Brazil
Serra do Rio do Rastro
Hairpins carved into a sheer cliff face, climbing out of the lowlands and into cloud.
From below the road looks impossible: a thin line zigzagging up a near-vertical face and disappearing into cloud. From the mirante at the top you get the other half of it, every bend you have just driven stacked underneath you at once. The fog arrives without asking, and for a few minutes there is nothing at all to see.
The SC-390 climbs the escarpment between the Santa Catarina lowlands and the Planalto Serrano in a stack of hairpins, and the view back down from the top is what people come for. The road is managed rather than merely admired: there is a monitoring point at Lauro Müller at the foot and another at the summit beside the mirante, crews watch it constantly, and when the temperature is low enough for ice they salt the surface at set points. At the top sits Bom Jardim da Serra, 1,245 metres up, a municipality of about 4,772 people that calls itself the Capital das Águas for its 35 waterfalls and 14 rivers, with the Laranjeiras, Funil, Ronda and Portal canyons cut into the same edge. Its own calendar runs to four seasons rather than one: canyon trails and waterfall swimming in summer, riding and trekking in the mild months, and in winter a lit fire, altitude wine, hard frosts and the chance of snow. The one thing nobody up here will promise you is a clear day.
Solo
Driving it alone is the pure version, because every bend takes the attention and every viewpoint takes it back. Check the road notice before you set out in winter: the same crews that salt the surface publish the conditions, and cloud can close the view down to a few metres without warning.
Couple
One drives and one watches it unravel, then you swap for the descent, because the road reads completely differently going the other way. Time the top for late afternoon and stay up there: the winter offer in Bom Jardim da Serra is a fire, a glass of altitude wine and a frost waiting outside in the morning.
Friends
It is a convoy road and it always has been, and there is a second day in it once the driving is done: four named canyons at Laranjeiras, Funil, Ronda and Portal, thirty-five waterfalls in the municipality, and horses, trekking and mountain bikes through the mild months.
- The mirante that ends the climb sits eleven kilometres from Bom Jardim da Serra and two hundred from Florianópolis, and every metre of the road to it is asphalt.
- Bom Jardim da Serra stands at 1,245 metres and calls itself the Capital das Águas, for 35 waterfalls and 14 rivers in a municipality of about 4,772 people.
- The Canyon das Laranjeiras is the other half of it, and on winter mornings the mist fills the valley under the rim.
- Winter can shut the road: ice forms in layers on the surface, and the military highway police restrict traffic on days of snow or heavy ice.
Churrasco serrano and carreteiro are the plates up here, with pinhão roasted whole or pounded into paçoca, and a glass of altitude wine after a morning that came in below freezing.
The municipality's own list runs on from there: rosca de coalhada, moranga caramelizada, doce de gila, and the Queijo Serrano and bracatinga honeydew honey that both carry protected origin.
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