The Penultimate

On friday morning (27/02?) Jon and I went for one last walk along the beach before we had to pack up and catch a ride with Andrea and Christian into the nearby town to get on a bus for Porto Alegre. Had opted to spend the weekend there instead of trying to get to Rio/Ilha Grande to see the Ibells as we were fast running out of both time and money. Managed to get a touch sunburnt at the beach despite fairly good attempts at protecting myself. Arrived in P.A. an hour late to a waiting Mathias! Bussed back to his neat apartment in ...insert suburb here... Ordered pizza for dinner then went up to the roof for a night view of the city while we waited for it to arrive. Very pretty. The pizza arrived in the most giant pizza box i'd ever seen, and had the most giant pizza i'd ever seen inside it as well. Even had a cheese stuffed crust and 4 different toppings including a chocolate/strawberry/mozzarella section!! Forgot to say the menu had had at least 70 different toppings to choose from. Drank some beer with our pizza then headed out to one of Mathias' fave nightlife spots. Unfortunately they were trying something new that night and the music was not that great, and it was super hot though apparently it always is, so we ended up leaving pretty early, earlier than Mathias thought he'd ever left that kinda thing. Got free jelly shots though. Went home and watched bjork music videos to counteract the bad music running round in our heads.
The following day we were going to go for a cheap but highly recommended buffet lunch but as we had only about 1 Real left we needed to quickly stop at an atm first. About 2 hours and a tour of all the atms in the wider area we still only had about 1 Real, rumbling tums and not much of an afternoon left at our disposal. So to make the most of what was left we hopped on a series of about 4 buses to get to Mathias' favourite spot in town, the brand new art gallery on the bank of the river with a view back to downtown (which sticks out on a little peninsula bit). Had a look round inside (in reverse order), the most interesting artwork is probably the architecture of the place itself which i think has been quite controversial. I liked it. Very white. And cool (good escape from outside). Afterward we got drinks from the cafe and sat outside watching the river with all the other fashionable people :p. Went to a giant supermarket after to try for a feed but the rest of Porto Alegre had decided to do the same thing, as soon as we saw the lines we made a beeline for the exit just in time to catch the sunset as we walked back along the river bank.
Bussed and walked back to the apartment, found an ATM on the way back that actually spat money out when it was asked to! (charged us an extra 8 reais for the privilege) Ate the other half of the pizza and pao do queijo with goiabada (made from guava) and mixed up the ingredients for mousse da maracuja (passionfruit mousse). Later a couple of Mathias' friends came over then we headed out to another rock club type venue where, once we got in, we stayed until it was light outside! Once again extremely hot in there but had fun dancing around. The place itself was kind of like an old house with many small connecting rooms upstairs and basement/dancefloor downstairs. Got home after 7 and tried to sleep (thank god for those shutters that block out every bit of light), when we came to again we packed a picnic and headed to the big park where everyone goes on sunday to sip mate/chimahao as it's called in this country. Very pleasant. Before going to catch our bus back to Curitiba we admired the daylight view from the roof then bid mathias farewell at the station.
Arrived early to Curitiba so had to hang around the station for a while before Thali's brother arrived as our chaperone. Accompanied him to go get a new licence, what a waste of time - if we'd ever imagined that would take more than 2 hours we definitely would've opted to go straight home. Anyway finally got back to Thali's a bit grumpy and exhausted and then had to organise getting to santiago as we'd left it to the last moment again (actually thali did pretty much all the organising being fluent in portuguese n all). Turned out all the direct buses were sold out so we ended up with a 3 bus epic combo trip that gave us a day in Cordoba leaving the following evening. Was too hot to do much the rest of the day besides nap and eat beans and rice. In the evening we went with Thali to her university and had a look around. Most notable features were a lovely little chapel (it's a catholic uni) and an incredible library. The central stairwell was fully enclosed by 3 storeys of beautiful, fascinating stained glass windows. Amazing. Went back the next day to take photos even. After Thali had finished classes we went to a middle eastern takeaway joint for juice and tasty nibbles. 50c for a mini pizza type thing - bargain. The following day, our last in Curitiba, was also stinking stinking hot. Thali cooked a yummy lunch again then later in the day we went back to the large park we'd seen the week before and dawdled and drank freshly extracted sugar cane juice and hoped to see alligators but didn't. Back to Thali's for a bread and cheese and cake dinner then picked up the 20 pao do queijo we'd ordered for the bus trips and went to see the botanic gardens briefly at sunset. Accompanied Thali to uni again for a short time until we had to go catch our bus! Woke up the following morning in foz do iguacu again, one bus down!