Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Brazil - Curitiba and Sao Paulo

Summary
  • Took the jungle train in Curitiba - very cool
  • Mark got stung by a bee
  • Explored Sao Paulo's "little Japan"
Curitiba
Our next destination after Foz do Iguacu was Curitiba which is the capital of the same state (Parana). This was a short stop mainly to take the Serra Verde Jungle train but included the "bee sting" incident. For anyone not on facebook, Mark was stung by a bee and suffered a sore (and very swollen) ear.
The jungle train line is Curitiba-Morretes. Morretes is a tiny town which relies heavily on the tourism from the jungle train.

The bee sting incident
We took a walk around the town once we arrived as we had time to kill before the train ride back to Curitiba. After looking through a lovely little old church we were walking down a street when mark was 'attacked' by a bee. Not sure quite what happened but he was not happy and we got out of there pronto! Unfortunately, another guy was also stung (also on the ear?!?) a few minutes after Mark was. I swear if I wasn't so worried about him it would have been pretty funny. Mark being attacked by something I couldn't see and running away up the street. I'm happy to report that his ear is now ok but the swelling stayed for a good 4-5 days!

The jungle train was pretty cool but you had to practically hang out the window to get nice pictures. I'm not good with heights at the best of times so I left Mark to it.




Sao Paulo
From Curitiba we went to Sao Paulo which is the 3rd largest city in the world! It was huge! We spent a little bit of time in a suburb called Liberdade which is "little Japan". Sao Paulo has the largest Japanese community outside of Japan on account o fthe number of immigrants who initially came to Brazil for coffee farming after the abolishment of slavery in the late 1800s. There is a very interesting museum about the immigration of Japanese to Brazil. We were very very sad to learn about the earthquake and tsunami the day after we spent time in this area. :-(

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