Out of the bubble......... One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.-- Henry Miller

Morretes, Curitiba and beyond

BRAZIL | Monday, 7 October 2019 | Views [470]

September 24th 2019

We cycled away from the coast again after saying good bye to Renato in Vila da Gloria..

through the rain to the train in Morretes

where that little fancy hotel made us feel like king and queen. We packed up the bikes and used that wet day chugging up to Curitiba through the mountains through the jungle and though we wished we could see the incredible scenery through the fog, but it still had its charms just watching the dripping and listening to the rhythm of an old train making its way through that jungle.

Curitiba was cold and gloomy at first, but our hosts were most heart warming and took us into their tiny little apartment as if we were old friends just stopping by. The most impressive bakery with home made cakes right around the corner

and the incredible Oscar Niemeyer Museum

made the time in this city most memorial. But our hosts “took the cake” by being so much fun! (Again, we wrestled 4 languages, which always adds to entertainment). There was a huge city market and when James and I decided to get a salmon for dinner we didn’t know we would actually make the best salmon dinner we ever had. Thinking about it still makes my mouth water...and we all talked about it for days.

When we left, the weather improved and we were joined for a while by one of our hosts and got sent in the right direction over some impressive mountains with breathtaking views and deeper into the forest.

My legs were aching - they haven’t been worked like this for weeks and Gurly started making some scary, deep groaning, unhappy noises - she sounded just like I felt that first day after leaving Curitiba. My pain subsided with more pedaling the next day, but Gurly got worse.....in fact she sounded like she is going to quit on me. It wasn’t obvious what was wrong with her, so, at the end of that day James and I looked her up and down gave her some TLC, cleaning this and that, rubbing and oiling various parts and changing a cable, adjusting the tension and voila! next day she was humming again like a little bird - my Gurly bird!! Carrying me to and through these places....( I think she didn’t like all that rain)

Now I feel like a can cycle the world again and off we went onto dirt roads into the Petar -Alto Ribeira State Park.

Here we took in the view on a little cut out by the narrow dirt road when a van pulled up with three guys jumping out asking questions and the next thing we knew, they pulled out their film camera and all the equipment to shoot a little interview/documentary about us and that is how we earned our hats.