Morretes - Curitiba by train

I stayed in the square in front of the bridge looking at the kids jumping in the river.

The water mustn’t be much more than 1.5 meters deep there, a guide was just explaining a group that the kids were mad to jump there. Maybe some tourists on that bridge give them money for them to jump…

Anyway, I stayed there watching from the distance like everybody and half an hour before the departure of my train I got to my hotel to pick my things up and empty my bladder before the trip. Thinking I had the map of the town clear enough in my mind, I started walking fast to the train station which actually was… the bus station! Note to self: never trust again the way I picture a small town’s streetweb in my mind!

I finally got to the right station just before the train was supposed to leave, an employee helped me jump aboard, I put my backpack down on the floor and as I passed to the next wagon to my surprise the train was already on the move!

I was seated in what seemed to be the tourist wagon (which i actually hadn’t paid for), there were comments about the panoramas, bridges and tunnels. Beautiful sights of the dense tropical forest. After a few bridges we got on one that was impressively high, but the next one was even more. With its curve to the left, you couldn’t see the train when looking from the right side. All there was was the cloudy sky and the trees across the valley, and no railroad track!

The train was getting out of the tunnels in a cloud of coal smoke (terrible smell), sometimes just to ride a short bridge and dive back into the rock to another tunnel! Along the track, houses abandoned by people and haunted by trees, workers staring at the train with some weird dark unsettling expression on their faces. Last, 2 hoboish guys with a tent and 5+ liters of water and a backpack.

Another bridge, immense, at least 150 meters high, its feet drowned into the river and the thick forest gave us a splendid sight of the valley as we were crossing it sky-high. (Thinking about my LC-A I lost a coupla weeks before…)

A few more bridges and tunnels, then the plateau – first inhabited houses, first football (soccer) field: we’re almost there.

written by yawn on 2011-03-24