Paraty, parties and poo-bins.

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Firstly, we would like like to apologize. It seems we are not natural bloggers, therefore, it is any excuse not to write the thing. How those in the blogsphere can be bothered to write, or even find something to write about every other day beats me! Anyhow, we have a lot to catch up on so I shall stop bitching...

We arrived in a small but infamous town called Paraty. The most untouched colonial town in Brazil and supposedly the most important example of portuguese colonial architecture. Small streets with large cobbles designed to allow high tides to enter and wash away. Beautiful multicoloured buildings and charming churches. The night we arrived the 'pre-carnival' party was starting. This is a month-long event with live music and parades leading up to carnival (basically another excuse for brazilians to party!) Bars have dozens of chairs and tables on the outside cobbled street, which after one too many is a bit wobbly, and costumed people roam with drums. It was amazing to see our first examples of samba-ing couples. We later picked up the courage to join in - four left feet describes it accurately.

Whilst in Paraty we were told we must take a tour of the waterfalls. Our guide Wagner picked us up in a beaten up old jeep and off through the jungle we flew (due to the pot holes!) we swung on a rope swing, jumped off rocks, swam in natural pools and got massaged by a waterfall. At every stop our guide rolled a joint. Not the most comforting sight when knew what the jeep and the roads were like. But pretty funny. The best part of the guide was the natural water slide (basically a smooth, slanted rock with the river flowing over the top.) The locals would 'surf' down this slide on their feet - it was to be one of the most incredible and yet stupid things I have seen.

We went to stay in the village of Trindade for a couple of nights. We were fed up of dormitories and so found ourselves a small hostel with a private room. It was a small wooden cabin in the middle of the jungle. It was so humid (laura looked like Monica when they got to the carribean) and we were literally bitten alive! The hostel we stayed at had more notes telling us we could not do you would not believe! Notes like 'please shower outside before you get in the shower so you don't get sand down the drain' and 'dry yourself in the shower so as not to get the floor too wet'. The owners were hippies but they must have had enough of being laid back! This made
us laugh at first but we were nervous wrecks at the end.

Our last day we took a reckie up the coast and took a small boat to a very remote island. It was like paradise. We spent all day just lying on the shoreline admiring the mountains and watching the dolphins and dreading our next stops to big cities!

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