Curitiba – a fun, capybara-infested city
The bus to Curitiba turned out to be quite eventful. There was a large group of football fans travelling across from Argentina for the Copa Libertadores final in Rio. They made a lot of noise preparing for the weekend’s atmosphere which didn’t allow us much peace during the journey.
As we got near Curitiba the bus was waved over to be stopped and searched at a military police checkpoint. Several armed, uniformed officers verified the driver’s credentials and walked sniffer dogs around a few random bags they’d selected and then into the underneath hold. When the dogs were first brought out, two women in the seats just in front of us on either side of the bus, passed black taped-up packages to each other and stuffed them up behind the curtains and into the shelf compartment above the seats. They were nervously checking out the window at what the officers were doing as they hid about seven or eight packages. I don’t know what the packages were, their weird reaction led me to think we’d just witnessed a couple of drug mules but it could’ve been completely innocent. I did wonder how we would explain that we had no involvement if the packages were found but the officers never boarded and we set off soon after.
We arrived late into Curitiba, we weren’t sure how safe the city was so didn’t want to walk 20 minutes to our accommodation in the dark. Unfortunately by this point, we had no credit for data on our phones and therefore no way to order an Uber. We tried desperately to connect to the dogshit WiFi inside the bus station and in the end had to traipse around the whole terminal trying several times to connect to the onboard WiFi of specific buses by standing near them and booking the Uber before they drove away. Eventually after about half an hour of frustration (should’ve just walked) we managed to connect, book and find our driver before losing signal.
The next morning we decided to do a park-to-park walking tour of the city. Curitiba is said to be one of the greenest cities in the world and a couple of the parks are home to groups of capybaras which we were keen to see in person. After Gayds topped up her phone, we made our way to the first park and managed to spot the large rodents pretty quickly. We stopped to watch them lazing around the water and ate a picnic lunch as every other parkgoer went past completely unfazed by the familiar sight.
It was a straightforward 50-minute route to the next park. Towards the central lake, there was another capybara just off the walking path; we had previously spotted signs warning people to stay at least two metres from the animals which I thought was still way too close. With a solid distance between us, we were able to get a good gawp at it happily munching grass and going about its day. They’re pretty amazing and reminded us a lot of the stocky, wiry wombats we’d seen in Australia.
We walked for a few more hours around a couple more parks and ended up at a cool wire opera house that was a mix of cable and glass in a distinct UAP shape. It overlooked a small lake where a suave jazz band performed atop a floating barge. They played smoothly and the music fit the mood well so we watched for a while and rested our weary feet from the 10 miles we’d just walked. Gayds was on the hunt for a new hat after hers was lost to the fjord in Paraty Mirim and it turned out there was a sick one in the gift shop of the opera house of all places. It had the outline of a capybara stitched on the front which suited her to a tee.
We were stupid enough to go without sun cream all day as it was overcast and not particularly warm, we even remarked on the mildness of Curitiba when compared to the rest of Brazil. Consequently, we ended up getting ridiculously burnt which I unusually had the worst of because of my newly shaved head. The burned scalp caused me some issues over the next week or so as it became sore and oozed yellow pus that dried and made it look like I had some kind of weird skin condition. It was especially aggravating as we’ve been in some boiling places with stupid UV ratings, but being out for hours on some cloudy, chilly day was what got us the worst.
That evening I bought a few thin steaks to have for dinner excited at the prospect of a bit of indulgence. When cooked, however, the steaks turned porky-white and I had a go at Gayds for her error in translating which resulted in buying the wrong meat. She was certain it was right and sure enough, after a bite to confirm, it was definitely beef. It was a strange dinner but it didn’t smell, tasted fine and I didn’t get ill so I don’t know what happened.
After about a month in Brazil, we both agreed that the cultural differences between here and home aren’t as vast as we once imagined they would be. We decided a lot of that feeling came from the fact that it’s actually a very developed country: WiFi and card machines are everywhere as well as decent public transport which makes our day-to-day life feel pretty similar. Additionally, technology is prevalent here too, everyone has smartphones and people spend a lot of time texting or mindlessly scrolling through instagram and tiktok.
Whilst there are obvious and major differences such as language, safety, exchange rate and cuisine, the subtle differences are, to me, more interesting. Things that seem similar at first but upon closer inspection have unique features that make it distinctly Brazilian. I thought about why this was and decided the country is so massive and therefore big enough to develop everything it needs without relying so much on imports or foreign ideas as was the case with much of New Zealand and Australia. One example of this is coaches, here they’re built primarily for comfort as they’re the main way to travel the huge country, all the coaches have large cushioned seats that recline 60° so there is some comfort on the long journeys rather than being stuffed in for as much profit as possible in the UK. In addition, they use an advanced ticketing system to ensure you pick up the correct bag from the underneath hold to prevent theft in a country where trust and morals are low.
Gayds likened this to something she’d read about ‘culture shock’ and how the big changes in a new country are easier to identify and therefore easier to prepare for. However, the small differences mean you have to consider things you usually wouldn’t, which wears away at you over time and culminates in culture shock. A subtle annoyance that affects us a lot is brushing our teeth. The tap water isn’t safe, so we have to fill our bottles and filter the water to use for brushing. Swilling mouths and cleaning toothbrushes use up most of a bottle so we then have to fill them and filter the water again so we have something to drink. Another is shopping for food, it’s a pain being tired and hungry and having to search through unknown foods with unknown prices to find something we want to cook. Then when we finally find something suitable, it ends up being ridiculously expensive or the other ingredient needed doesn’t exist.
The apartments had a gym and with heavy rain in the morning, Gayds wanted to see how much fitness she’d lost since we’d been on the road by running a 5km and comparing old times. I attended for support and spent the time writing and occasionally pushing or pulling one of the weight contraptions. This led to a few awkward encounters with the cleaner who kept seeing me sitting around doing nothing and must’ve thought I was the laziest gym goer ever. It’s okay though as I definitely am.
Our delay tactics didn’t work as it was still pouring down when we’d finished and showered, so we took a wet, self-directed walking tour through the historic centre of the city. As the rain eased later in the afternoon, we decided to trek over to the botanic gardens as entry was free, rather than to an architectural museum which had a fee. The route took us over an extremely dodgy bridge where we had to step over discarded clothes, bags of rubbish and multiple human shits. The sun was blaring as we got closer so I had just my hood up to protect my scalp and the rest of my jacket flailing behind like a cape. I was boiling and looked like a numpty but was too worried about my pus-covered head to care.
That evening we went to an all-you-can-eat churrascaria. It was similar to a restaurant we’d been to a couple of times in Newcastle where waiters would come around with skewers of barbecued meat and cut you slices with a card system where green means “Keep feeding me charred flesh” and red means “I’m too fucking stuffed to have another bite”. There was a massive buffet section, but after learning from previous experience, we went light on this and saved a lot of room for all the delicious meats. I never knew there were so many different cuts of a cow and we couldn’t understand which ones the waiters were offering us, so took a say yes to everything policy which resulted in our plates overwhelmingly piling up. I had a favourite, one little slither that wasn’t as rare as some but melted deliciously in the mouth. The rest of the evening I gorged more than I should’ve trying to find that cut again but after multiple switches to the red card to make more stomach room, I had to tap out. It was a great local experience where we were able to splurge a little thanks to some bday cash. The Newcastle restaurant was doing something right as we both thought it was similar in quality and execution.
The next morning we had another stupidly early bus to get to our new destination of Blumenau, I caught Gayds singing to herself “Everything has its place” when she was packing her bag and getting ready to leave. I guess we’re getting used to the endless packing and unpacking that comes with being constantly on the move.
