Paraty

Thursday February 9th - Monday February 13th 2012

Paraty came to affluence when gold was discovered in them thar hills in the 17^th century. The gold ran out, and the town declined, but happily the historic part of town was left untouched for years until it was re-discovered as a tourist attraction.

It’s now a sweet place with lots of good music bars, restaurants and interesting craft shops; the harbour area is just delightful with lots of gayly painted boats ready to take you off to the islands for a swim and snorkeling.

Nice street art ad for the drugstore

We spend the first day just relaxing around town and finished with a fine fish stew – after the rains had soaked the street samba parade:

Next day was still a bit showery so we delayed our proposed boat trip – luckily, but more on that later – and decided instead to drive to Trinidade, a little beach place about 16k away. I drove for the first time ever on the right hand side of the road (about time I learnt – it was far easier than I had anticipated), which may be why we had a major row – the only one of the trip thus far, which I think is pretty good!!! Luckily, the scenery of the first of the Trinidade beaches was so utterly spectacular – in my top 5 beaches of the world – that we were soon distracted:

This kid was about 12. and an ace surfer

The more sheltered beaches were well packed and I quickly realized that The Girl from Ipanema is well out-numbered by The Momma from Mangueira, and they are very happy still wearing their itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny bikinis, and letting it all hang out!!

We finished the day in an attempt to walk the Caminho d’Oro, the Gold trail, but it closed at 5pm and we got there at 5.15! So we decided to walk a small jungle trail just marked by a small sign saying “Bar” – and had a Saturday Gutta away at one of the finest bars in the world, accessible only by a plank and wire bridge and with a cooling-off rock pool if needed:

No street party that night, but we found a cool sax player in really nice bar:

Next day still a bit cloudy, but we decided to go ahead with the boat trip – and found it was the day of the annual boat carnival, with many of the boats dressed overall with streamers, flags and balloons and absolutely packed with party people strutting to the loud samba beat.  Our boat had one of the few captains who actually spoke some English, so we were a more staid group of about a dozen, two families and two “mature” couples, but we thoroughly enjoyed the goings-on around us, and after a couple of caipirinas, we soon felt the beat:

After a couple of hours, and a fish lunch, we went off to an island for a swim and snorkel – not great, but I did find a sweet yellow seahorse!  Also saw this cute monkey/lemur? Then to a bay with turtles popping up every 10 mins for a breath, but we couldn’t find any underwater, as the water was a fairly cloudy green.

The captain then realized there was a storm brewing and high-tailed for the harbour, however, the brunt of it hit just as we were coming in and he had a great deal of difficulty getting  docked – all quite dramatic, and very, very wet!

It made walking home through the well-flooded streets no problem, as we couldn’t get more wet! The hot shower felt heavenly, good ending to a really fun day.

Next stop – Buzios, but to get there, a nine hour drive…..