Teresopolis - March 21st

The main reason why we are here in Teresopolis is to see the mountains, and the way to do this is to go into the Serra dos Orgaos National Park on the edge of the town.  The range is called the Organ Pipe Range because of the weird and wonderful shapes of the mountain peaks.  Most spectacular of all the is Dedo De Deus, or Finger of God, which is actually visible from all over the town.  But we want to see it up close, so we head off to the park, with a transfer organised by the hotel to the park entrance on the edge of town.

Once we get there we start walking through the various trails in the park.  There are quite a few, but really only 4 are doable within one day, the rest require camping in the park, so we set out to do the four.  They are harder than we thought they would be, the first was a fairly simple one through the forest, but the second, up to see the Finger of God, is much steeper than we expected.  However the sign at the start of the trail did say we would take an hour to do it, and we only took 40 minutes so maybe we were going a bit too fast.  The extra time gave us time at the top to wait out the clouds that were swirling around the mountains.  They never really cleared but we did manage to get some shots.

The interesting thing about being in the park is how few others there were, but we did get to talk to a guy from Rio, and a couple from France, so we didn’t feel totally alone on the trip.  The Rio guy accompanied us on the third trail, which was across platforms built up in the tree tops.  And we met the French couple at the top of the last trail which gave us a great view of the town.  The town is built along a valley but there are some flavelas up the sides of the valley, so it is an interesting view.  And we get to see the Brazilian teams training ground.

In the evening, after we were collected by our hotel and deposited back there, we decided we were too tired to go out in the evening, so we ordered pizza to the hotel and had a few beers.  And we watched a few US cop shows on our cable TV.