Colônia Witmarsum
West of the city, the road descends into Campos Gerais country and arrives at Colônia Witmarsum, a Mennonite settlement whose roots trace an extraordinary path: out of Frisia after centuries of persecution, into Prussia, then to south Russia in the late 1700s, and finally fleeing the Soviet Union in 1929. The families landed in Santa Catarina in 1930 and named their new home Witmarsum, after Menno Simons's own birthplace — only moving on to Paraná in 1951, when a group bought an old ranch here and started over again on higher, more fertile ground. There's time to walk the small center before lunch at Bierwit, where the German-influenced menu suits the setting exactly. Before leaving, the local cooperative's cheeses are worth picking up — a serious operation today, turning out prize-winning, geographically-certified cheese from tens of thousands of litres of milk a day. Fuel is taken on the way out of town.