Two Beers and a Pretzel

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.

is may not be interesting update for most people, but don’t fret, on Thursday my uncle and I are likely going to Gramado (gra-ma-do), a Bavarian (as in German) village in the coastal mountains of Southern Brazil, plus some surrounding areas for hiking, wine tasting, and possibly river rafting.

Originally, my return flight to Buenos Aires was scheduled for the 22nd.  That’s not happening.  I checked the airline, and they said to try the place I booked it.  So, I called Expedia and they said the airline will not modiify the data because I bought a round trip, and the 1st leg was already done ($180 down the drain).  They said I can buy another fare for $250.  Nope… I’ll probably take an overnight bus to Montevideo, Uruguay for $70, see the town, and then catch the $10 ferry across the Rio de la Plata to Buenos Aires.

Today I went to an Arabian restaurant for lunch, then basically watched Obama-palooza today on CNN while playing with my cameras a bit.  So for the camera buffs out there, I did a comparison at sunset in the preset scene modes of both of my cameras…

Olympus 1080SW in “Sunset” mode – auto everything

GOOD = decent color and a fair amount of shadow detail in the city.

BAD = Hard to Focus and a lot of overexposure around the sun (well, it is the sun)

Canon G9 in Landscape Scene mode with ISO set to Auto

GOOD = Focus, color, exposure of the sun, decent shadow detail

BAD = Lens flare (green circles in he clouds to the right of the sun), some vertical banding in the blue sky – I think due to the auto ISO.

Next time I’ll set the ISO to 80 or 100 and experiment with full manual control of the white balance, aperture and shutter speed.  Shooting farther off center should eliminate the lens flare.

Finally, a really nice shot with the Canon a few moments later… again, in landscape mode with auto ISO.

Sunset Verdict…  The Canon G9 wins on pure photo-geek criteria.

The problems visible in the Canon images are correctable with better technique and utilizing the manual controls.  The Olympus works fairly well for sunset snapshots, but for a printable image, it’s hard to compete with Canon’s top of the line Point & Shoot that has many SLR like controls.

Still, even the G9 pales in comparison to what you can do with even a 3 year old Digital SLR…  like say, the picture I used for the website banner (taken July 2007 in King’s Canyon, California with a Canon 20D).

The biggest limitation on the G9 versus an SLR is that you can only stop it down to f/8 where many SLR’s will go down to f/22.  I think that’s more related to the smaller sensor size on the G9 and optical diffraction becoming an issues with small apertures.

Right now, the combination of the G9 and the Olympus is perfect for me.  I can get all the snaps I need with the highly portable / nearly indestructible Olympus regardless of weather, and the underwater capability has proven to be priceless.  The G9 satisfies my desire to take artsy and large print size images.  It’s not as nice as my SLR rig, but has 90% of the functionality, weighs about 15 pounds less and still fits in my pocket (barely).

If I had to take just one camera on this trip, it would be the Olympus.   It’s decent enough at everything to get by, and incredible when you go snorkeling or playing in the pool.  My only complaint is the paint peeling off.

Pronounced ih-tie-poo…

The Itaipu dam is a partnership between Brazil and Paraguay that started with a major bi-national treaty back in the 60′s.  It features the concrete structure in addition to an earth-rock-clay structure, an impressive concrete spillway, a 10km long fish migration channel to help spawning fish navigate the 120 meter change in altitude, an ecological preserve, and technological education center.  You can find out much more at http://www.itaipu.gov.br/index.php?q=en

At over 7.7 kilometers, Itaipu was the longest dam in the world until Three Gorges was built in China.  With very similar design (multiple semi-hollow pyramids).  Itaipu has 20 turbines versus 30 at Three Gorges.  Despite the higher design capacity in China, Itaipu set the current world record for power production (94.68 million Megawatt Hours in 2008) due to the high flow of the river (the reservoir here only fluctuates about 3 meters from max to min), and one of the best maintenance and operational down-time ratings in the industry.  They say Three Gorges is only seasonally able to generate part of it’s power because it depends on meting ice in the spring and summer, and even then it still has not hit max capacity because its’ reservoir is not yet full.

Officially, Brazil owns 1/2 the generating capacity and Paraguay owns the other 1/2, but Paraguay is currently generating 96% of it’s power needs from the dam (with the other 4% from another facility) using only about 2 of its’ turbines.  Paraguay runs on 50Hz and Brazil runs on 60Hz, so Paraguay sells it’s excess power to Brazil which is transmitted to a Sao Paulo substation before it is converted to 60Hz.

On Saturday, our tour started outside the dam on the lower level…

These photos give you an idea of the hollow pyramid structure…

In the preceding photo, you may be able to distinguish the original riverbed – 70 meters below where I’m standing.

then we went on top…

Into Paraguay (though technically still part of the international area of the dam, thus avoiding visa requirements) and finally inside the dam to see the control room which straddles the border between Brazil and Paraguay (the dark line on the floor – pic taken from the Paraguay side)…

… into the 1 kilometer long main hall.  The red sections of the floor are removable plates to allow service access to the generators and turbines.

Look at me getting skinny.  I’ve lost 5 more lbs since Christmas!!  Those pants barely fit back in Ohio – now they’re almost too big.

Now, a video of one of the turbine shafts…

Aside from the noise, you could sense the power of the turbine.  Considering that just over your head is a massive electromagnetic field generating 700 Mega-Watts of electricity.  The whole structure vibrates, but the turbine shaft will exhaust you just standing nearby.  It’s a very strange feeling, like all the energy is being drained out of your body as you watch the turbine shaft spin.

Aside from a slight dehydration headache (Rafa and some Canadian girls we met on the waterfall tour forced me to go drinking Friday night) and being a little sick from ingesting some river water in the boat under the falls, it was still very worth seeing Itaipu, and definitely worth ponying up the extra money for the special facility tour…

Later that afternoon Rafa and I caught separate buses.  I went back to my uncle in Porto Alegre, and Rafa went back to her home on Santa Caterina.  A sad goodbye after spending nearly a month together.  I’m really going to miss her, but I know I’ll see her again.

After 14 hours on a bus, I’m finally back with my Uncle in Porto Alegre.  I need some downtime to plan the next part of my trip.  We’re also planning an eco-tourism excursion into the nearby mountains next weekend.

I’m not really sure how you spell Iguasu.  I’ve seen Iguasu, Iguazu, Iguassu and Iguacu.  However it’s spelled, it’s one impressive waterfall.  The falls are split between Brazil and Argentina.  The views are supposedly better on the Argentine side, so that’s where we went on Friday…

Here’s one panorama of one part of the falls.  The actual falls are under you, the visible portion on the right…  Then imagine as the falls stretch to the center of the picture they make an isthmus and there are more falls on the other side.

There were walkways at all levels in the jungle over and under the falls…

Rafa and I booked a tour to the Argentine side of the falls, including border crossings, a train ride, views of the two different major sections of the falls and a very wet boat ride into the falls.  These boats are essentially big motorized rafts that fit 50 people.

Our boat was full of teenage Chinese girls.  They were astonishingly annoying.  When we were on the boat I barely noticed them, but you can really hear them on this video…

If that doesn’t show up, you can watch it on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOr2CQNm_9Q

After the falls, we rode down the river for a while and did a little jet-boat style whitewater rafting.  We got off the boat and had to walk up a long staircase to the jungle tour.  This is where the torture came in…  The 20 or so Chinese girls doused themselves and everyone else in the worst smelling bug spray I’ve ever encountered, then whined and moaned the entire time while climbing the staircase.  It was like fingernails down a chalkboard.  For a while I entertained the fantasy of throwing one of them back into the river as an example to shut the rest of them up – or at least make them run back to the river to help her and alleviate my aural suffering.

Once that calmed down, we got on an open-air vehicle thru the jungle and a guide explained to us that all the really neat animals like Jaguar’s and Puma’s are nocturnal…  Thanks buddy…