We arrive ridiculously early in Curitiba, Brazils second largest city. After no sleep on the bus, and with pregnant ankles from the bus journey I tiredly squeeze my feet into my brand spanking new trekking shoes!
From here we get the Serre Verde scenic train up through and into the rainforest to start our trek. This normally goes all the way to Morettes but we hop off 1/2 way through to take a trail through the national park. All sounds quite wonderful and scenic until I see the cobble stone path, soaked with all the rain and warning bells go off in my mind... I can see myself falling on my arse pretty fast in these spangly new shoes! Priority 1 is to not bugger up my wrist anymore or it's game over yacht racing. So, at this point I get strapping up like mad and the splint is on!
So we get started in our 5k trek, good practice for Macchu Picchu really although this is all down hill! It's not long before I can't see the rest of the group for dust, luckily we have another guide leading and Thomas kindly takes care of me. So,at a real snails pace we baby step our way down through the rainforest, both of us slipping occassionally (more me than him), and Kyri is also hanging at the back too so at least I don't feel too bad! At this stage with my good hand I basically have Thomas in a vice grip... And my eyes practically never look up, Thomas points out lovely stuff and I nod, briefly look up and say "yep, great" and straight back to looking at my feet so I don't fall!
Sadly I don't feel up to the swim in the rapids, good thing and one of the group starts to quickly get swept away.... Luckily the park guide Rodney jumps to the rescue! We finally make it to Morettes, with the last kilometre becoming "are we there yet?", "how many k's left?" and thomas always replying "ah, 45 minutes more" and so we walk for 1/2 hour and he says 1/2 hour more, and so on... I think by the time we get there we are so relieved, starved, shattered and will have no problem sleeping.
We head out for some local food, very interesting combination and delicious. Rice and black beans of course, the South American staple diet! Fish and chips, chicken wings, spag bol (sort of!), deep fried banana and some "manioc flour" thing, beef stew. We all devour this quickly, washed down with a Bacardi after a hard day on the trail.. Haha. So, the best thing is the rice, stew, banana and flour... Weirdly delicious! With ice cream for desert.
After this we head back and it's still pretty early, so we have a game of UNO first point of order is to agree the rules, bit like pool it Aussies and English and a it of uncertainty, and they seem to change as you play and people remember new ones!! Anyway, it starts to get a bit manic as the game speeds up and everyone's capability slows down... Good fun, but quickly ends with everyone shattered and off to bed by 9!!
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