Curitiba, Ihla do Mel, Foz do Iguacu

Hi guys!

Writing from Puerto Iguacu in Argentina - that´s right, we made it outta Brazil in one piece! We`re all excited about a new country especially because its half the price of Brazil. But here is an account of our last days in Brazil... (we´ll write about our experiences in Argentina after we have a few more :))

Tuesday:

Arrived in Curitiba after a 13 hour bus ride which was not as bad as it sounds. I´d love to say it was noisy and old and full of livestock, but it was serious luxury, with fully reclining seats and only 4 other people on board, so we pretty much slept most of the way. Fonz and I slept especially well after sharing a bottle of Cachaca and Coke and falling around the bus a little (just a little). We waited around at the bus station a bit until Fausto`s cousin, Frederico, came to fetch us and take us to Marcella´s (Fonz´s aunt) house where we were staying for the week. After a good meal at Lokal (a local) we walked to the Botanical Gardens. It was at these very gardens that Fausto and Steve accidently became homosexuals. We must have caught it from someone in Rio. Fausto also decided that it would be fun to strip to his underwear and jog around the gardens. Fortunately, this is Brazil, and a man in his underwear jogging around is not an irregular sight. That night we went to Marcella´s bar, Villa das Artes - a nice place with a mostly regular crowd and good bands - to chill and watch a tango band.

Wednesday:

The Arsenal were playing Liverpool in the champs league today, and Esteban was not gonna miss that one, so we went to the house of another of Fausto´s cousins, Bruno, to watch the game. After a disappointing result with Arsenal being robbed of victory by the ref, Bruno took us to a local japanese rodizio. We boldly requested the all-you-can-eat option and began to clean out the japs of all of their sushi. They never saw us gluttonous Saffers coming, and we easily ate 200 USD of sushi each but only paid the $25 charge for the Rodizio. Thats for Pearl Habour, ha. We floated back to Bruno´s place, met some of his friends and chilled out. Bruno drives quite "enthusiastically", so a good chill out session was needed after every near-death-experience, I mean car ride, that he kindly took us on.

Thurs:

We checked out the local mall and soon realised that malls are boring throughout the world. Nuff said about that. True to form, when the Gringos have nothing to do you can find them at the bar drinking Caipirinhias. A fantastic Samba band was playing so we three gringos tried our hands at Samba dancing and while Nadia cracked it, Fonz and Steve just put their Gringoness on display for all the world to see. & Later on we met up with Bruno´s friends at a club called Ambiental. From the street though, you´d never know it was a club because it was in a residential area and noise had to be kept down. From the inside it was fantastic - lots of friendly locals and an awesome Reggae band. In Brazil everyone drinks beer outta quarts, but they share each quart out into small glasses. This means that your glass is never empty - as soon as you take a sip someone else is filling up your glass and saying something incomprehensible in Portugese. We enjoyed the beer and sang along to the reggae covers (which is all they play here) and stayed out rather late. The strange thing about clubs in Brazil is that you get a card in the begininng on which you fill in your details and when you order something from the bar no money changes hands but rather it gets noted on your card. This is quite smart and quite efficient, but very dangerous method of partying. At least you get a reciept so that the next day you can go back and see where it all went wrong.

Friday:
7am: A hungover Gringo (Fonzo) arrived back home from aforementioned party. We all slept in and did nothing for a while. Bruno then took us to Happy Burger (aaaah Happy Burger), an American-Style burger place which serves cheap, huge burgers with everything on them. We then headed to a surprise party (it was a surprise to us too) and met some more (surprised) people. We became celebrities at the party solely by virtue of being from South Africa and speaking English. Everyone insisted on practicing their English on us, and some of them couldn´t speak a word, so after a while the Gringos got a bit tired of being practiced on. One of Bruno´s friends arrived and then drove us at about 2am to a town on the coast called Shangri-la (doesn´t sound Brazillian to me either). On the way Steve noticed that said friend was looking rather tired behind the wheel, and so he (bravely) volunteered to drive. Thus began his first wrong-side-of-the-road driving experience, which went off without incident (thank god). Eventually arrived in a very rustic beach town at 4:30am, at which time Steve needed a beer to calm his nerves.

Saturday:
Overslept and woke up at 10am. Headed to the port of Paranagua to catch the ferry to Ihla do Mel (honey island), a tiny little island with a population of 1000, 20km from the mainland. Cars are not allowed on the island so its pretty damn chilled out there. We arrived and walked along the beach to try and find our bearings and a place to stay for the night.

Stumbled upon a bar on the beach where there was a surfing competition going on (which Steve did not enter for fear of embarassing the locals). Met two Aussies who had come to the Island planning to stay the weekend but ended up there for a month. They showed us around the island and we soon found out how easy it could be to never leave the island. Its various pousada´s (guest houses) and bars are all hidden in thick tropical jungle which leads straight onto some beaches and everything is linked by a system of beachsand paths which are overgrown with jungle (think of Lost meets The Beach and you´ve got an idea - or just look at the photos and cry a bit). Found a cool little surfers camp in the jungle a few hundred metres from the beach and rented a room for the night, before joining the Aussies (real Aussie Aussies) for a nice simple cheap dinner at a restaurant somewhere on the beachy path. We then met a real character called Charles, a half-English half-Brazillian guy who moved to the Island 8 years ago and now runs a small tobaccò/internet shop and very probably spends his time smoking a lot of pot and talking to himself. What we found most amusing about him was his impeccable british accent mixed with his stoner brazillian vibe and his inability to remember what he was doing two seconds ago.
That night we went to a bar at the other end of the island (a ten minute walk) to watch a reggae band and chill out with the island´s population of local surfers and Australians. After stumbling home in the dark and not quite knowing where we were going, we eventually got some sleep.

Sunday:
Crappy weather today. Bruno came to meet us on the island and brought along a few surfboards, so we headed to one of the beaches and did a bit of surfing. It got quite crowded though in the water (on an Island!) so we went to have some lunch in the square, which consisted of a patch of beach sand and a couple of restaurants. It began raining hard so we decided to catch the boat back to the mainland and drove back to Curitiba. We had already booked our bus tickets to Foz do Iguacu for 9pm so we rushed to pack up our stuff before heading out to have a Churasco (braai) with Bruno before we left Brazil.

Monday:
Arrived, confused and rather tired, in Foz do Iguacu at 6am this morning and slowly found our way to the Parque Nacional Iguacu, the Brazillian Side of the monumental Iguacu falls which seperate Brazil, Paraguy and Argentina. Check out the pics and you´ll get an idea of what an amazing place it is. We then caught a bus to the Argentinian town of Puerto Iguacu, on the other side of the falls, where we are now. Its Nice!

Thats all for now - will write about the first part of Argentina soon. We´re just about to go to the grocery store for wine and not beer (this promises to please Nadia) since Argentina is the land of cheap wine and cheaper cows. Problem is that people here only eat dinner at 10pm and go out at 2am. Eish. We´ll let you know how the Gringos handle it.

Adios!

Los Gringos

P.S, you people must post more comments - as much as you wait for our blogs we wait for comments, so all those who read the blog and dont post a comment are hereby considered pooheads. Ha!

Check out pics from Curitiba at http://picasaweb.google.es/steveo.zogg/Curitiba

Unfortunately we`re having trouble getting the rest of the pics from Ihla and Foz online and we´re having even more trouble getting pics onto the site (after spending four hours in an internet cafe) so we`ll try again tomorrow. For now just read the blog multiple times and that should do it.

K bye