Curitiba

Their theatre built from an old gun powder house
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Curitiba started in the typical way as a small community of Jesuits helping travellers going west. It is now a model Brazilian town and quite a contrast to any other. It is clean, non-threatening and wealthy.

Curitiba is very creative and always tries to find interesting solutions to urban life. The bus stops are tubes that you wait inside and when the bus arrives a platform joins it to the bus. The shopping mall is wide, pedestrianised and well designed and there are parks right into the centre of the city.

Oscar Neimeyer gallery (the designer of Brasilia) - pity it was Monday and closed
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There is not much to do and most of the group were happy to do a day of shopping. Karen (from Cambridge, a v. nice 21 year old) and I found the tourist jump on and off bus and spent most of the day in that way. We found the outskirts of the town really attractive, hilly, green and full of parks and houses which could have been anywhere in the world.

One stop was in a small ecological park where a lake contained black swans and large turtles. An interesting spiralling boardwalk took you high up on to a viewing platform - which is where we got caught in a very sudden and torrential downpour. In seconds we were drenched and were lucky to find some cleaners in a little wooden building halfway down where we took shelter.

Ecological park lake and cliff backdrop - just missed the turtle photo opportunity
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We then caught the bus to the opera house made out of wire tubes (recycled something but we couldn´t understand what), then on to another park where we ran out of time.

The night bus left for Iguazu at 22:00 so we all met back at the hotel and tidied up for, what was for some, a new adventure of night travel