Today I am off on a weekend adventure I have been looking forward to since the beginning of my trip here in Brazil, Curitiba and Foz de Iguaçu!!!! I woke up at 6:00am and headed to the long distance bus terminal with one backpack and a purse ready to embark on this crazy adventure. Twelve people from ISA and I got on a bus that took 4 hours to get to Curitiba. When we arrived we walked to our hotel called Ibis Budget, it took us about an hour and a half to check in, it was absolutely ridiculous, if it took me that long to check a group in at the Andaz I would be fired immediately... but Brazil is not known for it's efficiency... (have I told you about how grocery stores do not keep large amount of change in their registers, so if you pay for something with a hundred for example, it takes 20 minutes for them to call the manager and get change, and it holds up the whole line,,, it's crazy). After that we grabbed a quick bite to eat then were off to see the Museum Oscar Niemeyer. The man who designed this museum also designed the city of Brasilia (that I had visited earlier in the trip), so it was really interesting to see more of his style of architecture. There were some really cool exhibits in the museum as well, for example one was all about art that tricks your eye, so there are buildings that don't match up and make it look one way, but if you stare at it longer you realize don't make any sense and couldn't really stand up that way, they were really cool. The museum has one part that is shaped like a giant eye, so the museum is also known as the eye museum to locals. After the museum we all went to dinner at a delicious Mexican food restaurant (mexican food is not really popular here, it is more like a special occasion place for Brazilians, but us Americans love it so much we hunt out the restaurants no matter what city we are in, and eat at them all the time :D ).
The eye !
look at this picture for a minute...
At the mexican food restaurant when we realized how much food we accidentally ordered... lost in translation
May 31, 2013 (Friday)
Today we woke up early, grabbed some breakfast at the hotel and were off to see the city of Curitiba! The city is one of the nicest I have been in here in Brazil. It is very developed and cleaner than most, it is also known for having a pretty cool night life. In my opinion it reminds me a lot of Europe with the cobblestone streets, catholic churches, and architecture of some of the buildings. We did a walking/bus tour of the city on a bus system called Jardineira Buses. Our first stop was the Jardim Botanico (the botanical gardens) which was beautiful, it was a large park area surrounded by the city, with gardens similar to a very small version of the french gardens at the Chateau de Versailles (much much smaller though). There was a glass building at the top of the hill over looking the gardens that housed many different types of plants native to Brazil. Next we headed to the Universidade Libre do Meio Ambiente, which was this hidden pond surrounded by cliffs and rain forest that you can only get to through a secret wooden path that start on this random street in the middle of the city. It was an amazing hidden gem in the middle of the city, very unexpected. Then we headed to the Opera de Arame, which is the glass opera house, this opera house is surrounded by a small lake and is very pretty. Here we also tried tapioca, which is a treat that is made out of flour called mandoca which is made from a root native to Brazil. They take this flour and sprinkle it onto a hot pan or grittle then you add what ever ingrediants you want, we chose to have morango (strawberries) and leite condensado (condensed milk) which was AMAZING! it tasted like the best strawberry short cake I have ever had! (the flour is a little salty, with the sweet, it was heaven), some people also like savory ones with cheese and ham for example, I tried a bite of that one too and it was very tasty. We also had some pamonha, which is a pastry that is made from corn, it is like the corn part of a tamale but made sweet with sugar and served hot with condensed milk and cinnimon on top,,, holy cow it's amazing..... Delicious with a coffee (and how Brazilians are thinner than American's I will never know.. haha no I'm kidding, most only eat this things rarely as a treat). After we headed to the bus terminal to get on our over night bus to Iguaçu!
looks european right..?
Botanical Gardens
The secret passage to get to the Universidade Libre do Meio Ambiente
The glass opera house
Making delicious Tapioca!!
June 1, 2013 (Saturday)
After our 8 hour bus ride from Curitiba to Iguaçu we arrived at around 5:30am and headed to our hostel. This was the first time I had ever stayed in a hostel! The hostel was called Bambu, and when we arrived I was pleasantly surprised, it looked pretty cool with a pool and outside area with a bar for people to hang out. But the bar tender had apparently had too much fun the night before because when we arrived people were still walking around drinking and he was passed out on the couches in the main living area. About an hour after we got there (while people were showering and getting ready for the rest of the day) the bar tender randomly woke up and puked all over the floor, and what shocked me the most was that the lady on duty working at the hostel did not even clean it up, she just tossed a rag over the large part of the vomit and walked away, that made me scared to sleep in the beds there, because if someone puked in a bed what did they do, cover it with a sheet and walk away... EW!! After everyone had freshened up from the bus ride, we headed out to the bird park. At the bird park it started to rain really hard, dumping rain is probably a more accurate description. So we decided to change around our ajenda for the day and go see the Itaipu Damn and save the water falls for the next day when it was supposed to have better weather. The Itaipu Damn was awesome, we toured around the damn after watching a movie describing how it produces enough electricity to power the entire country of Paraguay and 17% of Brazil. The bus tour took us over the damn and into the Argentinian side, it was a spectacular view (even with it pouring and thunder-storming out, we just wore plastic panchos). The damn is one of the 7 modern wonders of the world, so it was cool to be able to drive over it. After we headed to a place where the 3 borders of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil all meet, where two rivers merge. It is called the 3 frontiers. Then we headed back to the hostel to freshen-up before we headed to dinner at a churrascaria which is a classic brazilian bbq restaurant (like rei do gado in san diego). It was delicious. That night I put a sheet over the bed at the hostel, and slept on my towel fully clothes with a shirt covering the pillow and my hood on, you can never be too careful when staying in a place where apparently vomit on the ground is not big deal...
arriving at the hostel at 5:30am,,, thats the drunk bar tender on the right on the couch
an awesome backpacking backpack! I want to get a brazilian patch and put it on mine like this one! and in the future put patches from all the countries I travel to on it!
All the different people who have stayed at this hostel!
I was the first from San Diego! I put the pin in :D
And this is how you clean up vomit here at the wonderful Bambu Hostel... wow.
Bird Park
Rocking the panchos
The place where paraguay, brazil, and argentina meet
One of the seven modern wonders of the world, the itaipu damn
June 2, 2013
We woke up early ate a classic brazilian breakfast (fruit and coffee) then headed to a Buddhist temple in Iguaçu. The temple was really neat, I had never been to a temple before and when we got there all the monks were in the temple singing and playing instruments and praying, so it was really peaceful and tranquil to listen to them and walk around the grounds. There were many statues of Buda and what I can only assume were other symbolic people that I have no idea what their names are or what they represent ( I want to learn more about the religion because it seems very interesting) but they looked really cool. Then we headed to Foz de Iguaçu!!!!!!! The best part of the trip by far. The falls were breath-taking! And huge! There had to be hundreds of waterfalls, and we were really lucky because we could see all of them due to the fact it had just rained so hard so the water was really flowing. We hiked along the water falls getting an amazing view the whole way, then we stopped and had lunch on top of one of the falls then hiked past some more down into the base of the river where we got onto a boat and DROVE THROUGH THE WATER FALLS! So I was able to shower in one of the seven natural wonders of the world! It was unreal! Absolutely one of the coolest things I have ever done! After that exhilarating experience we headed back to the bus terminal and got on our 12 hour over night bus ride back to Floripa and had to go to class the next morning right when we pulled into the bus station, it was pretty hectic, but totally worth it! AMAZING trip!
These little crazy creatures will steal you lunch if you don't watch out, Crystal was walking around with her lunch in a plastic grocery bag and it ran up to her and grabbed the bag and ripped it with its claws. Then when the food fell out it took it and ran into the bushes, clearly it wasn't this little guy's first rodeo, he's got the attack and everything planned out.
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