Exploring the European Valley turned into a muddy adventure

Trying to get to the main road – did we make it? Keep reading

From Brusque we reviewed our plan, and decided to explore the European Valley and stop in the German town, Pomerode on our way to Curitiba (recommendations from the family). We really loved staying with the family in Brusque, and we would recommend it to everybody else traveling around Brazil. Before leaving Jocemar showed us around in the garden.

Explaining about all the fruit trees. This is a passions fruit, it is ready to eat when it turns yellow

It was time to explore the European Valley by bicycle! There is a bicycle route (it is a 300 km loop), that takes you around, and we had decided to do just one day on it. One on the bicycle and one in the van. The weather was amazing, but also hot.

READY – SET – GO!

Here are two major things to see here (1) nature and (2) the traditional buildings. The nature here is absolutely beautiful

The architecture is very European

This house is newly build, but still build with the old fashion style look of wooden beams in between the brick walls

It is the same for the churches, that looks a lot like the ones we have in Denmark. The biggest difference is that the churches in the European Valley are much newer, than the ones built in Denmark. We were also very impressed about how well-maintained everything was here.

Well it was time to switch! Now Esben was on the bicycle and I (Camilla) was behind the wheel in Lance

After about 20 km each on the bicycle we stopped at a waterfall to take a VERY NEEDED shower – YES the water was cold, but we both felt great after the shower and eating lunch

Back on the road after a late lunch, clouds was starting to gather in the horizon. We had planned a route or it is more appropriate to call it a short cut (because we didn’t wanted to backtrack), that would take us from the European Valley and to one of the bigger highways, and from there we would continue towards Curitiba, and stay overnight at a gas station.

It started to drizzle a little bit, but at the same time the road just got a lot worse – our van is more sliding through the mud and NOT crawling through. It was time to air down, if we wanted to make it.

But this is how our adventure ended – NO way Lance would make it through this , and the drizzle and turned into rain.

We had to turn around and backtrack all the way back to Pomerode. Why not just find another road out of here? Well we knew that the road back to Pomerode was good gravel road, and even if it kept raining we would be able to drive all the way back. Also we didn’t wanted to risk taking a different road, that we didn’t know the conditions off. So we backtracked for 2 hours, and it was dark before we made it back to Pomerode.

Next morning: Breakfast in the van and the view from the van

So back in Pomerode we decided to use the day on foot to see and to taste how much German that was left here in Pomerode, so check out the next post to learn more.