Curitiba

I left Florianopolis begrudgingly and headed for Curitiba, the capital city of the State of Parana. It was a great day on the motorcycle because the road climbed and wound its way from sea level to around  3000 ft through jungle rain forests and banana plants into plateau and pine forests. I arrived in a huge city (see arial photo stolen from Wikipedia), cold, and wet. It took me about an hour to find the hostel because the streets run like a spiderweb bending in the wind (bad analogy or good?) I drove my bike over the sidewalk and up a few steps into the hostel lobby and out of the rain. And there I waited for about 20 minutes. Turns out that the hostel wasn't really a hostel.  It’s actually a student-housing complex for the local college kids. And the students themselves run it. It’s pretty run down but the system functions without chaos. Try to imagine 18 year old American kids self running a 5 story housing complex of about 50+ kids with no adult supervision.  Insanity. Also the kids who run this place don’t get paid, it’s totally volunteer. When I asked one of them (Hector) why he did it he told me it was because he liked the community of it. Hector invited me to diner and we walked a few blocks to a “student cafeteria” that serves several of the colleges in town.  The food is subsidized and costs the students $.50 cents a meal. Because I was a visitor is cost me $3.00. The food was nutritious and tasted decent despite the prison like process of eating off of a stainless steel tray with several indentations for the various food items. On the 5-minute walk to and from the mess hall Hector said hello to about 10 other kids that passed us, he seemed to know everyone.

I shared a bedroom with two other 21 year old guys who were ready to party and smoked in the room. Despite Hectors kindness I decided to get out of Curitiba as soon as possible. A rainstorm was coming and the time to act was the very next morning.