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!!