The bus system, by the way, is easy to use. For those on a budget, I'd highly recommend it. R$2.20 per person versus a cab ride that's going to run upwards of R$30 to get from the downtown to the waterfalls. For those not on a budget, the cabbies are pretty nice guys and often willing to make deals instead of letting the meter run.
In the park, we opted for a package that began with a 9 kilometer bike ride through the rain forest.
The others on the tour were a local tour guide taking two neighbor friends to see the park. One of them had never ridden on a bike before. Much hilarity ensued. Usually too far behind us for us to actually see it. Though we could hear the laughing.
Our tour guide (who'd also been our tour guide on the boating trip we'd taken) would stop every once and a while to give these sweetly goofy guys a chance to catch up.
He also liked to point out the wildlife. Such as excitedly picking up this little dude and trying to take a picture with his camera phone at the same time.
Looks cute doesn't he? Or at least like some unassuming funky colored moss. Well, as we learned, do not mess with him. Just don't do it. Don't even let him brush against your skin. Because if you do you will have 48 hours to get to the hospital, or...you will die. No kidding.
Perhaps, it's not surprising that the rest of us weren't quite as eager to get close to the little dude.
Then, we saw another sight. A poor snake that had been run over (accidentally? not sure...) by a jeep. Our tour guide was really upset about this, especially at whoever was responsible, but determined that the poor guy was going to survive and shooed him back into the underbrush.
Then, I became a wuss.
I'm not sure how far we'd biked, but eventually the tour guide called the jeep to come pick up the other guys because they were having too much fun to keep up. We picked up our pace. The path got muddier. And a few kilometers in I was exhausted, breathing a bit heavy and dripping with sweat.
And I kept envisioning my bicycle tire slipping in the mud and bringing me down with it. The jeep puttered behind us for a while and eventually I waved a white flag saying, "You know, what the heck, we might as well get a ride the rest of the way." I hated giving up, but the tour guide seemed totally fine with the change of plans.
Upon later reflection, there's a possibility that the origins of my pneumonia lay somewhere in this last day at the waterfalls. Truth be told outside of a tremendous amount of walking in Porto Alegre, I hadn't been doing much exercise in Brazil prior to this bike ride. And considering the deadly caterpillars, who knows what I could have unknowingly subjected myself too in a slightly weaker state. Hmmm...
We trucked along until we reached the lake. Then we climbed in a boat and glided along the water checking out the scenery including baby alligators and toucans.
Then, just to add a little more exercise in, we jumped into inflatable kayaks and bumbled through the last kilometer on our own. The three guys shared a kayak and kept doing 360s, water from their oars splashing everywhere. They made Samosa and myself appear positively full of athletic prowess even though we could barely kayak in a straight line. We all couldn't stop laughing. The tour guide and the boat driver were also pretty amused as they observed from a distance.
Later we caught the second to last Parque Nacional bus back to the entrance.
Even the gift shop was closed. Everything was quiet and sunlit. We retrieved our bags and changed into dry clothes for the flight. The beautiful red mud of the state was all over our legs and feet and shoes.
We waited for the local bus with park employees and got off at the airport stop.
Time to go home to Porto Alegre.
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