Ricardo's Blog

Last weekend I travelled to the Sierra Gaucha in the Rio Grande do Sul state of Brasil. Rio Grande do Sul its the southern most state of the country neighboring with Uruguay.  It is a state with large areas of German and Italian colonization.  Several of the cities like Gramado and Canela look like small German towns in the middle of the southern Brasilian woods.  Besides being lovely places they have quite a bit of Araucaria trees.

Araucaria trees are quite unique, described by Wikipedia as fossil trees coming out of the Mesozoic period.  They have unique branches and evergreen leaves.  Check more about these marvellous trees at the wikipedia entry here. 

Here are a number of photos starting with a close up of the branches and leaves:

 Look at the branches, they extend like arms in a round embrace to the sun.

Look at those Araucarias standing tall at the back of this curve.

There are a couple of Araucarias on the right side of this image.  They both refelect on this beautiful pond.

This give you a great idea at how tall and ellegant they are.

And finally a dusk shot with Vale do Quilombo as an impressive backdrop.