Serra Verde Express Ride, Pokemon Snap, and Poor Photography Skills

Here is my brief attempt at being a prolific blogger (two posts within 48 hours!).

Yesterday I took the Serra Verde Express to Morretes, a colonial town outside of Curitiba, and then rode the regional bus back to Curitiba in order to catch my flight to São Paulo.  Needless to say, it was a day in transit, but the beautiful mountain scenery all made up for it.

Probably should've waited until after the train ride to show my mom this photo...
Pre-departure. Tired from an early wake-up, but pretty pumped about hopping on this train.
One of the many spectacular views on the way to Morretes. There was also a guide in Portuguese, but my limited vocabulary caused me to tune out after "Look to your left and you will see..." just about every time.

It was a four hour train ride, but worth every minute for the scenery.  Because Friday was a national holiday, there were also a lot of people on the train taking advantage of their day off.  I couldn’t help but think about how much the train ride felt like a real-world version of Pokemon Snap (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Snap)–minus the fire breathing Charizards of course.

Nintendo 64, you are dearly missed.

That is, for several stretches of the way, the view from the window is simply obscured by trees and other plants, but then every so often you would be greeted by an amazing view like the one shown above–in which case everyone on the train would scramble to snap a photo (bonus points if you caught anything exotic).

Me, with my fellow "Pokemonsnappers"
There was a great big warning sign about not sticking your head or hands out the window, which everyone immediately proceeded to ignore in order to get great photos like this one!

During my time in Curitiba, I also realized how important is it for me to take great photos so that everyone can share in this amazing experience.  I thought back to Amy’s blog, and realized how surprisingly inadequate my photography abilities are:

This. This is a photo.
Nobody knows what this is, David. But hey, at least there's a tree and some sky in it as well...

Dear blog readers,

From now on, I promise to channel my inner Mark Olencki when taking photos of my travels.

Yours truly,
David