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It was 7 AM on a Saturday and there was a car on the road with 5 people, me included, going from Porto Alegre, the capital of the state called Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, to a small town in that same state that I had never heard of: Dois Lajeados, 180km (112 miles) from Porto Alegre. Don't let the amount of people living there fool you; the 3.394 inhabitants know exactly what kind of natural beauty awaits visitors. At 11 AM I found myself walking over a field of wheat and about 15 minutes later, we encountered the river we were looking for and decided that was best if we walked alongside it. A few minutes later, the trees started to multiply and suddenly there wasn't a clear path to walk on, so we had to get our shoes (and half the leg) wet as we started to walk on the river itself. If at first I thought that was a bad idea, it was all forgotten as soon as we came upon a small waterfall that, combined with the sunlight, created a stunning rainbow that colored the stones on the water. Unfortunately, we had to move on, still walking on the river, and made our first stop near a bigger waterfall, about 10 meters (33 ft) tall. After sitting on the stones over the water and eating the food we brought, I heard this sentence: "We have to climb the waterfall". My first reaction was to laugh. The mount next to the waterfall was filled with trees and roots and it was very steep. But we chose this town to go on this little adventure because the father of one of my friends is from there and he knew exactly what we were getting into, just "forgot" to mention this little detail. Having climbed the waterfall about a hundred times before, he went first, cutting leaves and roots along the way, and making a few holes in the mount for us to put our hands and feet on. Everyone helped each other and at that moment I realized what Miley Cyrus was saying when she said that "ain't about what's waiting on the other side, it's the climb". But it was about what was waiting on the other side because we finally stepped foot on the ground since the trees were in a smaller number. About 20 minutes later, we found a pine tree of maybe 20 meters (65 ft) tall that was filled with pine nuts. One of my friends made a tie in a rope he had brought along like a tie someone makes when they want to grab a bull by its horns, and he started to throw the rope on a branch of the pine tree that wasn't so tall. After a few minutes he finally grabbed the branch and shook it, taking down the nuts. Then, everyone else took little branches from the floor to make a small fire pit with a lighter we had also brought along. We dropped the nuts on the fire and waited a few minutes until they were ready to eat. While eating, I lay down on the ground, looked up to the blue of the sky and its few clouds and a turmoil of thoughts went through my head, from how someone thousands of years ago might have also took down the pine nuts, made a fire (not with a lighter) and ate them to how lucky I was to have friends that showed me this incredible little peace of land so close to me and yet completely unheard of by so many people. The trip ended when we found the house of one of the relatives of my friend's father. We sat on the grass in front of the house, drank the traditional drink of our state called chimarrão, ate bergamot orange and I thought "yes, this was a good day".