Two Beers and a Pretzel

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).

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!!

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…

Wow, what a day…  I relaxed all day yesterday, as the horseback riding tour didn‘t work out.  I ended up booking a hiking tour for today.  My guide, Jesse, was from West Virginia.  We hiked in the hills of copan for about 6 hours total.

I ate termites!!!  They taste like citrus and pepper.

We then found a Mayan site associated with fertility where women from important families went to give birth.  We both sat in the “chair” and it was very comfortable.  I just couldn’t imagine taking a 9 month pregnant wife up there…  “Hey honey, come on, it’s just a 2 mile uphill hike to give birth on a rock shaped like a giant frog!  The Joneses did it!”   Jesse did a birthing demo:

From there, we hiked up to a waterfall with three different falls, a pool to jump into, and a part that goes thru a cave.

Finally, we ate lunch at an indigenous village.  The little kids from 3-12 years old sold me some “corn dolls”, and we ate freshly made corn tortillas, (yum) fried bananas, and chicken with rice, as well as the non-native Coca Cola.  What we didn’t finish was devoured by the kids.

I asked Jessie how the little girls could be so cute up until their late teens but seriously downhill from there quickly.  He said most girls start having babies at 14-15, and usually have 8 kids in their life.  They don’t have traditional families (even though they are mostly Catholic), and the boys/men have no obligation to support a specific woman.  In fact, even though a boy may father many children by many different girls, he will still live with his mother until he decides to get married – because men do not clean, cook, or do laundry.  What the men do is tend the crops and grow food for the whole village.

Well, I’m off to Twisted Tanya’s Thanksgiving Celebration…  Yes, there’s turkey and stuffing in Honduras!!!

Tomorrow I’m catching a bus to San Pedro, then an early bus on Saturday to Tegucigalpa and on to Managua, Nicaragua.  Then another Early bus toSan Jose, Costa Rica.  The flight was about $500-750 for a one way ticket.  The bus trip is about $100 one way on luxury coaches and continues on to Panama City whenever I want to go there.  I can chill for a few days reading on a bus to save $400.  Plus, I’ll spend the night in Nicaragua, so that will count as another country visited.

The only bummer is that the “windy” season is coming up, so I may not get to take a sailboat to Cartegena…  I may re-route from Panama City to Rio, and see Uncle Jimmy for Christmas in Brazil.  Then make my way thru Argentina, Chile, Peru, and bac