About this journey

Curitiba station sits on the First Plateau of Paraná, at an elevation of around 932 m above sea level, and it is from this highland city that the Litorina begins its descent toward the coast. The Paranaguá–Curitiba railroad, opened in 1885, was one of the great engineering challenges of nineteenth-century Brazil: to carry the plateau's exports of yerba mate and timber down through the Serra do Mar, the hill range that separates the interior from the Atlantic shore.

The Serra do Mar defines much of what the viewer sees as the journey unfolds. The railway crosses this rugged terrain in a continuous descent, passing through country where remnants of Araucaria angustifolia — the Paraná pine — still stand under protection. By the time the Litorina reaches Morretes, the altitude has fallen dramatically from that 932 m plateau, and the landscape has shifted from highland city to the lower, humid terrain of the coastal plain. The contrast between the two ends of this journey — an elevated state capital and the colonial town of Morretes at the foot of the serra — captures the geographic ambition of a line that has been running since 1885.