some thoughts from today:

this morning we walked around a huge park in maringa (3km circumference). unfortunately, the park is closed for another few months because (apparently) the monkeys have yellow fever.

the cone-shaped cathedral in maringa is really cool. it’s all cement and has very cool art work painted on the walls.

near the bigger cities, they have radar/camera combos to catch people speeding. however, they put several signs warning drivers about 500m before….so instead, you get mini traffic jams at the cameras.

tonight in curitiba, there was only one radio station (out of about 20) that played music…the rest were all talk.

they love that song ‘tonight’s gonna be a good night’ (black eyed peas)….it’s played everywhere and all the time.

it seems like brazilians may be more keen to speak english than spanish? the brazilians i met in santiago preferred speaking english to the chileans working at the hostel. and, on the radio today, we heard several english songs and no spanish ones. for instance, (twice) they played the new shakira song…but the english version instead of the spanish one. when they play english songs, they sometimes will play half of the original song then half of it in portuguese….it’s an interesting mix.

tonight we got stuck in a traffic jam in the center of curitiba. so much for their revolutionary urban planning system.

adrian made an interesting comment today — here, people expect him to speak portuguese…whereas in other countries (i.e.-argentina), they knew (expected) that he was a foreigner. brazil is pretty diverse. also, mixed-race couples seems more common here(?)

tonight we saw a really cool guitar/harmonica duo playing at a small joint here in curitiba (jokers). they were really good.