20 juni 2019: Floripa

From the bush we decided to check out some more European roots in South Brasil - starting with a brief visit to this convent located beautifully on a mountain top. We just walked around it as it was early in the morning. But guess what, we bumped into a pregnant lady with her hubby doing a 'baby bump shoot' in the convent's garden. You see this everywhere in Brasil - the bump goes bare and they drape little baby clothes on the bump and take lots of photos. Even before baby's are born they are now displayed on social media....I'll keep my further thoughts to myself :-)

We arrived in Blumenau, one of the cities also started by German colonists (like Curitiba). Of course we needed to check out Villa Germanica, the biggest venue for the Oktoberfest here in South Brasil. Apparently a very big happening as the halls were the fest is hosted were massive. Next door a brewery and a 'village' of German buildings filled with souvenir shops where they sell anything from 'lederhosen', 'schone madel' wigs and lots of t shirts with the German flag. Obviously we skipped those (sorry Birgit).

Also quite a few restaurants and a large pub so we decided to do what all Brasilians do on Saturday; have a big lunch in a restaurant - accompanied this time by live Oktober fest type German music, she even threw some good jodelahitis in there! Hans and his liter of schopp as they call it here. I opted to taste the vinhocerveca, a mix of red wine and beer and it was actually pretty nice. Not that at home I would ever consider mixing a nice red with beer - then it's better to do as the Belgians do mix sweet dark beer with blond beer.

This was very tasty with a German/Swiss touch; a crispy bread filled with very juicy fall of the bone meat - topped up with Raclette cheese from the grill. After checking into a pousada a bit out of the centre we took an Uber to go and check out the historical hart of Blumenau and Saturday nightlife. Well......the historic centre exists of the council building which is a large German fachwerk house and along the normal looking shopping street you see a few more historic houses but that's it. Not much going on but hey remembering it's Brasil and not Germany it's still good fun. The only nightlife we could find was a fund raiser market for the church next to the very modern cathedral - and the other option was a massive mall where everyone at 8pm was shopping and eating in a massive foodcourt. The nice sushi made up for some of the disappointment before we uber-ed back to the pousada.

Back to the coast and the beach! It was so nice to drive towards the beach again, Florionopolis and the Isla de San Catarina where we found the cutest little cottage on Matadeiro beach next to the village of Amarcao.

We had to park the car in a parking lot in the village, take our back packs with food and clothes and walk about 10 minutes to the tiny community on the beach where the 'bach' was. The couple who rented the cottage were lovely and he came out to meet us and walk with us to the house to show us the ropes, also carrying one of our backpacks.

With a beach like this and awesome weather, you don't need much that's for sure. Our E-books, swimsuits, mozzie spray and gin for our g&t's and we're good :-). Loved this swing for adults on the beach, I want one in Te Horo!

We just fell in love with this little beach community right away and after two nights decided that the four nights we booked should be doubled. Around 26 degrees with a sea breeze and nice ocean temperatures for swimming - I read 4 books. How good it is to have a holiday in a holiday!

After two days of reading we decided to do the much recommended walk from 'our' beach to the next beach and lagoon which turned out to be a steep 2 hour climb through the forest and alongside huge cliffs with with wonderful views. Once we arrived at the praia Langoinha do Leste we went for a swim right away, bliss!

After a nice swim and sammies break we continued with the second walk at the end of the beach another very steep climb, just over one hour this time to arrive in the most southern fishing village of the island, Pantano do Sul.

All in all a good and very hot work out topped off with a ice cold beer with these views of the beach. A busy gathering of fishermen coming and going, repairing their nets and chatting. Colourful boats everywhere and the end of the day sunlight.

The bar on the beach was kitted out with thousands of little bits of paper where visitors had recorded their best wishes, hopes and dreams. Very nice touch and no......we were tired we didn't ask for a piece of paper..

This very colourful insect - family of the grasshopper probably - lived next to the front door of the cottage - just beautiful.

Sunset is at 5pm, very early but here it's autumn too like at home. The handful of people and surfers that were there go home and all goes quiet. Apparently in summer it's a very different story and checking the number of home owners that have parkings on their properties it's perfect for us to be here 'off season'.

The flowers around the front door (including passion fruit flowers and fruits ready to eat) were frequented by kolibri's (bejia flor in Portuguese) and butterflies (borboletas), just lovely to watch. On Sunday afternoon we enjoyed the live music at the Surf Bar accompanied by nice food and of course carparinhas - how mellow can you get! Made us decide we could stay for 2 more nights - we just didn't want to leave.

To walk of some of calories of those carparinhas and g&t's we decided we'd do the walk again but this time starting from Pantano do Sul. At 9 am we were on the bus and 20 minutes later we were walking uphill again. Earlier and more rested than the first time the walk felt easier. Still hot so had another nice break with a swim at the beach after the first hill. Here you see the beach and the hills we had to scale first.

On the second hill towards 'our' beach we spotted four seals frolicking around and fighting for the best sun baking spot on the rocks.

Finally Hans decided to actually get up at 7 am and walk to the beach to watch that sunrise - in autumn it's a bit cloudy but still nice.

A few pics of the cottage to remember our stay here -we may go back sometime!

Back over the bridge with our backpacks - bye bye Matadeiro beach.

We took the scenic route towards the mountains from Floripa and traveled through lots of little villages that have these surprisingly big colonial buildings on display. To us it's still a bit unusual, tropical forest, lots of banana palm trees and then these building and very colourful very tidy houses and yards - European heritage.

The last bit of the journey to Uribici was very steep and a very poor narrow road as you can see in the clip. We also didn't see much!  Arrived in Uribici which claims to be the coldest town in Brazil at the end of the day. And indeed it was a whole lot colder than on the coast, probably only around 10 degrees after sunset, a 10 degree drop compared to our nights on the beach. For dinner I had crepes at a local cafe. Made by the very nice Israelian owner of a cool hostel where we went earlier in the afternoon along our route. We planned to stay there but found out that we would be the only guests and he would be in town all night baking crepes! We didn't want to be stuck at the hostel in the dark with just the two of us so decided to stay in town but still come and check out his crepes. They were very nice too - never found out how an Israelian became a crepes chef in Brasil, but he must have picked it up in Belgium where he also lived for a while.

From Urubici we were off to visit canyons, in this part of the Brasilian mountain ranges there are lots of them. We decided to change the route a  little bit to check out a very famous viewpoint and road first the Serro de Rio do Rastro. From there to the Ronda Canyon and further through fazenda country to the next canyon.

We had to drive over a bit of private land and asked at the first canyon if that was possible. Well, you need the authorisation of the owner the first guard said. We asked the second guard who told us just say you have authorisation from Jorge when you get the checkpoint at the private land. So we did, the guard nodded 'ok' when we mentioned our friend Jorge, wrote down our name and off we went. What a system eh, but it does keep three people in a job.

Lovely drive with heaps and heaps of my favorite tree, the Brazilian variation of the Auracancia tree. Nice lunch at a little rio, waving to all the locals looking at us curiously. The final stop of the day from the nice Pousada Tio Tinho we found to spend the night; canyon Montenegro. Very impressive and beautiful. Because the canyon is 1450m high, it's completely green, covered in trees and shrubs. Very different from the bare canyons in Peru at 4000m. Peace and quiet. On our return we sat next to the fire chatting as best as we could in our Spanlighs Portuguese mix with a Brasilian couple who'd come down on their motorcycle from Sao Paulo. The dinner was a real treat with local fish and meats and if anyone working in a bar in NZ saw how they pour a glass of wine here they'd laugh out loud; 2.5 glass in one. Our next stop is one more national park and another canyon and then back to the coast to Porto Allegre to catch our flight to Holland in a few days. Tchau for now!