Jill Wendholt Silva CURITIBA, PARANA, BRAZIL - Utter the phrase "eco-tourism," and chances are an adrenaline-pumping, Indiana Jones-style walk on the wild side comes to mind.
You might imagine paddling in a canoe while slithering through steamy jungles on the tongue of the mighty Amazon River. Or sleeping in a vine hammock suspended above the rain forest's lofty canopy. Or hunting with binoculars for elusive insects, birds and butterflies in a tropical paradise.
But eco-tourism can take a distinctly urban bent.
When my Brazilian-born husband, Otavio, and I packed our children, Andre, 9, and Daniela, 4, for a trip to Brazil, we decided to skip the yellow fever shots and malaria pills. Our walk on the wild side would be confined to the asphalt jungle. With comfortable shoes stuffed into our overstuffed luggage, we were ready for some Parana-style tree hugging.
On a short flight from So Paulo, our plane circled over the high plateaus of Curitiba, the capital city of the state of Parana. With a population of 1.6 million, it's a thriving metropolitan area bent on showing a handful of world tourists a model for reuse, recycling and urban planning.
Ask nearly any Curitibano to recount the growth of the city and, regardless of age, most flash back to 1972, when then-Mayor Jaime Lerner decided to block off Rua das Flores , a central avenue into downtown, to create a pedestrian shopping mall. That was the beginning of the creation of an infrastructure that controlled the city's growth and secured it as an economic hub for the region.
As a civil engineering student at Maringa State University of Parana, Otavio became a disciple of Lerner, an internationally recognized architect and urban planner. It's been two decades since Otavio graduated and began working in the environmental consulting field, but his eyes still shine when he talks about Lerner.
Known as the Ecological Capital of Brazil, Curitiba in 1990 was awarded the United Nations Environment Award, identifying it as one of the world's "most livable" cities. In 1992 the International Institute for Energy Conservation recognized it for creating a mass transit that uses 25 percent less energy than other cities with 75 percent of all trips on a bus.
In the last four decades, the city's elected officials have deliberately set about honing a model mass transit system, a solid-waste recycling program and a parks system that has tripled the number of parks and green spaces in the city.
A much beloved liberal politician who retained popular support in Brazil and abroad, Lerner has served as Curitiba's mayor three times and Parana's governor twice . In recent years he has been a guest professor at the University of California-Berkeley.
To understand the roots of Brazil's urban planning movement, we start with a trip to the Oscar Niemeyer Museum. The white, saucer-shaped building most clearly represents the Brazilian aesthetic. The bottom floor of this ultramodern museum is devoted to pen-and-ink conceptual sketches by Niemeyer, the country's most famous architect and, not coincidentally, the creator of the nation's futuristic capital, Brasilia.
In the 1960s Brasilia was a social experiment designed to draw the population - roughly 80 percent of which clung to coastline - to the vast and largely untapped resources of the interior of the country. Niemeyer's grand vision put together a city laid out on a grid, fanning out from the center.
In the case of Curitiba, however, Lerner did not have the luxury of constructing a pristine new city on once barren land. About 220 miles south of So Paulo, the prairies of Curitiba in the late 1600s served as a route for cattle drivers who traveled between Viamo in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul and Estrada de Ferro Sorocabana in So Paulo, a defunct railroad line.
By the late 1800s large waves of immigrants from Germany, Poland, Italy and Ukraine began arriving. The majority of immigrants cut timber from the surrounding region or grew coffee and mate, a pungent herb emblematic of the region and drunk by cowboys from a sipping gourd. Over the years the city continued to attract a diverse array of immigrants, including the Japanese, who came at the turn of the century to work on coffee plantations.
By the 1970s city planners recognized the city's haphazard growth and sought to produce a more organized living pattern. The Lerner Plan was built around the five axes into the city and used to unite eight cities into a metropolitan area.
The tie that would lace it all together?
Mass transit. Not electric cars hovering on tracks. It turned out to be something as low-tech as a bus system referred to as a "surface subway."
Night or day, Curitibanos hop on the bus. No surprise, then, that the bus is also the best way for a tourist to see the city. Curitiba's tourist buses fan out in a loop from Rua 24 Horas, a shopping mall named for the street that never sleeps. You can eat, shop and do errands at any hour, a common occurrence in the United States but a rare convenience in many Brazilian cities. Still, even at rush hour, there is relatively little automobile traffic downtown, despite a population of 1.6 million.
We look for a white bus featuring tourist destinations. The 10 real (about $3.75 U.S.) allows you to disembark three times, and a tour is given in three languages - Spanish, Portuguese and English.
The articulated buses make their circuit through the city zones in express bus lanes, stopping to pick up riders at transparent tube platforms that facilitate easy-on, easy-off access. The system transports 2 million passengers a day on 340 color-coded lines using more than 1,500 vehicles.
The "surface subway" setup allows drivers to collect fares in 20 percent of the time it takes Los Angeles rapid transit authorities, according to former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan , who was interviewed in a promotional film produced by the Curitiba Tourism Authority called "Going to the Future."
Already well-versed in the ways of curbside recycling, our kids immediately notice the most obvious offshoot of the city's litter campaign. Primary colored trash bins known as lixo baskets dot the city-scape. Each is coded with graphics to help even children and the illiterate separate arious types of waste.
In Curitiba, curbside recycling has been a way of life for years. Social service agencies also run a green exchange program that encourages poor families to exchange recyclable waste for fruits and vegetables. Orange-clad city street sweepers pick up trash on the streets and walkways. They work as part of a social program that employs senior citizens and people without job skills.
As we ride on the bus through the city, we notice workers installing solar panels on a new home. When we stop at Parque Barigui, the second-largest urban park in Brazil, a small herd of sheep is grazing the grass down to a stubble. Their work saves the expense of full-time groundskeepers.
Each neighborhood we pass through has its own character, but the farols provide a unifying theme. Literally translated in Portuguese as "lighthouse," the farols are tiny libraries with Internet access. They are one reason the city's literacy rate is one of the highest in the country.
All around us is evidence the city government has used urban ingenuity to reclaim numerous blighted buildings, turning them into civic workspaces and cultural attractions. Parque Sao Lorenco, once a glue factory, is what Curitibanos call a "creativity center," a scaled down community center with space for art exhibits. Nearby, an abandoned rock quarry provides a natural shell and splendid acoustics necessary for the city's opera house, Opera de Arame.
The Paiol Theatre , a former gunpowder deposit built in 1906, has been transformed into an intimate 225-seat performing arts theater. The Jardim Botnico, or botanical gardens, sits high atop a hill and is surrounded by the region's distinctive Parana pine trees. The greenhouse structure provides one of the best examples of the recycled metal tubing and glass construction that has become the city's stylish architectural trademark.
"We are making citizens aware of the possibility to actually have an ecological city," Lerner says in Curitiba's promotional film. "That is, we are making the population experience a radical change in attitude. ... It's a vision that concerns the whole planet. It is a local attitude to guarantee a global survival."
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IF YOU GO:
GETTING THERE: In So Paulo, it is necessary to transfer by bus to Congonhas Airport for a 50-minute domestic flight to Curitiba on a Brazilian airline.
WHERE TO EAT: Although tourists will find fabulous continental fare and fantastic ethnic restaurants, a trip to Brazil isn't complete without a gut-busting stop at a typical Brazilian churrascaria . A cross between a family-style steakhouse and a barbecue restaurant, a churrascaria features a smorgasbord of grilled meats served hot off a saber-sized skewer by waiters dressed gaucho (cowboy) style. The waiters rotate around the room, eager to slice another piece on your plate. A wooden baton on the table painted red and green indicates when diners want more food and when they are full (or taking a rest!). Be sure to try the po de queijo , puffed cheese bread rounds made with tapioca flour. Order a caipirinha , a Brazilian cocktail made with fresh lime juice, sugar and cachaca , a rum-based liquor.
Churrascarias to try include Saanga Grill, 2423 Av. Iguacu, Agua Verde ; Fogo de Cho, three locations in So Paulo ; Boi Gordo, 1088 Av. Victor Ferreira do Amaral, Tarum ; and Churrascaria Curitibana, 1315 Avenida Iguacu, Centro.
If you're traveling with kids, pizzerias are ubiquitous. But my son, Andre, warns to beware of "weird toppings"-like mustard and ketchup, peas or hard-cooked eggs. For a more traditional Italian restaurant specializing in daughter Daniela's favorite massa (or pasta), try Bologna, 1367 Rua Carlos de Carvalho. Where to stay
Motels in Brazil have a different connotation than in the United States. (They're for amorous rendezvous.) Choose a hotel instead. A check on a discount travel site uncovered hotel rates ranging from $55 to $150 a night. For example, the Four Points Sheraton, in the center of the city on Avenue Sete de Setembro, runs $90 a night.
THE WEATHER: Brazil is in the Southern Hemisphere, so its seasons are opposite from those in the United States. Whatever time of year, be sure to pack a sweater and a rain jacket. Curitiba's perch on a plateau about 2,600 feet above sea level tends to make it cooler than the rest of Brazil. Average year-round temperatures for the state of Parana range from about 50 to 72 degrees Fahrenheit.
MONEY MATTERS: The Brazilian unit of money is the real, pronounced "hey-all." One U.S. dollar recently exchanged for about 2.64 real. One real was worth about 38 cents U.S.
THE LANGUAGE: Brazil was colonized by the Portuguese. It may help if you speak Spanish, but the official language is Portuguese. Although Brazilians are friendly and eager to try their English, it's still wise to carry a pocket dictionary to communicate essential needs.
TO LEARN MORE: Go to the Ministry of Tourism site, Turismo Brasil, at www.embratur.gov.br/en/home/index.asp or www.curitiba-brazil.com.
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Jill Wendholt Silva: jsilva@kcstar.com
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(c) 2011, The Kansas City Star. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.
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