R.O.U.S.

First off, this...

is the Braziliam Telecom tower in Curitiba.  It's over 109 meters tall and has a 360 degree observatory open to the public.  The view is supposed to be pretty neat, and it is on our list of places to go.  Of course, when we wake up every weekend and look outside to plan our day, it seems like this is all we see...

The weather has been getting better, though, so maybe we'll get a clear day someday.

So, this weekend's adventure was Baragui Park.  Baragui is one of Curitiba's city parks that is a result of flood control efforts in the 1970's.  When other cities channelized their rivers, Curitiba used the available money and created parks along the rivers.  At least according to this interesting article on the city-
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/cities-of-exuberance/curitiba-story-of-a-city

Of more interest to us were the park's inhabitants - capybara.  Because the girls watched the Princess Bride for the first time a couple of weeks ago (and the second and third time), we've been calling them R.O.U.S.s - Rondents of Unusual Size.  Which they are, of course.  The largest rodents around.  But, we did have to reassure Maggie that they did not have big teeth, they would not try to bite us and drag us off, and we did not have to bring fire with us to protect ourselves.


Here is the Princess Bride version of a ROUS

Here is a capybara

More cabybara

Extra credit points for anyone with better google skills than I that can come up with what a group of capybara are called. I couldn't find it.  One site suggested that you should just go with animals that they are closely related to such as chinchillas (a herd), guinea pigs (a group), or a hamster (a hoard). 

And some fearless capybara hunters

There are also supposed to be crocodiles (caiman, actually, I guess) around.  Mac saw them when we was here a couple of years ago, but we didn't see any on this trip.  We had to be satisfied with this

playing crocodile deniststs

Walking around the park