Tree Tops of Teresopolis
Teresopolis
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| The many fingers of Teresopolis |
We decided to have a break from the city and head in to the mountains for a few days staying at Teresopolis. Teresopolis is a small town that on a quick google search promised a number of fun sights to see, and of course a fun hike into the mountains. The first day we gathered our trusty satchel and headed to the information centre to get some information on how to enter the park and for a few things to do, we stopped at one of the trusty sights the fountain of Judith on the way. The fountain was quite Dutch in style, mostly porcelain tiles with a blue flowery nun on them. Lots of the local used this fountain to fill up their own water bottles. There was very little information at this location but we assume this saint made drinking water in a land where the tap water was bad. Perhaps she was the first to filter water with her stockings, perhaps she secretly boiled the water with her wrath behind her fount we will never know.
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| Judith's Fountain |
Anyway, we continued on the journey to the information
centre, not fully realising it was just beyond boundary of the town about 10k
round trip. Huff… However upon arriving we looked over the edge of the boundary
from the valley we were in and could see the spectacular view all the way back
to Rio de Janerio. We stood here a while admiring the rather green and lumpy view
all the way to the harbour, trying to block out the squelchy kissing noises of
the couple next to us. Alas, the finger of God eluded us again; the clouds were
too low for us to see this particular lump of rock.
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| The view from the entrance to the park |
On another day we went to see the famed water falls of the
local area. We had prepared ourselves to be whelmed, not overwhelmed as we had
just visited Iguazu, which is supposed to be the most significant in the area. The
heat of the day beat down on us and the local’s lunch we had just eaten filled
our bellies slowing our walk up the hill, we walked past some maintenance men
and thought: ‘oh perhaps the waterfall is a lot further up’. It was not. We had
pretty much missed it. This local hot spot, was not quite what I would call a
water fall, as the water fell the grand distance of one and a half feet about
that of a toilet bowl. The breadth of the waterfall was a sight to behold,
nearing two foot across. Not quite a top ten TripAdvisor thing.
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| The view from the aptly name 'Hill with a View' |
On another occasion we had read about a beautiful, mock medieval
castle which was good to visit with beautiful turrets and so on. So we got up and took a stroll into see this
castle wading our way through the large whole sale stores we made our way to
the castle. Unfortunately, the castle was actually someone’s house under renovation.
Fortunately there was a great cake shop on the corner which we frequented. Andrew
having his ‘coxinha’ pear-shaped shredded chicken ball, with
mash and deep fried bread crumbs. I had the fresh strawberry and Chantilly cream
layer cake. I won. Yum.
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| Beer, Coxinha and Cake, Olivia is in her element |
In light of a few trip advisor fails we decided to mostly
focus our attentions not on the attractions but on eating. One thing we tried
that looked like a pastry turn over, happened to be a semi savoury donut, these
were stuffed with meat, but had baked sugar into the dough. We had another cake that was a Dulce leche
cake with cinnamon covered churros on top. We tried some local stewed steaks
and black bean stews which were delicious. They were topped with cassava on top
which we had had before in Fiji, but instead of being a rather wooden potatoey
thing, this was shredded much like desiccated coconuts, in my opinion a much
better way to eat it to.
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| Lots of these lovely flowers that smelled great! |
We actually made it to the Serra dos Orgaos one day, this
was beautiful and pretty jungley, nice to see orchids in their natural environment.
We as we always do, climb to the top of the hill to see the other mountains
around us. This was HARD, but when we reached the top after climbing over all
the tree roots and with a lot of aerating the arm pits. We were on a par with
the finger of God, and could look directly at it. Turns out Mary’s thumb was
next door. Who knew? And some other
anatomy of other random famous people accompanied them. (As I said quite a
lumpy landscape, the name of the park actually means mountain range of organs, bleurgh.)
We are training for Machu Picchu with all this hill
climbing, though sometimes I don’t feel as fit as I ought to be.
Until next time
Olivia and Andrew
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| Look at the size of this butterfly! |
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