I spent a few hours at Pirai Falls, which are in the state of Santa Catarina, about a 30 minute drive from Joinville. Its totally different from Joinville (a modern city of German descent) - just dirt roads, mountains, trails, rivers and creeks, and some nice falls.
I did have one unfortunate incident occur: I visited Pirai Falls the day before I left Brazil to fly back to the USA (mid March 2001). At one point in the afternoon. I look down at my legs (I was wearing shorts) and see what appears to be hundreds of mosquitoes attacking me. Yeah, Brasilian mosquitoes love Americano blood. Anyway, these mosquitoes bite you and fly away, leaving a little sack of poison that burrows its way under your skin. You're supposed to apply pressure to both sides of the bite until you see the little ball of blood under your skin come up and exit through the bite hole. "No problem" Joao (my Brasilian friend) tells me, "they're not dangerous or poisonous or anything"… OK then, no worries, sounds good… NOT! By the time my plane arrived (roughly 24 hours later, 4 planes later) my ankles were extremely sore and very swollen; and stayed that way all weekend in NYC where I was attending some Allman Brothers Band performances.
So make sure to be prepared and have mosquito repellant!
Oh well, fuck it… Life goes on. I still enjoyed hanging at Pirai Falls that afternoon, and I managed to still have a great time in NYC... And I was fully recovered 1 week later from the mosquito incident
Enjoy the pictures.
