Sarah: Curitiba, Brazil - Serra Verde Express

  Curitiba, Brazil
Monday, March 24, 2008

The Serra Verde Express is the name of the cool train ride we took from Curitiba to Morretes.

The Lonely Planet said it was the best train trip in Brazil, so we thought, thatīs a must, especially since we are pretty damn sick of buses! It is only a three hour trip and you descend from about 1000m to basically sea level, we thought weīd give it a go.

We had to get up at 5:30am to get the bus into town and then a taxi to the train station to catch the train at 8:00. Needless to say I was not impressed about the early rise - as anyone at KV knows, Iīm not really a morning person!  So on the trip on the way down, I could seriously barely keep my eyes open - in fact I basically dozed on and off the whole way down. Because it was so early in the morning, there was a lot of mist in the forest so much of our view was obscured. it was really frustrating, because you could see a valley full of mist, and knew that if it wasnīt there, there would be some fantastic views!  So, being incredibly sleepy, sitting on seats with the bare minimum of padding, seeing not much but mist and a few trees, I was kinda wishing the train would pick it up to more than 30kph! Seriously, thatīs about how fast it went. It kind of felt like just being on the West Coast of NZ - cool, lots of trees and water, ya-di-ya. (donīt get me wrong, I love the West Coast, but wanted to see something I hadnīt seen before.)

By the time we got toward the end of the trip, the mist had cleared somewhat, and we did get a great panoramic view of a wide cropland valley surrounded by rainforest.

The railroad was built in the 1880s, and consists of 71 bridges and 13 tunnels, carved out of the granite mountainside. Man, it would have been HARD work!

Morretes was a tiny, sleepy little town, with cobbled streets, a river running through it - called something like  Nghauninga - and hotels and restaurants built right on the river. it was lovely. it was our first small brazilian town and very cute. We only stayed one night there and got back on the train the following afternoon.

The trip back really made the whole thing worth it. (It helped that I was awake throughout, this time).  There were abandoned stone buildings dotted along the way, slowly being swallowed up by the forest.  I presume they were left over from the building of the railroad and the small communities that no doubt sprang up along the way.  It gave me the feeling of riding through a ghost town. For the first part of the journey, there was only some mist higher up, clinging to the mountaintop, so we got to see what qualifies it as the trip as the best in the country. We saw great valleys, gushing waterfalls, running streams, rivers, lakes... We rode beneath mountainous peaks that poked majestically up through the mist - breathtaking. We snaked our way right around the valleys - we could see the other side, with the bridges. We passed through canyons where the cliffs rose dramatically up on either side of us, so steep that no vegetation could grow on them.   We would go right along one side, over a bridge, and then wind our way up the other side. THEN, it started to pour. Well, it is a RAINforest after all! Even that was pretty cool - gosh I love the smell of rain: so fresh, smells like spring, and better still with all that lush vegetation to bounce off. It even gave the forest more of a primeval feel to it - like something out of The Lost World. Photos canīt do it justice.

We met a dutch guy called Taco, (well, i dunno how you spell it, but I thought he better not go for a trip to Mexico!) a pilot for KLM, who was travelling by himself. I think he was glad of someone he could talk to, as, like us, doesnīt speak more than 5 words of Portugese. He talked a lot during the trip, yes, even more than me, and we helped each other take photos. We manned each side of the train so we could spot a good view or photo op.

I definitely enjoyed the trip back, it made it feel like our 5 day detour had been worth it. It was truly spectacular.

We are now in Campo Grande, as I said, and tomorrow we leave for our trip into the Pantanal - the worldīs largest wetland. Weīve been promised safari tours, horse-riding (am trying to get ray to do it for the first time - could use some help in the encouragement stakes guys), piranha fishing crocodile-watching, night-walks, and lots of animal life. The only things we definitely wonīt see are jaguars (bummer, only in Nov) and anacondas (not so bummer?) Canīt wait.