The landscape and heritage as tourist attractions: Coffee Route - north of Paraná

Abstract

The Coffee Route, a touristic route created in 2009 which covers seven cities in north of Paraná, makes it possible to rescue coffee importance for those who had lived at the height of coffee culture and also for those who did not experience it, but have certain affectivity in memory, such as family history, for example, being a way to educate for valorizing patrimony and memory. This research has as central question to discover how what still exists of coffee culture in landscape and in memory (material and immaterial heritage) marks or can mark tourism of local base in North of Paraná. This paper has as main objective to analyze and to understand the importance of landscape and of heritage as touristic attraction in Coffee Route - North of Paraná, dismembering itself in specific objectives: to verify how touristic activity planning, development and management took place in Coffee Route and also the effects of these actions on landscapes; to analyze Coffee Route landscapes and its links with local heritage and also linked to coffee culture history, and to investigate the most significant elements in related landscapes. Considering the nature of this theme, fieldwork has been essential, combined to bibliographical research. In field, observation was made, landscapes were photographed and those responsible for associated enterprises were interviewed, besides other people involved with Route structuring. These procedures were important for approximation with study object and to produce empirical information, analyzed through geographical theory. In case of enterprises associated to Coffee Route, the re-signification of coffee memories is not only relevant for construction of North-Paraná identity, but also allows the development of tourism activity linked to cultural attractions in those cities that have in their origins links to coffee. It is understood, then, that touristic activity can provide cultural enrichment through contact between different realities, in sensations, experiences, environments and landscapes, that is, in different experiences from habitual ones.