Hummingbirds for breakfast

It´s about a week since we left Paraty, but we´re only just catching up with the blog. A lot has changed in a week, we´re in a new country (Argentina), it´s cold, we got thoroughly wet and muddy at the weekend. The lovely memories of Brazil are fading fast!

Paraty marked the final stop on our trip down the Costa Verde. It is a protected historical town with handsome colonial buildings, no traffic and wide cobbled streets that disappear under water in the rainy season. The architecture is very simple - low white buildings with brightly painted window and door frames. The town as a whole seemed to be a bit of a magnet for arty types and musicians. Galleries everywhere and fabulous restaurants and bars with live music at lunch and dinner times. Sneaky cover charges though if you happen to be ordering while someone is playing! Worth it though for the excellent atmosphere.

We stayed in a rather faded but authentic colonial house on the main square. It was run by a couple of sisters and their elderly mother from what we could work out. The ground floor was half full of dusty junk, antiques and bits of old machinery - reminded me a bit of the Sherwood garage. But the rooms were clean and furnished with the pick of the original artefacts from the house´s heyday. The rooms had big windows that opened onto the square and pink geraniums in all the window boxes.

The ladies seemed rather fond of adopting ´street pets´ and encouraging wildlife in general. We sat by the house´s courtyard for breakfast every morning and watched hummingbirds buzzing in and out of the luscious flowers. On our last morning, a family of grey marmosets pitched up and watched us eat. The ladies explained that they sometimes give the funny little creatures left over fruit and some of the lovely organic manioc cake they served us for breakfast. They were keen to let us know they didn´t give the monkeys anything that wasn´t organic in case it was bad for them.

After a day or so wandering around the town and along the sea front, we decided we should see more of the surrounding countryside and signed up for a tour by jeep of some local waterfalls, a historical farm, a water powered cachaca distillery and orchid exhibition. Big mistake. It wasn´t terrible, but it was certainly unspectacular. The really good thing to do in Paraty is a day´s schooner trip, but because we had already just done one in Ilha Grande, we thought we´d do something to take us a bit further into the countryside.

A couple from London on their honeymoon were in our group. They both had horrendous hangovers and weren´t coping with things too well, but were desperately trying to enjoy themselves. Over lunch we admitted to each other that the tour was a bit rubbish and got more and more hysterical about it as they day progressed.

There hasn´t been much rain in Brazil recently, but that´s no excuse and there are much better waterfalls to be had in Wales. We had to wait 90mins for our lunch. There were only a few long-legged chickens scratting around at the farm. The cachaca distillery was tiny and not ´in production´, the stuff tastes vile without limes and sugar (caipirinha style) anyway and it is quite clearly not orchid season. We really wished we had stayed in our corner cafe on the square or started another conversation with our guesthouse ladies about the importance of pet castration!

The evenings were pretty lively in Paraty. When we arrived, the streets were decorated with intricate sawdust pictures. Graham thought it was very considerate of the town to lay on such a welcome. However, it turned out it was Corpus Christi festival and there was a big procession from the church that evening. After that, the town square became a sound stage for the whole weekend for some of the local amateur (I´m assuming) bands. There was no respite from the decibels in our square-fronting bedroom. On the last night there was a great funk band on doing James Brown covers and some more soulful stuff. We decided to join the crowds of kids outside and let our hair down and stay up late for a change.

Our plans were to head to Sao Paulo next, but in the end we decided not to stay in the city. We got to the (rather magnificent) bus station in Sao Paulo and thought we´d spend a few hours there before pressing on to Iguassu. So only about 20 hours in transit in total. We were a little ratty when we finally emerged from our vehicle at the bus station on the Brazilian side of the falls, but the sun was still shining and we knew we should be in for a proper treat with this set of waterfalls. But that´s a whole new blog entry...

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