Seaside colonial style beauty - Paraty
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Hmmm that headline sounds a bit like a travel brochure, but this place is truly beautiful.
We arrived quite late at night (about 10pm) and checked into our new accommodation - a place called the Blue Lagoon (Lagoa Azul) - just on the outskirts of the main town. It is a Spanish/Portuguese style villa with an open courtyard in the middle with a guitar shaped pool which is indeed blue and very inviting... especially after 5 hours on the minibus. The rooms were very spacious and comfortable and certainly the best presented so far with lots of wooden furniture and fixtures, and a nice big bed.
Our first full day in Paraty was spent exploring the old quarter of town with cobble stone streets (more like boulders) and wonderfully painted buildings... like a cleaner, less touristy version of La Boca in BsAs. I have never taken so many photos of doors, window and bicycles. They must have some control on street signage as well, as even the local pizzerias and bars have very modest signs next to their doors. Even at 10am the streets were getting very hot and I think it would have reached at least 40C in the town itself.
We weren´t too worried about the heat though, because after exploring some of the historic sights we were going to go on a boat trip out to some islands and beaches around Paraty and the temperature would be a lot cooler. We boarded the schooner which was called the Estrela da Manhã IV (Star of the morning) and we found the upper deck covered with cushions and quickly took our place up there in comfort! =) Our MC for the tour Fabio or just `Fab´ was great and played guitar for us in a kind of lazy beachside bossanova style... now this is how to holiday in style. The schooner hadn´t even left the pier and we were happy just to laze about.
For some reason the pier was a bit of a mess with all of the boats, launches, tour schooners tangled up in the night (on hearing this later, Julio laughed and says this always happens) so it took us a while to get underway. Once away the temperature did drop by at least 5C with the water and a nice cool breeze. Fab did a door prize draw of our boarding passes and our number came up as well as Roger´s - another traveller from our group. Our prize was a free Capeirinha and our new friends Rebecca, Kat, Emma, Jacky and Deb were a little bit jealous.
The Caipirinha is the Brazilian national drink, and contains cachaça (40proof sugar cane liquor) with limes and sugar and sometimes vodka.
We stopped at a secluded beach and most people jumped into the water instantly. I jumped on board the dinghy to get to the beach with my camera equipment all wrapped up in a dry-sack. Kellie got to hold a spiky sea urchin while I was busy chasing sea crabs that had burrows all along the beach. When it was time to go, the boat blew its horn four times and people swam back and got back on board.... hang on.... where is that dinghy??? I was standing on the beach by myself and hoping not to get left behind (although I could think of much worse places to be stranded). Luckily others stumbled back along from the far side of the beach too and we managed to get back on board without further incident.
We continued the cruise and on the next stop our helpful deck hands were throwing bread into the water to attract a variety of fish and Fab decided to go swimming as well. He pulled the biggest star fish up off the sea floor and gave it to Kellie who was in the water again to hold. It was so heavy that it´s arms were bent over.
A storm was beginning to build up and you could see a bit of anxiety on the captain´s face, so the cruise was postponed until we could sit out the rough water in another beautiful secluded bay. That was pretty much it for the cruise.
There are a lot of islands in the area around Paraty which have restaurants built upon them. You can catch a boat out to one eat, drink, be merry and then sail back into town. I wish we had more time to stay here.
This has definitely been one of our favourite days so far, and has really let us relax and wind down. Tango....? What tango? =)
Posted byAndrew at 12:05 am
Labels: travel
Hope you dudes had a good time. You must be in transit now for your 35 hour journey... blergh!