Day 16
And the adventure continues! Even though it has only been a few days since my last post, we have gotten to know an entire city and are on to the next one. But what a city it was…
City #3: Curitiba
From the moment I first got off the plane, it was easy to tell there was something significantly different about this city when compared to Sao Paulo. The hustle and bustle of the city was pretty much non-existent. There were natural trees and green spaces that weren’t completely surrounded by skyscrapers. It was a breath of fresh air, literally! The beautiful and unique umbrella pine trees for which the city was named after especially stood out as if they were saying: “This is MY city and I am proud of it.”
I had heard a lot about the sustainable city of Curitiba and was eager to see it with my own eyes. I was certainly not disappointed. The second day was my favorite. We visited with URBS, who is responsible for Curitiba’s amazing bus and integrated transport system… and then we got to ride the buses ourselves! We also visited the Environmental Ministry this day and the guide might have arguably been the coolest man I have ever met in my life. He had the appearance of an environmental genius, and the way he laughed reminded me of the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. He very quickly proved my first judgement of being an environmental genius. Two things he said really stuck with me:
First, after a student asked why Curitiba was such a sustainability success and he responded more or less, that it was an accident and was all just kind of random. It was awesome to think that people can just simply be like this, but at the same time it made me sad because I realized how hard it would be to replicate this “accidental” culture in other cities.
Second, I asked: “With all these wonderful sustainability successes, what do you think the biggest sustainability challenge for Curitiba is?” His answer was water. This was really interesting after coming from Sao Paulo, where there was an actual water crisis. Although Curitiba isn’t in a crisis yet, it was interesting to see how they are already thinking about it and thinking about how climate change might make things worse.
I wish we could have spent more time in this city and getting to know it even better. The culture there is simply beautiful, and I feel like I fit in really well. However, I am equally as excited to be here in Santarem as I begin the fourth leg of my journey: The Amazon Rainforest. It’s only been one day so far, but already has been a crazy adventure. I will save all the details so far for the next post, so stay tuned.