Day 70 - 13 Feb.2012 - Curitiba

We left the spooky hotel as soon as possible, the breakfast was basic for Brazilian standards, and set off after buying things for lunch in the locals supermarket. We wanted to see the Park of Vilha Velha, famous for its bizarre rock formations, which is shortly after Ponta Grossa on the way to Curitiba. On the way we stopped for lunch to eat our supply of muesli and yoghurt and continued towards the park.
The Brazilians seem to adopt slowly the South American way of charging foreign tourists more for the entrance of tourist attractions and so we paid extra expensive here as well. With 10 quid per person we were in to see some rocks and two lagoons. The rocks were indeed quite interesting to see. As we are not geologists, we cannot say much on how it came about that these rocks are sticking out like that, but it is beautiful nonetheless. Just look at our pictures. Next to see were the lagoons. They are called “Furnas” and were created by water infiltrating the sandstone underneath the ground, creating big caverns. At some point the cavern is so big that the earth above collapses, creating these open Furnas. One Furna has a lift installed to go down to the water level but unfortunately the lift is out of order since 1998 due to lack of repair – a shame, as it would have been really exiting to go down.
When we left the park it stared to rain and we were really lucky to have seen the park in sunshine. On the 90 km to Curitiba the rain intensified and by the time we reached the Capital of Parana we had a decent and constant downpour that did not look like it would stop any minute or so. This time our TomTom did have the street names of the town catalogued and we navigated straight to a hotel we found in our Quatro Rodas guide – piece of cake.
The hotel was nice looking and we booked ourselves in for almost the same price than the spooky basic hotel in Laranjeiras do Sul!
Later on we ventured out for dinner but as it was Monday, most of the restaurants were closed (not only an Aberdonian thing as we learned now). At the end we found a place to eat which was open today. We thought that the people here must be earning similar wages to UK as the place seemed to be populated by locals but a pint of beer was over three pounds – more like London Prices. We did not work out if that is the case or if beer for the locals became in recent years an expensive commodity here. Anyway, we liked the beer and the food. Good night.