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Published: January 18th 2009
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After 32 hours of travelling, involving 5 buses, many bus stations and many road side cafes, eating too many empanadas (or pastels are they are called here), we finally arrived in the town of Paraty. Paraty is different to other Brazilian towns. It is only a few hours from Rio, making it a popular holiday spot. It is a bustling, small, quaint village with cobbled streets and a picturesque harbour. It has many beautiful beaches within 20 km.
We had booked ahead into the Paraty B+B, and were very grateful for this when stepping off the bus as it was a cool 36 degrees, with the kind of humidity that causes sweating instantly. As you can imagine after such a long journey, our tempers were very much in need of a shower and some space to stretch our legs out. The Paraty B+B, typical of Brazil at this time of year, was a bit on the pricey side, but delivered a beautiful airy room, with friendly staff and good breakfasts.
Paraty had unfortunately just suffered the worst floods in 20 years, just a few days before we arrived. The local council being what they are, had refused to send
in any help to clear up the mess, instead asking for volunteers from the school kids to dig up all the sticky mud that was causing havoc in the cobblestonesd streets. In addition, many houses including our hostel was without water, and a local entrepreneur was charging extortionate rates to fill up tanks of water. All in all, it was a bit of a mess, but the locals seemed to be coping admirably, and fortunately our hostel had managed to sort out a water supply as we arrived....phew!
It took us a while to unwind and get into the spirit of things, but after a walk on the harbour watching all the boats come in from the day trips and booze cruises, and a bevvie while watching the sun go down, we felt relaxed. We ate an overpriced meal, and decided to join the locals for a beer in the square. I needed to use the 'banheiro' so had to run back to the hotel, by the time I returned Stu had introduced himself to the table next to us and was indulged in coversation. One guy was a surfer from Hawaii who had been living in Brazil for
2 years......so he was obviously Stu's new BF, and the other 2 were his friends, local guys he had met recently. Soon we were joined by another traveller from Switzerland. It was an ecletic bunch, with many languages being spoken, and after a few capirinhas we were all best friends, and stu had arranged an early morning surf the next day with his new buddy, while I chatted to the camp Brazilian, still trying to get tips for my eternal quest on how to samba.
For any of you that do not know, a capirinha is a national drink of Brazil. It is a cocktail made with 'cachaça', lots of limes, lots of ice and sugar. Cachaça is a type of rum...there is another version of the same drink using vodka, which was much more to our liking. While I am on the subject of local drinks I will also explain how food works in Brazil. It took us a while because the the menus looked so confusing so we spent the first few days pointing and being surprised by what arrived, but now we finally figured it.
There are only really 3 options:
1. 'lanches' -which are snack
bars serving all many of deep fried, baked, breaded pastels or saltenas, or they will cook a hamburger or sandwich of some kind.
2. 'the per kilo buffer' - this one took us a while to figure out, but it basically hot food served canteen style, usualy madew up of rice, black beans, salads, and some stewed or fried meats, that you have weighed before you eat, and charged per kilo. The price varies greatly from cafe to cafe, with obviously varying quality of the food.
3. ' the rodizio' - this is the pinnacle of buffets, for a few extra 'reis' you can eat anything from the hot buffet, but you also have skewers of BBQ meats (of much better quality) brought to your table continually until you can eat no more.
We ended up eating 2 per kilo buffets in one day as we misunderstood the process, and Stu actually ate a plate of food weighing over 1 kilo......
Anyway, enough about food and back to Paraty. The next day we woke to Gabriel (the Hawaiian guy) knocking on our door at 7.30am ready for surfing. It was at this point that I mumbled good bye and
went back to sleep. At breakfast the owners of the hostel went into great detail telling me all about the troubles in Paraty over the pat few days. Since the storms, the weather had been getting hotter and hotter and today was no exception, so we did our best to busy ourselves with jobs such as food shopping and blogging in any building with air con. Feeling the effects of the heat, and irritation of the mosquitoes constantly buzzing around we took refuge in our hostel and had an early night catching up with a few films on DVD.
The next day brought another scorcher and we got up early and took the local bus to a beach called 'Trindade' about 25 km away. Now this really was the best beach that we had seen in Brazil so far. Turquiose waters, onto white sands meeting the tropical forest behind, with just a few Pousadas and Cafes making it still relatively untouched. The problem is that neither of us have the skin for sitting on the beach all day, so after 2 hours of applying factor 50 vigourously and often we still felt too frazzled to stay any longer, so
took the bus back for a much needed cold shower and all you can eat buffet.
Again we had jobs to do, it was a tricky business organising what we would do for our final 2 weeks in Brazil. It was the heart of the holiday season and the prices reflected this. Accomodation was pretty full most places, and at least 3x more expensive than off season. It was kind of like Cornwall on August bank holiday - heaving every where. This was causing us a few problems as we wanted to go to the very famous Ilha Grande, which is supposed to be very beautiful, with some of the best beaches in the world, water sports, and hiking. It is a large island near Rio with no cars, and little crime. It sounded perfect. The problem was that we couldn't afford the prices they were asking for accomodation, and that was even dorm rooms. So after much debate we opted to head off the next day in the direction of Rio de Janeiro in hope of some cheaper prices and inspiration.
Paraty is a nice place, it is overpriced due to its proximity to Rio, but there
is enough to do to keep you entertained for a few days. It has a safe and relaxed feel to it. We were glad we visited, but like always, and the problem we get with itchy feet, it was time to move on.
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