Official Name: The Friendship Force Curitiba - Brazil

How to arrive

International Airport: CWB – AFONSO PENA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT at São José dos Pinhais - 17 Km from Curitiba.

Connections are available to/from São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Foz do Iguaçu and a lot of other cities around Brazil and South America.

Means of transportation from the Airport to Curitiba downtown:

Taxi fare: About US$ 15,00

Special bus line fare: About US$ 2,00

Popular bus line fare: About US$ 0,50

Usually each host picks up the ambassadors, by car, at the Airport. It's about twenty minutes drive.

Other main distances:

São Paulo – 400km, about 40 minutes of flight or 7 hours by bus

Rio de Janeiro – 800km, about 70 minutes of flight.

Foz do Iguaçu – 650km, 60 minutes of flight or about 9 hours by bus

About The Club

Our club was chartered in 1992. We have about 80 members, including families and single people. Our partners are between 17 and 80 years old. The medium age is 45 years old. We usually welcome two Inbound Exchanges and sponsor one Outbound Exchange per year. We are able to host about 25 Ambassador in an Inbound Exchange. The president of the club is José Roberto Infante Bonatto, assisted by his wife Tânia de Góis Bonatto. They are active in the club since 1994 and were ahead of the institution many times.

About The Exchanges

Curitiba:

Ambassadors are picked up at the Airport by each host with his own car. We offer a Welcome Dinner, a visit to the Government Palace and/or City Hall, a visit to one industry and sightseeing in Curitiba.

At night, the ambassador has optional programs with their respective hosts. A Farewell Party is scheduled at the end of the period of visitation.

We normally program visits to tourist attractions near Curitiba (up to 120 Km):

Morretes:

The first tour begins with a train ride through a centenary railway, a bold engineering work which is a pride for Brazil, disembarking in Morretes. At this small, old and nice city, we take a short sightseeing walk and have lunch, profiting the opportunity to taste the local typical food called "barreado". After lunch we return to Curitiba by Graciosa road, a centenary road with a lot of curves edged by flowers and the Atlantic Forest.

The price of this one day ride, meal included, is about U$ 50,00, to be paid by each Ambassador.

Vila Velha:

The second tour is a visit to Vila Velha State Park. We reach the park by bus, through the "Rodovia do Café" highway, enjoying the beautiful landscape consisting of rivers, scrubs, different kinds of plantations, cow farms and the countryside. At Vila Velha Park, we take a walk through the “stone city”, checking the natural sandstone figures, about 400 million-year old, that take the profile of a castle, a camel, a rhino, a whale, and the famous candlestick. After this we see the Furnas, enormous craters with approximately 110 meters deep until the water level, linked underground by a beautiful crystal water lagoon full of different kind of fishes, that we see soon afterwards.

The price of this one day ride is about U$ 40,00 for each person (to be paid by the Ambassadors), including a typical Brazilian barbecue for lunch.

About Curitiba and Surroundings

In the southern State of Paraná, with a peculiar terrain featured by its geographical irregularity, you can find valuable natural treasures and some of the most important tourist attractions of Brazil, such as:  the Iguaçu Falls; the wonderful stone city of Vila Velha, near Ponta Grossa; the largest continuous section of preserved Atlantic Coastal Forest in South America; and, beyond one of the most beautiful sectors of the mountain range of Serra do Mar, the Ilha do Mel (Honey Island) at Paranaguá bay.

Curitiba is embedded in this highland, placed at an altitude of 908 meters. It was founded by Portuguese explorers, in the Seventeenth Century, and modeled in Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries by immigrants from all around the world, mainly from Europe and Asia, as Germans, Italians, Polish, Ukraine, Jewish, Japanese and Arabs.

Curitiba, the charming capital of Paraná State, is famous by its high quality of life. There are 50 square meters of green area available for each inhabitant. Considered as the Ecological Capital of Brazil, cosmopolite and modern, the city is often taken by other cities around the world as model, because of its simple and functional urban solutions. Despite its fast growth and the fact that there were more than two and a half million inhabitants, the infrastructure is well planed, where modern architectural structures and old colonial buildings can stay together in harmony.

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