Feb. 1 - 3, 2014

Friday we visited the dairy farm and I wrote about it in the last blog but here are a few pictures.

 We left Antonio’s for the first time for the long trip about 11:30 pm.  I believe it was 1:30 am when we left it a second time because Shirota forgot his cell phone.  The heat is beginning to get to the students and they were pretty tired when we left.  We arrived in Curitiba about 9:00 Saturday morning and headed straight to the botanical gardens.  We had nice tour focusing on it’s history and collections and then we were able to visit the greenhouse.

From there we had a city tour and ate lunch at a local restaurant.  We also visited the Niemeyer Museum.  Niemeyer was an architect who planned Brazil's Capitol of Brasilia.  You see his designs all across Brazil.  For the evening meal we went to a German Restaurant.  The meal was excellent   Some of the students got stuffed duck, others got a pork loin while some got bratwurst.  Our meals came with potatoes, spaetzel, potato salad and sliced tomatoes.  We got to bed early for a change around 11:00 pm or at least we were all at the hotel.

Sunday was to be our fun day at the beach.  We had to work hard to get there but we finally did and had an awesome day.  We took a boat from Ilha Do Mel to Honey Island.  The boat ride was gorgeous and we did see dolphins swimming.  Then we walked about a mile in our pants and boots while everyone else on the island was in bathing suits.  We saw some of the vegetation on the island and checked out a couple different beaches.  Our guide picked the best beach that he suggested and we went swimming for a little while.  He then suggested a second beach where the waves were a bit less strong and we weren’t by the rocks.  We gathered our stuff up and moved on to another beach.  We finally settled in for the rest of the day at a beach on the ocean side and the students were “living the life”.

Break in news!!!!!  It’s Monday as I am typing this and we just put the bus on a ferry and a barge is taking us across an inlet.  About half the bus is asleep and the other half watched the experience.  Christine woke up in the middle of it and said ‘”What the heck, there is water out there, what are we doing?!”  We are now moving off the ferry at Geratuba.

Back to the beach…. The students had a blast riding the waves, looking for shells, soaking up the sun, surfing the waves (yes, a few rented surf boards and tried their skills at surfing).  We left the beach with lots of sun about 7:00 pm.  We boarded the boat and rode back to Ilha Do Mel where we met up with the bus.   I guess everyone else left the beaches at the same time too as we were in a very slow line of traffic for several hours.  We stopped and had dinner and tried to wait out the traffic but that didn’t really help either.  What was to be an hour and a half trip to the hotel in Paranagua/PR was six and half hours with supper and we reached the hotel at 1:30 pm.  By the time everyone showered and got to bed it was a very short night as we needed to check out of the hotel and be on the bus by 8:00 am.

Monday, we started out the day visiting the Port of Paranagua which is one of the large import/export ports of Brazil.  It was interesting to hear about the plans for growth in the next few years.  It takes about 3 hours to empty or fill a boat and many of the boats hold 17,000 kilos.  The port is already full for each dock reservation available in 2014.  While we were there they said there were about 100 boats out in the nearby waters waiting to dock.  Corn, sugar, soybeans are popular products being loaded.  In the afternoon we were able to tour the port city and see some of the old buildings and learn the history of the city.  Again, it was very hot out.  We then enjoyed a boat ride in the port area and were able to see the boats docked, loading and/or unloading from the water side.  Visiting a port is something most people don’t think about and take the whole process for granted.  This visit opened the eyes of some of the students to a whole different food, agriculture and natural resource industry.  In the evening we ate on the way and got to the hotel in Blumenau about 8:30 pm.

We have had difficulty with internet so let me see if I can at least get this posted tonight.