We entered Brazil at Chuí, the country’s southernmost town. There were shops selling clothes and household items, enticing the population next door into spending money to save money. We immediately filled Bolivar’s tanks, oh joy, almost half the cost of fuel in Uruguay.
From the first, it was clear Brazil was a wealthy country. Everywhere was so clean, and all the houses were painted, on all sides! Driving north on the 471 the road was in good condition, and surrounded by water, the Mangueira lagoon on our right and the Mirim on our left. It was a stunning vista, except for the large furry bodies lying in the grass. I’d seen one of these animals in Paraguay (stuffed, in a tiny museum), they’re called capybaras. Here they were everywhere, shuffling around in the swamp, and also, unfortunately, pushing up daisies on the roadside. They’re very odd-looking creatures, with their short, blunt heads, like a child’s drawing, as if the artist lost interest before he or she could add more compelling features.
Our first evening, looking for a hotel, there were language difficulties, not to mention figuring out on the fly how much a Brazilian Real was worth. (We really should prepare more.) Venturing onto the streets of Pelotas, it was very quiet and being Sunday, all the shops were shuttered. Until we came to a medium-sized square. There the entire city seemed to be congregated on one street, gathered along a row of sidewalk bars and restaurants. Squeezing our way in among the crowds we found two free seats, only then did we notice most of the crowd was female. There was a band playing and kids running around, and waiters working overtime delivering beer and meals to packed tables. For the second time that day we were mystified. This often happens, we notice something out of the ordinary, but never find out what it was all about. Whether it's a dead capybara or a party where the men look just plain happy to be allowed on the fringes, such is life these days. It’s one big guessing game, and, if we only knew it, probably guessing wrong.
In Porto Alegre I imagined an evening sipping cocktails by the harbour. What I hadn’t imagined was a city of over a million people that looked extremely daunting on approach. We found ourselves in a modern monastery instead of a hotel. It was a place where events could be held, rather like the types of accommodations we’d stayed in in Denmark, only without the religion. There was a lush organic garden, a vine-covered terrace and a smaller building housing ten monks. These could be seen tending the vegetables and roses during the day. It was most unexpected because outside the gates was a school, and a residential street that stretched all the way down to a busy main road. The cell-like bedrooms, quiet reading rooms and holy statues lining the corridors were a refuge and only the lack of nearby food drove us out. They even did our laundry, and Fran, taking advantage of a passing breeze, was able to hang his bike pants out the window. There he goes again, lowering standards all over……well, wherever he happens to be all over.
Southern Brazil was beautiful. The countryside was flat, and almost neon green with its golf course-like fields and farms on an incredibly vast scale. Trees covered every inch of every ridge but there were also signs of deforestation. Green hillsides, with half cut away, exposing large chunks of red clay, like open wounds. All to make way for another lane of motorway. And then later, rows of plantations to make up for the trees already lost. But you could see why people moved here, with the promise of fertile, often free, wide-open spaces. A new life in a new world, far from the madding crowds. The place names alone told some of the stories: Novo Hamburgo, Teutônia, Anitápolis and Westfália, the latter sporting a giant pair of wooden clogs at its entrance.
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Stopping in no-frills Lajeado and Lages, we spent some non-eventful days getting caught-up on the real-life stuff that keeps the fun-life moving along. It was also a rest from packing-up every morning and looking for another place to live. Meals were becoming a bit of a chore too, more fuel than food. We may have been in one of the world’s best beef and barbeque countries, but it was hard to find just simple food and no matter the town, it was almost impossible to get away from the dreaded burger and its sponge bun. That said, breakfasts had improved. There was now a smattering of fruit, in the form of salads swimming in orange juice (not bad), and we discovered a new bread, Pão de Queijo (surprisingly real). And the guests at the buffets often smiled, a nice compromise when neither party spoke the others' language.
We were following the mostly nice weather from Uruguay. In Brazil it got even better, blue skies and balmy temperatures. We were on our way to Florianópolis. What a great name, though it’s hard to imagine an army marshal and president getting much respect with a name like Floriano. Again, I was expecting a medium-sized beach town and again was stunned by the size (over a million people). There was no sign of the ocean until we crossed the bridge to Santa Catarina Island. The weather was warm and grey but the upside was an empty beach except for one or two locals. To get there we crossed a wooden boardwalk over marshland and a group of capybaras nosing their way among the wet grasses. Very brave of them I thought, living so close to the traffic, but at least here they weren’t dropping dead. I suspect the tourist board doesn’t allow it.
Blumenau was not the picturesque German town everyone said it was, which is probably a good thing since this was Brazil. I’d been fearful of a Solvang California-type product but really it was a very ordinary place with some German-style buildings. Our hotel, in the centre of town, was very old world, with dark polished woods, warm stained glass interiors, elderly porters and overstuffed chairs. The languages spoken were Portuguese, German and Spanish, in that order. It was an odd feeling to be wandering the paved, Northern European streets in an area that has a humid, subtropical climate. Outside of the city there were forested hills and driving along the Itajaí-Açu River it didn’t take long for Brazil to return. Following its brown waters and misty banks, you got a good idea of what met Herr Hermann Blumenau and his seventeen settlers when they stepped off their boat on this very same river in 1850.
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We avoided the cities as much as we could. It seemed that every urban area we passed through was huge, with tall thin skyscrapers with futuristic profiles. Out in the countryside we enjoyed the changing scenery as we moved north to more humid weather. There were only two disadvantages to this: laundry days were becoming more necessary and more frequent, and Bolívar was getting covered in dead bugs, as was Fran, being second in the line of fire. But never have we seen a landscape so green. It varied from pasture to swamp to rolling hills, and endless Araucaria trees reflected in ponds. There were logging trucks everywhere but the roads were good, that is until they turned to cobblestones, and finally red dirt. One day our navigation app added two hours to the journey by sending us down one of these red routes. It was slow going and when we finally reached the small town that’d put us back on asphalt, it itself was in even worse nick. Coming down a hill we found the main street completely dug up. From the innovative metropolis to this….…I guess not all houses are painted on all sides after all.
We were so close, only 800km, we had to see the Iguacu Falls. We'd been before but to drive there now was an experience we couldn’t pass up. Paraná was our final state and the trees grew thicker, as did the air, and the deep red clay that clung to our boots. The area had completely changed. You could no longer drive right up to the falls, instead a new road had been built, ending in parking lots with buses that ran visitors through the jungle to that incredible first view. “My poor Niagara” as Eleanor Roosevelt had once so honestly put it. And she was right. Even second time around it took our breath away, as did the twenty-two years that had gone by since our last visit. Oh, where did it all go? How can this be? But there were no answers. It was just another one of those “not-so-sweet” mysteries of life.
Brilliant writing Yvonne. What an intrepid pair.