bit of trouble walking as I haven't played for a long time now! Like us, Rafael has the Bugio monkeys come and visit in the trees in their garden, unfortunately it was getting a bit too dark by then so the couple of photos below taken by Dennis are the best any of us could get of them. There's also a photo of Mum holding a brazil nut shell, none of us knew that the brazil nuts we're used to actually come in a group of eight or ten that are encased in an even larger shell about the size of a cricket ball. Then on the morning of Monday the 10th we packed up ready to head off to Cambará do Sul. The dogs at the pousada were sad to see us go, but at least they were able to comfort each other :-) Before leaving Canela we had one last visit to our favourite cafe, Confeitaria Martha for some coffee and pastries.

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