This is Lauren with a belated update on our second-to-last stop in Brazil. Since the keyboard in the Buenos Aires hostel barely works, this entry will be mostly pictures. Andrea, Nick, Dario and I spent two days in Curitiba, a medium-sized city about 12 bus hours south of Rio. Dario, his friend Jose, and Jose´s girlfriend met us for a drink. Andrea, Violeta and I particularly enjoyed the sweet Italian-style wine.

Jose got us a deal at a hotel along a downtown pedestrian street. Here´s the view from our window-

We met this nice dog outside our hotel.

We checked out the merchandise at a huge street fair, and since it was surprisingly cold, we picked up some hats.
Curitiba is known as one of the most sustainable cities in the world primarily because of its excellent bus system. Here´s one of the stations- it´s elevated so you just walk into the bus.
Dario says this model of Volkswagen truck, which we´d never seen before, is very fast.
We went to one of Curitiba´s many parks in the hopes of seeing carpinchos (capybaras in English). We saw some from a distance on an island in the middle of the lake and almost left disappointed when a whole group of them swam across to eat the grass right next to us. I snuck up on one and touched it, then ran away.
On the last day, we hoped to take a tourist bus around the city, but since the bus along with most other attractions in Curitiba was closed on Monday we took a maraton walking tour instead. The tour resulted in a few blistered heels, but we also made it to this beautiful museum for the architect Oscar Niermeyer.
Other highlights of the visit included visiting Russian, Mexican, and German bars, and for everyone except me, a huge meat buffet. Curitiba wasn´t as outwardly environmentally friendly as we expected, but it is a well-planned and pedestrian friendly city with great public transportation. Recycling bins were widely available, and as in many other cities here, people with carts go up and down the street s at night picking cardboard and other recyclables out of the trash to sell. We had a fun and relaxing visit, and hopefully we´ll be able to update you on the rest of the trip soon!