BIG and small is just a relative thing

So, I’ve been in Brazil for just over a week and I’m already learning a new meaning to Big and small. Why? Well, Brazil is a HUGE country (apparently almost as big as the US) so the measuring stick people use here to judge size and distance here is very different! As for the Portuguese: so far so good. I mean, speaking Spanish slowly and then having people answer me in Portuguese seems to be working.

For the last week I’ve been in this city considered to be the greenest city of Brazil: Curitiba. Rafa (my friend here) works here at the Volvo plant. It’s been really good to see him again (after 2 and a half years!!!) and meet several of his friends….though the language barrier is definitely very apparent with some of them! Also met Rafa’s girlfriend and her family who were really welcoming…even got invited to the 85th birthday of her grandfather! Hardly anyone spoke English, except one uncle so we had a good time just chatting. So what have I been doing while Rafa is at work?

Well, the first day I didn’t do much….had a cold and a bit of a fever so decided to relax and enjoy the tropical weather (so much for winter here….it’s been 30 degrees every day here and yes, an air conditioner can be very pleasing in the middle of winter!!!! Who would have thought that to be possible?). On Tuesday I went on a train from Curitiba to a tiny little village of Morretes. The train takes 3 hours whereas a bus would only take 1 hour, but the railway track goes through the middle of native forest (it’s not exactly the Amazon, but it’s big and green and seems endless) as well as crossing two mountain ranges….so you can imagine the views and the number of tunnels and bridges we passed! Just heard from Rafa that some 4000 people died constructing the railway line (somewhere in the late 1800´s)!!!! That’s shocking! Moerretes was a real picturesque little town…cobbled streets, old churches, palm trees and banana trees EVERYWHERE!!!! I loved it there…I just sat on a terrace looking over the river, drinking fresh orange juice staring into oblivion for 2 hours! Incredible! From Morettes I went to the port town of Paranaguá. Also really pretty but not as tranquil as Morettes, but they do have a tiny little beach and a mangrove forest just off the coast (some 50m) creating this big island of trees….good protection barrier from the sea!

Wednesday and Thursday I spent walking and traveling around the city of Curitiba…it has so many gardens and parks that it’s impossible to visit them all, but I made an effort! I think my favourite forest was the German Forest. It’s about 2 hectars of native bush, has two typically German buildings and a little cobbled path running through the forest with the story of Hansel and Gretel told along the way….it’s also on a hill so you get a good panoramic view of the city.

Friday Rafa took me to his home…in a town called Itapeva which is really near to Curitiba (or so he said!). He wanted me to meet this family….some 400km´s away….The whole weekend I spent there and had a good time communicating with his parents in Portuguese/Spanish. His sister spoke English really well. On the way to Itapeva, we stopped at a Dutch colony: Castroolanda. I was really surprised to learn there were 7 Dutch colonies here in Brazil. I mean, I knew there were several Italian and German ones, but Dutch??? Turns out, after the Second World War, farmers in Holland were too poor and had too little land to cultivate what was needed. Some 200 farmer families left for Brazil in 1953 with all their machinery and even their cows, bought a plot of land of 700 000 hectars (!!!!!) and divided it equally among the families and started cultivating maize, wheat, potatoes and also farm animals for meat and milk. Incredible. And that was just ONE of the seven colonies. So we went to one of them, and I spoke Dutch in Brazil!!!! How weird was that?!?!!?!? They also have Dutch schools as well as a replica of a windmill in Holland, which was built to commemorate 50th anniversary of the colony! I now want to go visit the original in Holland though it’s near Groningen…a bit of a trek for us Dutch people (again, for Brazilians they would consider it to be close!).

The weekend here in Itapeva has been great! Relaxed a lot, got to know Rafa’s family and also went to visit Rafa’s “small” farm….turns out, it’s a 60 hectare piece of land, 40% of it is native jungle/forest (with al the lovely poisoness creatures that go along with it!!!) with a waterfall, a dam and then 60% of it they are using to grow pine trees and eucalyptus trees for wood which will be used to make paper….it’s a hobby of Rafa’s father….he likes nature and according to the Brazilian law, 20% of your land needs to be set aside for natural rejuvenation of native forest…he left 40%, and because he’s now retired, enjoys working for weeks at a time on his “little farm”. You can imagine my surprise to learn and see that this “little farm” was spread over 2 hills and had a lovely view of about 50kms around us….

So far Brazil has been wonderful! And the fresh fruit is amazing! They are all about 3 times as big as what I’m used to at about a tenth of twentieth the price! I keep telling people how amazing their fruit is here and they tell me that Mangoes, for example, are nothing special….many people don’t eat them and they are just left to rot….you can imagine my horror! At the moment I’m just waiting for the time when my bus leaves for Florianopolis….the famous big island for it’s beaches in the south of Brazil. And it’s leaving soon!