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Monday, 16th of November:
We made our arrival at the bus station at 4am and made the short five minute walk to our hostel, Che Lagarto.
The hostel is really nice with a bar, good social scene, a pool and comfy dorms and only cost 40 real a night (€10).
We hit the hay and we're glad to have made it to Paraty a day ahead of schedule.
We woke up and walked around the town and then hired bikes for the day. They were 50 each (€12.50) for the day and cheaper if you had them less than 5 hours. We shopped around a bit to make sure we got good bikes with suspension which was key.
We cycled out of town, through the roundabout. The road forks to the left and right with waterfalls on both roads. We took the road to the left to Tobaco waterfall and cycled about 5km uphill to the fall. There was a nice pool to swim in but the highlight is the rocks just below where you slide into the water along the rocks with shallow river water running in them. Class!
We were all too scared to attempt the jump from the big round rock just up from the rocks.
Afterwards, we went to the Cahasca distillery and sampled some different spirits and purchased these class sweets. Cahasca is the main ingredient in caipirinhas- the famous Brazilian cocktail.
We then cycled back to the fork and made the very steep 3.2km cycle to Pedras Blancas falls in what was then pouring rain. These falls were empty and we didn't bother going for a swim here.
We cycled back and made it the bike rental shop for about 6pm soaked and muddy.
After a shower, we headed for dinner near the main park to a place recommended by a guy in our hostel. It ended up being a bad decision where we paid quite a lot for a small portion of steak, chips and rice. We had to go for pizzas afterwards which says it all! With the pizzas, we had a bottle of Trapiche wine all the way from a vineyard I had visited in Mendoza. Pretty cool!
Tuesday, 17th:
We got up and went to the dock for about 10am. After a bit of humming and hawing, we decided on a decidedly girly looking pink boat filled with love heart cushions. Certainly an odd choice for four lads but we had talked to the guy yesterday and he did a deal with us for 50 reals (€12.50) each for 5 hours (which ended up being 6)!
It was a little rainy again in the morning but it didn't stop us having a good time. Our first stop was at a snorkel point where we hung out for awhile and did some jumps off the boat.
The sun came out then when we got back on board and we enjoyed some tan time on top of the boat. We stopped for lunch where we made the mistake of ordering "polvo" or what we thought was paella. It ended up being octopus which wasn't great but we were hungry so ate a lot of it anyway!
We then went back to shore which we reached at 4.30.
We got some food straight after in a place near the hostel as we were trying to make the 7pm bus to Rio. We ordered a Guaraja repeat; a Bauru (ham, cheese, lettuce and tomato sandwich) and acai - for 15 reAl (€4.75).
We checked out of the hostel. They had forgotten to put our laundry on the day before and tried to rush it before we left and handed it back damp which was very annoying. The lads were in such a hurry that they didn't realize it was damp until we reached the bus stop.
We got on the bus at 7.10pm after some delays in the ticket office and were on our way to the "City of God", Rio de Janeiro.
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