German Rain

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?

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. 

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.

Team Lost Ravages Southern Brazil

The staff at the museum in in Witmarsum warned us that if we decided to spend the night in their back lot we should know that school buses start to show up early. In the photo below you can see one parked before 6:30. 

We bugged out between the parents and buses all dropping off kids. By seven we were three miles up the road waiting for a coffee shop to open to sell us caffeine and bread. And that was where we got swamped by curious Brazilians anxious to see our home on wheels.

We drank our coffee, “the fuel that moves you” and got on the road to Rio Negro toward the Atlantic, all day under gray skies. 

It was a smooth state highway amid rolling fields and forests. It was lovely, even before eight  of a Monday morning.

The plan was a slow drive through the rain toward the coast. Our idea was to split a five hour drive into two days through the mountains to sea level, then we would arrive on Tuesday at the coast and have two days to hope sunshine would appear to recharge our house batteries.

The weather is not conducive to beach time at the moment and which has  made life a bit annoying this week. And yes I know it’s not the end of the world but we are trying to figure out a better strategy than just sitting aboard GANNET2 listening to the rain. Take a look: 

So we decided to stop in Rio Negro, home to Teutonic Architecture…

…and do a couple of loads of laundry. 

We love Brazils do-it-yourself laundries. This one had no signs prohibiting dogs (only prohibiting the washing of dog related laundry for some reason), Rusty got to enjoy some air conditioning.

Small washers were $3:50 while the big one was $7:00 so it wasn’t cheap but it got the rugs clean and our clothes clean and cheered us up. Good deal.

We then drove across a bridge out of Rio Negro in the state of Paraná into the city of Mafra in the state of Santa Catarina home to a giant Condor supermarket. How big is it? Have you ever seen this many Easter eggs over your head? 

I am learning to use Google Chrome’s translate feature. Check it out:

Apparently you can add cinnamon and sugar and make it sweet or with different additions make it savory. But we will never know because Layne was shopping from a list. But we still failed to remember the milk. It’s cold enough here, less than 80 by day and mid 60s by night, that I’m back to drinking tea but I have run out at last of Yorkshire Gold. Brazilian tea is feeble even double bagged.

Being productive is second nature to us so I got Rusty walked and found a trash can before the rain came back and we got on the road with milk and all after Layne went back in and picked up the forgotten items.

On the way we found more rolling fields and a narrow bridge.

A very narrow bridge but we fit fine. Surprising really. 

And we stopped to give Mr Precocious some downtime.  I’m doing a lot more Rusty lifting these days to get him into the van and onto our bed. He’s learning to accept he needs the help. I love my dog. 

We drove some more and it turns out Santa Catarina State has crappy roads. 

And fog. This suddenly was getting hard and the downhills were steep making it even harder. 

Oh and trucks barreling along finding a tentative slow moving gringo in their way made it unnecessarily exciting. 

But we discovered American metal is the best picape (“pee-cah-pay”pickup) there is:

And so we drove thinking we needed to find somewhere to spend the night. A campground we checked down a side road for instance: 

However the place was closed with a for sale sign. We made a note in the iOverlander app for others, if there are any, driving through here. Then we got back on the torn up highway.

And we drove on down the mountains seeing things as we went. 

They do a really shitty job of patching the gouges caused by overloaded trucks. 

Around 4:30 we stopped here and asked the lady of the house if we could stop for the night. She said yes then her husband (I think) appeared and nixed the plan. Oh well, on we went. 

Before we left, a clutch of Brazilians approached us but instead of threatening us free loading van lifers they wanted to know where we were from and how we lived. More lovely people.

But we still had to keep going to find an overnight stop. 

Second gear manual to get down the hill without burning the brakes. I told you it was a tough day. 

I’ve never heard of any of these cities. I have no idea where we were. Team Lost in action. 

We didn’t even try to stop for the night here. 

We found a gas station but they said no overnight parking. Sigh. However at our second gas station we struck gold. 

Free and the view isn’t bad.