We stood on the platform, watching the train recede into the distance. In front of us rose the spectacular Marumbi mountain range, clad in rainforest apart from the peaks.
The Curitiba-Paranagua route is one of the most beautiful in the world... Waterfalls cascade past the train window and gorges yawn below- Helen Raine
Turrets and domes of naked rock rose stark and beautiful out of the trees. Behind us, the rainforest closed in right up to the tracks.
We had been on the way from Curitiba to Ilha do Mel (Honey Island), but had got off at Marumbi, dozens of kilometres away, in the absolute middleof nowhere, at the suggestion of a fellow passenger.
He was a cheerful Brazilian who enchanted us with tales of waterfalls, deserted forest trails and the conquering of the peaks in front of us.
There was also, he said, a very nice campsite close to the railway line. We had no idea if any of this was true, but since the train was now rounding the bend and not coming back for three days, we were pretty much committed. We shouldered our packs and crossed the footbridge.
It was quite a relief to discover that the campsite did indeed exist. It was even free and had hot water.
There was just one snag. Fires weren’t allowed, and there were no cooking facilities.
We had plenty of food.... but you have to be pretty hungry before you can stomach uncooked rice and pasta. We set up our tent and divided out the now rather dramatically diminished provisions into a pile for each day.
It was late afternoon and the campsite was littered with collapsed hikers. They were sprawled on the log benches, collapsed on the grass, slumped on camp chairs.
They had apparently just returned from the mountain peak hike. “Hmph”, we thought. “These Brazilians aren’t very fit, are they? They look totally knackered”. The peak didn’t look too far away – how hard could it really be?
Well, at the beginning, not very. The path meandered through a forest of birds, with toucans and motmots flitting between creepers and the odd monkey scrambling about in the canopy 50 metres above us.
It crossed a wide but languid river on rather unnervingly wobbly stepping stones. The incline increased steadily, but it was not impossibly steep.
The part that was wiping people out was the peak itself. As we came out of the tree line, the path steepened dramatically until we were scrabbling upwards on our hands and knees. And then we hit the wall.
To reach the summit, to get the much talked about 360˚ panoramic view and toreally feel that we’d beaten the Abrolhos peak, we had to do battle with a vertical, sheer cliff.
Handily, someone had hammered iron staples into the rock, but they were narrow, barely enough to get a foot onto.
This wasn’t too bad at first, but as we got higher and the risk of instant death from a fall got progressively larger, it became very difficult to maintain my sangfroid.
I was suddenly gripped by the cold sweat of vertigo. Every step upwards was an enormous effort as the rational part of my brain loudly and persistently ordered an immediate descent.
It was too late though. Going back was just as dangerous as going on by this point. I gritted my teeth and kept climbing.
It took several minutes of just lying on the flat rock at the top before my legs stopped trembling and I could really appreciate the view. It was quite a shock.
We’d thought ourselves deep in the middle of the forest, hemmed in by lush, green trees for hundreds of kilometres.
In fact, this remnant of Atlantic rainforest is scarily fragmented, with ranches and fields of slash and burn encroaching on all sides.
The view was stunning in its reach, with the mountain ranges painted fifty different shades of blue and grey, but it was the perfect visual demonstration of a story repeated throughout South America: the destruction of the rainforest. It didn’t detract from the beauty of the mountains, but it did make us realise how fragile it all was.
And then of course, we had to go back down, on legs that were still protesting about the climb up. We made it back into camp looking remarkably like all those Brazilians that we’d eyed with derision not 24 hours earlier.
After another couple of days exploring the rainforest on beautifully remote trails, food was running low and it was a relief to find the train grinding the station before we succumbed to scoffing raw rice.
No one had spoken English at the camp so ascertaining the exact time and day of the train’s arrival had been something of a pantomime.
After all the exertion, it was wonderful just to sit back and watch the glories of Brazil’s coastal range slide past the windows. The Curitiba-Paranagua route is one of the most beautiful in the world.
The train rattles through 14 long mountain tunnels, along tracks chipped into steep mountain slopes, with huge green drops below and over 30 bridges, one of which is 180ft high. Waterfalls cascade past the train window and gorges yawn below.
We got off at the last stop, Paranagua, bound for the heaven of Honey Island and still high on endorphins from the zinging mountain air of our climb.
So if a stranger ever tells you to alight from a train in the middle of the jungle five minutes before the train stops, the only sensible thing to do is grab your bags and go.