Travelsauria

Leaving for a travel always brings an hidden mixture of expectations. Deep inside, each of us hope to be positively surprised by a location, a person or an experience encountered on the way. This was also our mood after Rio de Janeiro, driving to Silva Jardim, but none of us would have ever expected such a blast. In this article we are going to talk about this special place, its community and all the initiatives that are taking place there. Silva Jardim is a small town of 22.000 inhabitants, 110 km north east of Rio de Janeiro. After a prosper period in XIX century, given by a good trade in wood and sugar cane, the municipality has been ranked down to one of the poorest in Brazil. Walking through its streets, you can understand how many fields and properties have been abandoned. Our goal is to spend time in farms and learn about permaculture, therefore our search of hosts is based more on the quality of the projects than the location itself. We didn't know much about this ar...

Our adventure on a new continent last already two weeks and we are still alive! But if you think we got accustomed, you are mistaken. After an 11 hours flight and an almost lost backpack, you can imagine how overwhelming the first impressions have been for us, stepping from the airplane straight into Rio de Janeiro, a vibrant metropolis with 7.5 million inhabitants. Here in Brazil everything is bigger. Some more examples? Its territory could contain Germany for 16 times. The first toad we have seen was bigger than Johanna’s hand.  A small beer measures 350ml, instead of 330ml. We were lucky to meet Bruno, a real Carioca (that’s how Brazilians call a person from Rio de Janeiro) who accepted our Couchsurfing request. He did not only invite us to stay with him and his family but also drove us around for hours, up the hills and down the hills, in his car with darkened windows. Noticing that most of the cars had them, we were wondering if that is because of the...