Sao Paulo is for Lovers?: Campinas and Iguacu Falls

As promised by Abby, there are photos of Iguacu Falls and the Jesuit ruins she and her friend Mary visited in Argentina. But there is also the thrill of Campinas (pronounced camp-penis for you non-Portuguese speakers out there, but certainly not a word that translates properly). The kids and I spent two days there with our friends Peter and Leca. We stayed at a hotel, but the gist of the visit was that we spent some time with Leca's family. They own a house in Campinas, the biggest "inland" city in Brazil (Sao Paulo is, for some reason, considered coastal, even though we have to drive over an hour to get to a beach). It's a city of about a million people, and is definitely a more laid-back and generally prettier city than SP. Leca's dad did some churraso (Brazilian barbeque) and I had some conversations on Portugese. Sophie's our real Portuguese star though, as everyone seems to comment on her fluency and pronunciation. Noah admits that Sophie speaks it better than he does, although I was complimented on my accent by her family... then again, they're very nice people and...well...maybe they were just being nice. There's a lot more green space in Campinas than here in SP, as well as several parks. Went to Bosky Park, which is also a small zoo. They even have sloths and capybaras roaming the park freely. Far from dangerous animals, they nonetheless invade the caged animals' habitats and eat their food. Poor turtles can't do a damn thing about it!

So Abby's afraid that I'm going to post about how I'm a "hero" for keeping the kids by myself for five days. Well, I am a hero. The kids were well-fed, well-clothed, well-kempt and generally happy for five days. I do have a newfound respect for single parents, and hope to never be one, for more reasons than one.

I'll let Abby do her own Iguacu/Argentina post, as it makes much more sense for you to read about it from the traveler herself. But here are a couple of pics from Campinas: