Curitiba 1

The seats in the bus reclined all the way but even so I could feel the bumps due to the poor road conditions. At 0240 the bus stopped for 20 minutes at a rodoviaria with a huge cafeteria, snack shops and a convenience store. There were spots for about 20 buses and the place was busy even at that hour.

We reached Curitiba about 0640. I remembered that my next destination, Iguaçu, was in the same state, Paraná, so I checked the price of an outward ticket at the intrastate counter. It was raining hard so I took a taxi to my hotel. It appeared to be owned by a Japanese or Chinese. My room was very narrow and faced the street, but seviceable. I found a lavanderia (laundromat) to have fresh clothes again, but I had less luck finding a place to change a traveller's cheque.

Curitiba is a busy city, but I felt no angst in its streets. The populace looked self-assured as they went about their lives. It felt more like a European city than a Latin American city. About 80% of Curitiba is Caucasian which contributes to this impression.

The city is fortunate to have an enlightened government that has made impressive reforms initially under Mayor Jaime Lerner, an architect and city planner. It was an article by him about urban planning in Scientific American that piqued my interest in Curitiba.

The crown jewel of the reforms is the Integrated Transport Network which uses buses. Light rail is expensive and heavy rail even more so, so Lerner turned to buses. Traditionally buses require a higher driver to passenger ratio, a disadvantage compared to light rail. Lerner got Volvo to build long, articulated buses that carry up to 300 passengers. To allow rapid boarding and alighting, he had tube shaped bus terminals built where passengers prepay the fare, wait in the weatherproof holding space and board the bus through extra wide doors. A surface metro system, in effect.

Buses have priority lanes and in the centre of the city, several routes converge so that riders can make transfers. I could see that buses arrived at short intervals and the traffic flowed smoothly. This and other unorthodox but effective solutions to urban issues have won Curitiba awards such as Globe Sustainable City. It has been declared the most livable Brazilian big city. Lerner's reforms also extended to housing, education and employment. More stories later.

I was still sleep deprived from the short night, so I walked around until my laundry was done. I bought socks to replace worn out ones. For lunch I found a por quilo place. Some offered a free cafezinho (expresso) or batida with the meal. Another Portuguese term encountered: cachorro quente (hot dog). Catupiry seems to be a kind of cheese spread.

But Curitba was frustrating in other ways. I didn't find a supermarket or convenience store for snacks and drinks. In a music store I looked in vain for a Jobim song book, though they had those of Gilberto Gil and Ary Barroso.

It seemed as if Curitiba wasn't expecting tourists. And why would it, it doesn't have spectacular scenery like Rio or Iguaçu. It's just a smoothly-run city going about its own business very well.  If you only look at temperature averages, it appears to have a mild subtropical highland climate, but it is subject to extremes of weather, sometimes within a single day, due to its position on a plateau and other geographical factors. Evidently its residents feel that such climate is bearable for a better life in other dimensions. (But it seems that eco-tourism has increased in recent years.)