Two Beers and a Pretzel

My cousin Julia wanted to show me the Children’s Science Museum in Porto Alegre, so we went today.  It’s a holiday weekend here in Brazil, so it wasn’t very crowded.

Among the typical exhibits on electricity, sound, light, leverage and music, they had an entire section on geology that included some of the crystal geodes that Southern Brazil is famous for…

It’s hard to tell in the picture, but this geode was about the size of a large laundry basket.  That display bumped up against the kid-favorite, dinosaurs!!

One thing that would not happen in the USA, they had a whole section on human reproduction, showing the reproductive systems, development stages in the womb, and then a birthing video that showed everything.  I seriously doubt you’d see that last part in a kids museum in the States.

Anyway, after that, I found out the REAL reason I was asked to come along…  Julia wanted to see me on the Human Gyroscope…

Just outside of Canela there is an alpine slide, arboretum, another crescent shaped canyon and a very neat looking waterfall.  My uncle and I visited the alpine slide first, but they wouldn’t let me take a video.  It turned out to be a pretty short ride and my still photos of the track were not impressive enough to post.

Next, the Parque Das Sequoias.  They had some 50 year old Giant California Redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) and Chinese Dawn Redwoods (metasequoia glyptostroboides) among many other trees.

A Giant Sequoia (Sequoia gigantea) was listed in their literature, but I didn’t see one.  After seeing them in California 2 years ago, I was wondering how they could live in this relatively mild climate at a much lower altitude.  Apparently, they can’t…  The park had one for about 50 years that just recently died.  If you haven’t seen a Giant Sequoia in person, you owe it to your self to go to Sequoia National Park and see the General Sherman Tree.  It’s the largest (by mass) single living thing on Earth.  Here’s my pic from 2 years ago.

Yes, those are fully grown people near the base (it’s 275 ft tall), and the trunk of the tree would take up 4 lanes of traffic on a typical US freeway.  So hearing they had Sequoia’s here in Brazil, I was expecting something like that.  Oh well, they had some nice trails and over 120 tree species from all over the world.  They actually had the young redwoods, which are in the Sequoia genus and already towered over the other trees, but that was still kind of dissappointing - like going to see a humpback whale and they say “Oh, sorry, it died.  But here are some nice dolphins to look at.”

From there we drove to the Crescent Canyon park for some hiking and finally on to the iconic waterfall.  It’s about 400 meters tall and flows over a large cave-like opening.  We rode a chairlift up to a high vantage point, but the best views were from the path below the lift.

After all that exhausting riding on an alpine slide, walking thru a tree park, and sitting on a chairlift, we decided to get some food.  Actually we hiked up and down about 300 steps in the crescent canyon, so we really were tired and hungry.  Fortunately, we met a local the previous day who recommended the “best Apple Strudel in town”.

This was my kind of place.  A number of my friends would appreciate that the rafters were lined with cans of every beer imaginable…

The owner and head chef, Norbert, chatted with us and recommended the smoked pork chop, schnitzel and sausage with some sides from his home region of Germany around Ramstein, including a homemade spicy mustard and some decent saurkraut.  In what has become a recurring theme, he fell in love with a Brazilian girl and moved here.

Of course, the finale at a place named the “Strudelhaus” was his Vienna-style Apple Strudel with heavy sweet cream and vanilla ice cream on the side…

Yummy!!!

We then left for Porto Alegre via New Petropolis.  Continuing the German theme, New Petropolis has a park at its’ center that preserves the original buildings of the early German immigrants.

On Sundays (which it was), a polka band plays for beer as a surprising number of people show up to socialize, listen to polka, eat German food, drink beer, and dance.

Needing to wash down the Apple Strudel, we opted for the beer, splitting a potato pancake and listening to the music..

Considering that my “Lonely Plant - South America on a Shoestring” book dedicated barely one page to Canela and the National Park, and did not really mention Gramado or Bento, I had a great 3 days in this beautiful region.  It may not fit their criterea for ’shoestring’ travel, but it just goes to show that it’s always worth it to use a guidebook as a simple guide, not as a travel bible, and make friends with the locals (even if he is already your uncle).

The city of Bento Gonçalves, the hub of Brazil’s wine country, is about 2 hours Northwest of Gramado by car.  The surrounding hillsides are a kind of mix between Tuscany and Napa.  This region is reputedly the second best place in the world for the champagne grape.  Of course, since this isn’t France, they have to call it Brut.

The morning of the 24th I was a little stuffed up from the air conditioning back in the hotel, and my ears completely failed to pop as we descended from the high hill country into the valley.  Additionally, I had a pretty painful headache that I assume was related to all the sunburn I had acquired yesterday.  My scalp was actually blistering.  Of course, I left all the decongestants and pain killers back at the hotel.  It was a painful day, but not enough to stop me from sampling some vino.

The roads down to Bento were great.  My uncle commented that these twisty mountain roads would be fun in my car.  Granted, we’d have to be driving about 3x faster than 60 km/h, but It really made me miss my car.  I would have gotten about 30 speeding tickets.

This brings to light a few interesting facts about driving in Brazil.  There are speed bumps everywhere preventing what I would consider to be an ideal driving speed (roughly 120 mph).  They also have well marked photo-radar speed check stations every few miles that will automatically send a ticket to the registered owner of the car.  Similar to the USA, you get points for tickets, and after about 12 or so, you lose the right to drive.  Unlike the USA, you can simply say that you were not the driver, and get the “actual” driver to agree and assume the points and the penalty.  Many men’s wives have no idea how close they are to losing their license.  This has also sparked a cottage industry where people of legal age who do not actually own cars or drive will get their license, advertise in the paper, and sell you their driving points.  Similarly, if you own a business with a fleet of cars, you can simply apply your points to any of the cars in the fleet.  If you get too close to the point limit on your existing fleet, the company mysteriously acquires more vehicles.  In spite of this ingenious way of dealing with speeding tickets, there are not really highways in the sense that most US citizens picture…  more like a lot of state routes with many intersections and speed bumps, so real excessive speed is not a viable option - not that I would ever do that

OK back to the wine…

We started at the large vineyard in the photo.  MIOLO is an established winemaker that came to this valley about a decade ago.  We toured the vineyard and cellars with an English speaking guide, then proceeded on to the tasting.

Wine aging in American and French barrels…

Champagne racks…

We tasted about 8 wines here even though the tour package was only supposed to include 5. The red’s were decent, but a little bland for my taste.  Not quite up to par with Italy or California in my opinion.  It may be a little too wet in this region to pull really complex flavors out of the grapes.  The white’s were better, although I’m not much of a white wine drinker.  The champagne was another story.  I usually don’t like champagne, but this was really good.

The tasting was R$15 (about $6 USD), and they let you use the entry ticket as a coupon for the same value in the shop on the way out.

We moved on to another vineyard that shuffled us around between existing appointments, but we ended up skipping out of there to the Villa Valduga vineyard.  The winery has been around since 1875, so I believe it’s the oldest in the valley.  Oddly, they said that they mow down and replant the vines every 12 years.  My headache was in full effect, so I didn’t take many pictures of the grounds, although the peacocks made me get the camera out.

We took another tour of this winery and the cellars.

By the end of the tour, I was feeling much better - just in time for another tasting…

This place had great wine - I even liked the red’s.  The Cabernet Sauvignon was tasty, as was the Merlot.  Cabernet Franc was so-so; I was too wowed by the Franc back in Cali at Chateau St Jean to really give this one a good rating, but it was better than at Miolo.  Here, they actually had a Gewürztraminer that was good, and the white’s were all very good.  Their Chardonnay almost converted me to white wine, and the Champagne was some of the best I’ve ever had (apparently it won an award in France).  The server even had us try their 15 year Brandy (pretty good).  I asked why they had Brandy, but not Port, and he went behind the counter and opened a very tasty bottle.  When I get home, I’m going to look for their wine in local shops.

The price was also R$15 per person, but rather than a discount on purchases, they included some monster sized wine glasses with engraved Valduga logos.

After the tasting, we went for a quick dinner at a hotel where we talked with one of the outgoing chef’s in the lobby, but I was not feeling well again, so I didn’t eat too much.  However, the hotel had a heck of a view over the valley.

The drive home was equally as uncomfortable as the drive there until we arrived at our hotel and I downed an Alleve and fell asleep.

Here’s a nifty new trick…  I’ve added a GEO Mashup mod to my blog so that I can link posts to a location and give you a google map of where I am.  There’s also a map on the “Sean’s Maps” page that shows my route, and has stick-pins at the locations where posts were geo-tagged.

On Firday the 23rd, we booked a tour to one of Brazil’s largest canyons in the Parque Nacional dos Aparados da Serra.

Along the way we learned about the candelabra trees (Araucaria angustifolia) that are native to this area, but were cut back in the early 1900’s down to about 2% of their former population.  Now it is a pretty serious crime to cut one of these down - even if it looks dead, so the population is slowly recovering. This species is officially on the IUCN critically endangered list.

There are a lot of Araucaria trees in Gramado and Canela (a neighboring city - the name means cinnamon), but a few miles outside of town you can see that many of these slow growing trees were felled in the past to create cattle ranches.  Now days many of the former ranches are more profitable as tree farms, so you can spot many plots of land where the pine trees are relatively young (6 year harvest cycle) and all lined up in rows with Araucaria trees on the borders of the plots.

We started at the visitor center and followed our guide along a trail that used to be a dirt road.  The first vista overlooks a waterfall, and another waterfall just out of view at the end of the canyon (you can see the spray if you click to see the larger version of the image).

A panorama from the same overlook…

Walking further on, you see the canyon open to the valley.  The ocean is about 20km away.

And a panorama from here also…

Then we hiked back to the end of the canyon and around part of the other side.  There actually was an end to this canyon with no signs of a river or waterfall.  You simply turn a corner, and there’s the end of the canyon.  I can only assume that there used to be a river here.

A closeup of the large waterfall…  It’s something like 600m (almost 2000ft) from top to bottom.  This is the same waterfall as the 1st canyon image on this post.

And a view of the other waterfall (closer to the end of the canyon) from the opposite side.  I actually had to lean way over a near 1000 ft drop to get this picture while my uncle held my left hand…

We rode back to town, cleaned up, and I realized that I forgot to A) wear my hat, and B) put sunscreen on the part in my hair.  Thus, I burned part of my scalp.  It was a nice, cool, partly cloudy day in the mountains, so you completely forget that you are getting massive amounts of sun.  Even with sunscreen, I burned my nose and the back of my neck.  The scalp was the worst.

To soothe my pain, I talked my uncle into dining at the best fondue restaurant in Gramado, and there are several.  Downtown, there is an area called the Black Lake.  It was named something else until a fire in the mid 50’s when an enterprising German immigrant dammed up a creek to create a small lake, planted a bunch of pine trees native to the Black Forrest back in Deutchland, and renamed the area the Black Lake.  It’s now the center of town, and all the best dining establishments are on its’ shores.  That’s where this fondue place is.

This fondue restaurant was amazing.  They started with the obligatory appetizer of cheese fondue with bread and small potatoes, then came the main course…

Fillet, chicken, lamb, 16 sauces, and a searing hot griddle to cook it on.  The beef and lamb were great by themselves.  Both were good with the garlic sauce, especially when mixed with the green herb sauce (1st and last sauces in the row of 5).  The beef was also good with the dried tomatoes, caramelized onions, or strawberry. The chicken was great with a mixture of orange and pineapple, apple, strawberry, or garlic sauce.  The lamb was great with apple or strawberry, but I kept going back to the garlic/herb mix.

We had enough meat for 4 people, but we somehow managed to pool our resources, design a plan of action with an acceptable return on investment, and implement our solution ahead of schedule and under budget…  OK, forget that..  This stuff was awesome and we devoured it!!!

Then came dessert…

8 different fruits to dip in the chocolate sauce.  Strawberry and banana were the clear winners here, but apple and white melon were not far behind in the running.

Believe it or not, when I got back to my Uncle’s house on Sunday, I weighed in and actually lost about 4 more pounds.  I’m down to 246.5 (112 kilos).  I weighed a bit over 275 when I left my job back on October 31st.  I need to write a diet book…

Sean Danekind’s Vagabond Diet

Store your car, rent your house out, sell all your extra stuff, travel the world, carry everything in a backpack, walk a lot, eat like a king 3 nights a week, eat normal the rest of the time, replace soda-pop with beer… and lose 10 pounds a month.

Somebody call Oprah!!

On Thursday the 22nd my uncle and I headed North from Porto Alegre to visit the hill country of Southern Brazil.  We made a brief stop at the airport to change my ticket back to Buenos Aires from the noon that day to February 4th.  TAM airlines told me to contact the issuing agency.  Expedia said it was not possible to change, but I could book another fare for $250.  The TAM office at the airport was more than happy to change my fare to the 4th only 2 hours before the flight for a whopping $30.
The airport in PA has a huge mural depicting the history of flight

Brazilians credit Santos Dumont (a Brazilian) with inventing the airplane.  Being from Ohio, I checked up, and Santos apparently built and flew an airplane in Europe 3 years after the Wright Brothers’ Kitty Hawk flight, but he had more witnesses and launched without a catapult.  You can read about the controversy here.  Besides, their mural actually has 2 Tie Fighters in it.  Seriously, George Lucas may want more say in his role regarding the history of flight.

Of all the things in the airport, I found a GAP authorized retailer.  One of the duty free shops has a taxable store near the entrance.  An extremely limited selection, but it is there…  The actual area containing GAP clothes can be completely seen thru the window - about 10 ft by 10 ft.

After settling my ticket woes, we hit the road to Gramado.

See the Google Map Here

German immigrants settled in Gramado in the late 1800’s and seemingly convinced the original Portuguese settlers of the benefit of Bavarian architecture, then invited the Italians over.  So what you get is a Bavarian village where they speak Portuguese, full of furniture makers, Italian restaurants, a growing eco-tourism industry, and loads of beautiful scenery reminiscent of the Rhine River Valley in Germany or Gatlinburg Tennessee.  And, it actually does snow here occasionally in July because the altitude is around 850m (2,700 ft) above sea level

We spent much of the day checking different ecotourismo companies for whitewater rafting trips.  Some companies advertise 4km, others 8km.  The river here that is about class-3 or 4 for about 4 km; after that, you could take a canoe with little trouble.  Considering the price and that it would eat up hald a day, we decided against the rafting.

That night we dined at a Brazilian Churrascaria (chur-hask-area) serving traditional Brazilian food (something like rotisserie barbecue over a wood fire) along with cultural music, costumes and dancing.  Since this region was populated by Germans, there’s a lot of half-samba, half-polka music.

Before the food and the main show, a guide explained the traditional Southern Brazilian tea - Yerba Mate (also called Cha Mate when the leaves are toasted).  The tea is held in a gourd and sipped thru a metal straw with a filter on the end that goes into the tea.  In my opinion, it tastes like crap, but I’m not a fan of tea in general.  The Brazilians love it.  You’ll see them carrying a gourd with the metal straw, and a thermos of hot water.  On Sunday’s in the park in Porto Alegre, you’ll be the only person without a gourd in your hand.  Drinking this tea is a social experiment in germ warfare…  They share the same straw with everyone and anyone in the vicinity of the gourd.  It’s a social bonding activity in Brazil that goes against the common North American behavior of “this is mine, that is yours, and we don’t drink from the same cup.”

With that in mind, I donned the Goucho hat, found a dancer and a gourd of tea and paid about $4 for this picture.  No, I didn’t drink it.  I’m sure that particular gourd was in the hands of about 50 people that night.

Then there was a lot of dancing that reminded me of German dancers wearing cowboy costumes instead of lederhosen.

The show also included the Gaucho (South American cowboy) skills that you often see at North American theme parks where a guy takes ropes with balls on the end and dances with them, then lights them on fire and gets his groove on…

The rope with the balls is essentially a type of lasso.  The Guchos would throw the rope to lasso the legs of the cattle.