The rain in Spain may very well fall mainly in the plain, and it certainly falls everywhere on the just and unjust alike, but in southern Brazil it really puts a crimp in tourism, especially if you live in a van.
I woke up in the gas station in Corupá and looked out upon a scene of mist and rain which left me hesitant to wake the crew.
Rusty starts the night on our bed with us but often goes to his own bed on the floor but more often he enjoys hard ground or if he can get it he’ll sleep happily on gravel. He knows what he likes and does not like being told to sleep in comfort. If I was going to torture him I’d make him sleep on memory foam.
I went to get coffee as I was reluctant to clatter about making tea in the dormitory and it was there on the sidewalk I met a truck driver who engaged me in conversation and I actually managed to understand him. I’m getting better at Portuguese if they slow down.
He has a sister in Boston and we talked about the cost of living and how in Brazil you get paid less but the costs are lower. He makes seven bucks an hour driving trucks but food costs far less and he has no mortgage as he lives with his extended family. And there’s no war here, he noted, as an aside. 
He also mentioned a couple of destinations. Our plan had been to drive three hours to a well reviewed beach. The trouble was sitting on a beach in a rainstorm seemed sub optimal so when he suggested Pomerode, a town an hour away we reconsidered. As Layne put it we have never been so indecisive in five years of retirement on the road. Pomerode it was then.
It was a winding drive for an hour through a valley that was Brazil but occasionally nudged Germany.
Hills aren’t obvious in photos but there were some steep ones in these towns we drove through. Really steep like a roller coaster.
And we met an occasional suicidal Brazilian; why walk on a sidewalk when you can be in the gutter on a blind curve in the land of notoriously distracted driving?
Germanic street names.
We met old friends by pure chance, Germans of course.
And had a robust German dinner with Agnes and Herbert. Fried polenta and crispy bacon:
We talked for a couple of hours probably on our last meeting as they go south to Montevideo to send their Toyota home to Germany after three years in South America.
We first met them in Chile crossing to Argentina.
Life on the road is lots of good byes inevitably.
Pomerode is known as the most German city in Brazil not least because 75% of the 34,000 people who live here speak German. The city was founded in 1959 after the region these Germans lived in was awarded to Poland after World War Two.
We left Jaraguà under a typical piece of local architecture. The German community speaks a dialect particular to Pomerania known sometimes as Low German and they brought it with them when they left their homes on the Baltic coast of what is now Poland.
We have discovered a bunch of different German towns around here, immigrants from different eras pushed out of Germany by poverty, politics, revolution and religion. Often one thinks of Nazis taking refuge as if on a whim in South America. A large part of the attraction was not only the politics of dictators governing here but also the presence of established German communities. We saw the same immigrant roots in southern Chile and Argentina. Local politicians wanted settlers to claim empty land coveted by their neighbors and they sought white migrants from Europe where 19th century conditions were terrible for the poor and South America offered opportunity. This lot of Pomeranians were just more recent than most. 
You can see the German stereotypes at work here, the subject of jokes, order cleanliness and tidiness, but in the middle of Brazil it’s refreshing honestly to see neat and tidy roads and towns.
Layne isn’t fond of fruit and pastry for dessert so I’m going to have to find a moment to get myself a strudel. She can have chocolate and good luck to her.
We thought we’d found a campground close to downtown and it was a tight uphill fit into a garden in front of a dilapidated but fancy villa.
There was mountain one there but a sign said it was $5 to park until six pm and there were no signs of toilets or showers. So Layne got to studying iOverlander while I walked Rusty.
Nice strange evocative abandoned: what a strange place.
Turning back to the highway the entrance gate hadn’t got any wider. 
And so we drove through a rainy damp German town. 
A short stretch of miserable bouncing cobbles.
And so to the next attempt at a campground. This one worked out and we settled in for some cooking and blog writing and sleeping under GANNET2.
You figure out who did what. But it was me who emptied the toilet in the dump station. Always me just in case you were wondering, Rusty never helps.
Layne preparing our tax returns while Rusty helps.
