After house sitting in Florianopolis, we decided to splash out and hire a car and drive to Iguacu Falls. These falls are supposed to be some of the most dramatic in the world, and you never know when you are going to be in position to visit them again. So off we went:
Road trip to Iguazu
The weather is no good for travelling to our next port – Curitiba. So we are going to travel from here to Iguazu falls by road, the falls should be spectacular, as the rain has not stopped here for the last few days.
Fortunately there is a car rental pace right outside the yacht club, and they have the perfect vehicle for us.
SO as I write we are driving up the coast. Brazil is just so green, it is amazing, the buildings seem to be completely random, as is the city planning. There is a mixture of agriculture, though there does appear to be some proper cattle farming.
Shortly after leaving town, you find yourself transported to New York, with the statue of Liberty bearing down from a department store car park. Not quite life size, but a good effort.
Then you drive through a small beach town resort, which just has wall to wall high rise buildings, amazingly enough with no vegetation in between, so you know they really have been packed on top of each other – because in Brazil, things manage to grow everywhere. No nook or cranny remains free of growth of some sort. Now we have just passed a field of planted lettuces, and other greens, the soil they are growing in is pitch black in colour.
There are road signs everywhere, billboards and random homemade and hand painted signs. This interspersed with palm trees and an odd 3 metre high globe decorated with acloud cover advertising Santa Rosa…. Then container terminals as far as the eye can see, with the familiar names of Hamburg Sur and Maersk painted across them – the same the world over.
Junk yards full of wrecked cars, shops selling enormous beach towels – Betty Boop, a toucan, Hello Kitty and a girl in a bikini on a leopard skin mat. A boat yard pops up, constructing big trawlers – reminding us that this road is actually right next to the sea. Then more towel shops, the collections equally random.
Fields on both side of the road flooded after the rains, filled with cattle and hundreds of egrets helping themselves to the tasty fat ticks that cover their hosts. Along the road walks a man with a wheelbarrow and a generator – on his way somewhere!
We cross a river, with the associated sprawl of habitation and light industry. More towels sporting ponies, a poker table, spiderman and of course a girl in a bikini under a palm tree. ‘Hotel Playtime’ languishes next to the river. Fat horses stand knee deep in grass. A valley opens, a sign advising of a ‘Parque Thematica’ – of what theme we are not quite sure. A small, mould covered castle style house hides in amongst a tree grove. Trucks big, long, short … We pull into a shop for some refreshments, there is a roof of a warehouse next to the car park, with 2 horses tethered for the day, eating their way around the skeleton of the building. We crest a small hill and a lifesized Brontasaurus greets us advertising a park I assume with dinosaurs in it! The ‘Flamboyant Hotel’ with two life sized carton style whales decorate the next hilltop. A collapsed billboard looks sadly over a poor rural area. An enormous factory boasts a smoke stack high enough that it has been painted red and white to stop planes flying into it. There is so much to describe, a lorry drives past sporting a load of new tractors.
A very smart newly painted multi story furniture shop with glass windows shows off its wares at the roadside. The Baby Jesus advertises an ‘Artesenal Cornucopia’ of stores. An abandoned churrasco shop has plants growing out of its’ windows. Bright wash day clothes are out on display after the days of rain.
A full size, restored wooden galleon stands on a pond? An ostrich farm on either side of the road. A house on a hill has fields of vegetables and a smaller field, jam packed with bee hives. Black vultures soar above a hilltop. An enormous bill board see-saw with 2 billboard children – bounce up and down in the wind. Road side shops with garden ornaments galore - flamingoes, Snow White and the seven dwarves, Mother Mary, toadstools and gnomes. A wireless network pops up as available on my computer screen. We pass a convenience store- a big one, with the second floor not built – in full use at ground floor level, but the roof and struts all there for floor number two. A hotel entrance sports a small windmill.
We stop for a snack at a road side store, a white A-frame with a latticed red window and door frames. A craft and snack shop with a camping area in the trees behind where Lucy found a wendy house to play in.
There is a German influence here, as confirmed by a few windmills over the next kilometers. A two storey high duck swigging a beer and wearing liederhausen added to the odd Germanic/Brazilean flavour of the area.
We drive through Curituba – a huge city, the capital of Parana state, the main route to Foz Iguazu going right through the city – no bypass to speak of. The road passes through some kilometers of thick, lush rain forest. Waterfalls and creepers everywhere. You can just imagine the sloths and monkeys there must be in there. We still have not seen a sloth – I would just be so super excited to see one.
We stopped at the Hotel Palmeiras, a clean and basic hotel with a buffet supper on offer and a best of all – a jungle gym for Lucy – who from being almost asleep, was wide awake and sliding down slides! We leave and start to drive through kilometers of hills, covered with a mixture of forest and farmland. Rolling hills covered with small brightly coloured houses and skewbald animals. There are teams of workers cutting the roadside grass in Brazil. A team of around 20 men armed with a weedeater/grasscutter and a yellow overall. A never ending job creator – the Brazilian verge.
The rolling hills carry on as far the eye can see. Brazil is just enormous, and the more you see, the more you realize there is. There is a brilliant purple tree – that loses all its leaves and stands by the side of the road with its’ bright purple big flowers shouting “look at me”.
There is a type of monkey puzzle tree here that is very interesting – it is has a tall trunk and the branches only start near the top – sort of the top third. The branches are really long and again only have leaves on the end – so they are sort of a skeleton tree. But the leaves that are on the end are spiky and spiny in texture. But when seen from a distance – look like green balls on the ends of the branches. Quite unusual. They also seem to grow taller than the surrounding vegetation so stick out the top, and normally make a striking silhouette.
We drive out of town past the ‘Kiss Me Motel’, these Motels are apparently only for sex, and are hired out by the hour. Rather a different scenario from our Motels at home – which are really just cheap Hotels! Imagine the four of us arriving, clueless, baby in tow – asking for two rooms for the night! Of course in the poorer communities where people live in very small houses, there is very little privacy – so it is not unseemly to go and pay for a private space for an hour to be able to enjoy your more intimate relations! We have passed a few of these hotels with special names –‘My Garden Hotel’ and the ‘Celebrity Hotel’ being two of the more amusing ones.
We pass through an area of hills where the farms are much smarter. Proper working farms – more substantial buildings with well maintained fields and fences and animals in good condition. Forestations of pine planted for the poles have been stripped of their lower branches to encourage their straight upwards growth towards the light. The floors of these forests covered in vegetation, unlike pine forests in South Africa which only have pine needles. Big ferns in particular grow happily under the shady cover.
We have seen more interesting birds– a large bird with a forked tail, that turns out to be a bird of prey – we spotted high above the forest canopy. When we stopped for refreshments, we saw another interesting fly catcher type bird – black and white with extremely long tail feathers. Mum is the birder extraordinaire, armed with binoculars, camera and field guide, diligently marks what species of birds we spot in what location.
We drive through a small town – in the parking lot of the general store there is a horse tied up amongst the cars. The road we are travelling on is very busy with trucks – but has an excellent surface – obviously quite a new road, in some places, we have been stopped as they is still working on it. There are many tolls – probably one every 80 kilometres, varying substantially in price – from a few centavos to 8 reias (x 4 for the rand). The new road looks like it is worth the price.
Another tree that has been very noticeable amongst the forest cover is a bright orange flowered tree, a similar colour to the orange gum flower. Yesterday when we stopped for one of the road works – we were gazing into the forest and there sitting not 20 metres away on a branch was a monkey and her baby. Very fluffy with a long, thin, short-haired tail.
We pass the ‘Hawai lanchonette, restaurante and filling station’. Driving through some of the thicker rainforest, there are baskets for sale by the side of the road – brilliant died grasses of pink, turquoise, blue, yellows and reds flash through your field of vision as us girls wish we could stop – I am sure we will see more at the falls.
A man and horse plough the side of a hill – it is a field, but it just seems so endless in relation to their small profiles. And it makes you think in wonder of way back when all ploughing was done by this way.
A green building marked Funeria – a funeral parlour has a pair of two metre high statures of macaw parrots standing guard at its’ entrance.
We pass a blue factory – named Cool Seed. Another Motel –‘The Bonnie and Clyde Motel’ – with a suggestive accompanying picture – as if you could not guess!
Lots of half built buildings – which have been abandoned , presumably with the crash of the world economy last year. Hotels, houses, apartments blocks – all standing empty, black mould adding to their dilapidated, deserted mood.
The Brazilean highways have a police department specially dedicated to them, and to add some clout to their message to watch your speed – at every Polica Rodavaria station along the higway –about every 80km or so – they have an area to collect all of the vehicle wrecks from accidents on the highway – so there is always an in your face reminder of the nasty result of an accident.
We reach the town of Foz do Iguacu, amazed that the trip alone could be quite such an experience. We find a reasonable hotel after some haggling and crash for the night. Looking forward with anticipation to the next few days of new sights, and hoping the falls are all we are hoping for!
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