Curitiba, Brasil

Kara says:

Brasil, new country, wahoo! Portuguese, new language, boo. Have now realised portuguese is not actually a different language, it's just spanish with a speech impediment. So we can sort-of understand what people are saying to us. But it's incredibly frustrating when they claim not to be able to understand our spanish in return, it's the same language!!!

Curitiba. Came by bus from Puerto Iguazu, lots of green fields, cows, rolling hills. Curitiba is a pleasant city of about a million people, some nice colonial architecture and cobbled streets, students (and therefore bars), microbrewed beer and German sausages. Therefore Karl = pig in muck. There's quite a German influence in Brasil, have to google the history of immigrants. Photos of the town.

The only thing to do in Curitiba, apart from wandering around, is take the train through the hills to small town somewhere down the track. It passes through some very hilly/mountainous countryside covered in rainforest. Brazilian rainforest! There's some left! Photos of me in train, hills, bridge, train. The track is actually surprisingly busy with freight trains although the only passenger train is strictly for the tourists and railway workers. Along the way there's lots of abandoned 19th/early 20th century buildings that look like they used to be houses for railway workers, way up in the forest and hills in the middle of nowhere. There are still a couple of places that seem to be accommodation for railway workers, I assume they spend a few days up there at a time.