É um relato de uma das inúmeras expedições que a Equipe Caminhos do Sertão faz no litoral paranaense e  região do Lagamar, que possibilitam elaborar roteiros para todos os gostos e níveis de dificuldade.

A  região possui diversas áreas de proteção ambiental, cachoeiras, cidades históricas e muita cultura caiçara. Além disso, os trechos de bicicleta são intercalados com viagens de barco e trem. Oferecemos roteiros de 2 a 10 dias, para grupos a partir de duas pessoas, em qualquer época do ano.

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On Superagui island there was rumour of a beached right whale 15km up the beach. We won a sea-soaked cycle race against the rising tide and reached our whale before the vultures. Locals said the 3-month old calf had died that morning, lost on its passage to warmer waters further north. Not being big on animal observation, I have to concede that this one fascinated me. You can pay good money to view live whales frolicking around the coast of southern Brazil in the winter (www.baleiafranca.org.br), but you will not touch the warm, translucent grey-blue-pink skin nor the hundreds of brushes in its foamy mouth through which the whale ingests plankton. And you will never get close enough to open its blowholes and have a look inside…no, come on, surely not?!

A 5-day cycling trip around the Baía de Paranagúa was supposed to be about saddles, mud, panniers and physical challenge. As it turned out the memories were dominated by whales and boats. ‘A Mata Atlantica’, the Atlantic rainforest, was our stage, lush hills cascading down in a huge continuous bank from Curitiba, dispersing into a huge bay dotted by a series of islands. Water, mangrove, forest and lots of it…our two-wheel wilderness playground.

We had resolved to attempt this trip in winter. The rain, as we drove north from Florianópolis, was intense. We arrived in the port city of Paranagúa – all tarnished glory and atmosphere with its crumbling Portuguese facades and harbourside warehouses – just in time to catch our boat to the islands. The rain eased as we got under way at the end of the afternoon, but then so did the engine. After floating around the estuary admiring an endless line of freight ships amidst clouds of oil and vapour I began to wonder whether the cycling was going to happen at all. Our captain gave the engine some welly and we made it all the way in third gear. Our ears suitably shrilled, we arrived at a beach village. As we surveyed our surroundings in the dark on the beach, locals kept bumping into us. The sudden appearance of a horse and cart emerging at speed from an expanse of sands is quite arresting, but we quickly realized we were standing around on the village’s main thoroughfare.

A small skiff took us across to Peças Island (Pieces), where we pedaled gleefully along hard-packed sands. We came across a fallen tower strewn across the beach. Echoes of the dictatorship? The shipping equivalent of a train-spotter’s perch? The fort directly opposite on Ilha de Mel (Honey Island) reminded me of a brilliant Brazilian film I had recently watched, ‘Almost two brothers’ (www.quasedoisirmaos.com.br), which presents the political and social history of Brazil during the dictatorship (1964-1985) through the eyes of political and common prisoners on Ilha Grande in Rio de Janeiro State. Ah-ha, but I was in the State of Paraná. We decided to finesse our back-wheel skidding techniques instead of extrapolating historical links.

One of the great pleasures of traveling in Brazil is the language. It is fascinating to listen to the local dialects and voices, so different from your home town, and the islanders in Paraná were no different. We were given an excellent opportunity to observe island relations firsthand, when we sighted our 3-gear boat being dragged from the water by a motley crew of men, teenagers and anyone on hand. Call me cynical, but it must be part of a captain’s charm to gather together 40 people on a cloudy afternoon in order to haul your boat up onto a beach. We played our part in this tug-of-war, before boarding another skiff bound for Guaraqueçaba. We sat back to concentrate on the dolphins and birdlife as we motored up estuaries and past islets, when suddenly the boat was beached like a whale on yet another sandbank. We’d lost this particular race against the tide. Nothing to do but sit it out in the silence of the mangrove, and wait for the swell which would release us. It could have been worse, with someone looking in my blowholes!

We reached Guaraqueçaba on the mainland, the main bay settlement, minutes before the sort of torrential downpour you need to go to somewhere like Brazil to witness. My new panniers were being saved the ultimate waterproof test. As misty clouds rose up the mountains before us, we set out for Tagaçaba, a hamlet 40km down the quietest dirt road imaginable. The forest here is high and dense enough to remain permanently chilled under the canopy of the trees. Up and down we meandered, pleasantly surprised at the relative ease of carrying two 25-litre panniers. A few cogs and a well-adjusted chain is a truly amazing bit of technology. Biking as a means of travel has a number of clear attractions: your viewpoint is high, you get to cover quite long distances quickly, and you feel tired and hungry at the end of the day with an appetite which makes you feel healthy. On reaching the colonial town of Morretes we indulged in the local speciality, barreado, a nourishing meat and potato dish buried in a clay pot beneath an open fire for twelve hours and cooked slowly, like a stew. OK, it is a stew, but a good one! Just time to catch the spectacular afternoon train up through the mountains to the plateau to enjoy a couple of saddleless nights in Curitiba, the state capital, and site of yet another astounding Oscar Nieyemer architectural creation, O Olho, The Eye, an absolute must.

Caminhos do Sertão are a small but expert ecotourism operator, specializing in two-wheel trips in southern Brazil. The idea is simple but works. A cycling adventure where the emphasis is on enjoying beautiful landscapes, as well as actually tackling the nitty-gritty of locomotion on two wheels, with a sense of fun and adventure being the main requisites.