Missing Verano! lluvia lluvia lluvia...

As predicted I'm sitting back at 2 Hertnon St listening to the rain and wearing almost all my alpaca typing this. Boo. :p
Where'd i leave off? We arrived early in the morning in Curitiba and were found by a Thali not long after! (Thali=Thaline=friend from finland days) She took us back to her house/apartment in Agua Verde where she lives with her parents and brother - it's commonplace for kids to live at home while they're at university there, unless they go to another city for uni i suppose - via a bakery and put on a delicious typical Brazilian breakfast of bread with cream cheese spread, several varieties of cheese, freshly squeezed passionfruit juice and our first taste of pao do queijo which i totally fell head over heals in love with (definitely best when it's fresh we discovered later though).
Then it was off on Thali's ticky-tour of the city. Started out in the historic heart of town where it was once just a small cobblestone village. Had a look at an exhibition on the history of curitiba in showing in the cultural centre. Drove through downtown. Looked at the "eye museum" designed by the famous brazilian architect who also designed the whole capital, Brasilia. Didn't go inside though. Wicked ramp for skateboarding if you're so inclined, though i doubt you'd get away with it for long. Then to a theatre made all of steel wires, next to which is a natural amphitheatre that has had some big names play at it but is not currently accessible to keep it beautiful. Then to a beautiful park (one of curitiba's many) with a view of that area of the city. There we drank Guarana and saw some people filming for a popular car show. Next we climbed the tv tower that has a viewing platform with a 360 degree view of the place (actually took the lift, don't think you could climb up). Stopped at a small nature(?) university in a very tranquil spot briefly before heading back into town for lunch at an all you can eat Churrascoria (sp?). Incredible. They had a huge salad bar and a sushi bar where you filled up your plate then as you were sitting at the table the waiters would come round with the different cuts of hot meat on big skewers along with many other dishes (lots of cheesy pasta) and you could choose to have what you wanted. Crazy, was pretty glad to be there with locals! After lunch thali had to run a few errandy type things so we saw a bit more of the city that way along with another very large park area that's pretty popular i think. Also saw many of the famous(-in-brazil) Curitiba buses/bus stops - big transparent tubes above the sidewalk, if you stay in the tube when you change buses you don't have to pay twice. Then we dropped the male at home to snooze and thali and i went to the salon (as big as a BIG department store where they do everything related to body-beauty, apparently 300 people can be getting a manicure at the same time) to get beach ready very inexpensively. Resisted getting a $5 full manicure even though it's a very brasilian thing to do i'm told, every week. Thali then dropped me off at home as she was going food shopping for carnaval which lasted over 3 hours and meant she didn't go to class (her classes are from 7-11pm! A lot of people do internships in Brazil while they study so you can do classes at very flexible times). Had a very late dinner, and even then we didn't really need it we'd eaten that much at lunch. Curitiba is a lovely city from what we've seen. It's very easy to find places to escape the feel of being in a city of several million people entirely, lots of trees and parks. Thali said that it is illegal to cut down any trees there, except in your own back yard and even then it sounded like there were maybe rules about that too.
Early morning friday morning as we were off to the beach!! The beach that was a 5 or so hour drive away. Our driver Carol picked us up and off we went. Brazil is a beautiful country to drive through, though i kept falling asleep. Drove down the coast of the Atlantic. Stopped on the outskirts of Florianopolis for lunch (another buffet :p this time you only got one chance to fill your plate though) then carried on a little way further south to the small beachside settlement of Praia do Rosa, complete with potholed dirt roads and big nightclubs. Spent a long evening at the rental company while Thali and Carol tried to sort out the house we were staying at as the one they'd booked turned out to be a whole lot dingier than the photos and info on the net suggested but the owner wouldn't give back the deposit. Trying times, we got free fries and a free phonecall home out of it though! Ended up going to a much smaller but cleaner/nicer place that was closer to the beach as well but only had 3 double beds when there was going to be 12 of us arriving altogether. Enough floor space for everyone in the end. Enough mozzies to go round too. The weekend was super hot, went to the beach in the afternoons (wasn't game/stupid enough to join the brazilians in the heat of the day/burning sun). It was a beautiful surf beach with the softest white sand but cold cold water. Packed because of carnaval - umbrellas as far as the eye could see just about - which also meant the single narrow road in and out was at gridlock at times as all the hot young things insisted on driving their hot little hatchbacks to the beach that had to be in easy walking distance of almost everywhere.
The next few days the weather wasn't so amicable. Got rained off the beach on every attempt. Once there was a huge wind gust before the rain that sent several umbrellas flying along with clothes, hats etc. Those dirt roads turned to mud roads then to rivers. The tap, shower and toilet water went brown. We played a lot of cards and read books and drank beer and caiparinha and some yummy condensed milk alcoholic smoothie. Also ate A LOT of delicious food mostly made by thali. Eating fried flour is a bit strange though. And Brigadeiro which i personally don't think can count as food. And Açai which is delish. Went for a walk and saw a little owl. Discovered Morrison Camping Bar (a rock/blues bar) and tried to go there on 2 occasions but neither time was it open. Others payed much too much to go to the flash nightclubs and listen to horrible music. Went to the nearby town one day for a quick look round. Thali tried to get us to Florianopolis for a day but it never eventuated. And that was pretty much our carnaval!