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Sorry same pic as still haven´t had a chance to upload mine. Also to be honest Paraty isn´t too far away from Ilha Grande so it sort of counts.
It took a couple of hours to get to Paraty and when we arrived at the bus stop we randomnly saw one of the guys who worked at the hostel we had booked and he showed us how to get there. We passed through the old colonial town which was built by freemasons and is a reminder of the time when Paraty was booming due it being the obligatory stop on the trade route for diamonds, coffee etc between Rio and Minais Gerais.
The hostel is definitely one of the best we have stayed in so far - it is right on the beach and the communal areas are really good with pool table, table tennis, tv room and a really good bar and restaurant. It was really quiet when we arrived due to a big group of 30 checking out that morning but at least our dorm was full. We met the three other guys staying in there who had met in Rio and were travelling together for a bit as well as a lovely British couple. We decided to head into the centre with them all in the evening and this meant walking along the beach. On the way there we came across about 40 middle aged women all dressed in black, dancing around to N-Trance and later found out that they were witches and this was quite common!
On Sunday morning we all went to the Cachoeira Toboga - a natural water slide on a huge rock face (once used in a film called The Emerald Forest apparently but I´ve never heard of this). THere happened to be a competition on that day with all the locals taking part and it was so good to watch. They were surfing down (ie standing instead of sitting) and doing it in pairs, blindfolded, with a skipping rope (?) and all sorts of other crazy ways. In the evening we went to a per kilo restaurant and then went back to the hostel accompanied by one of the local street dogs . It´s really funny, they take it in turns of walking round with you and if you stop or slow down they wait for you patiently. There are so many of them but they seem to have loads of fun hanging around together.
I went to the Casa da Cultura on Monday with two guys from the hostel and it was really interesting. It only opened in 2004 and is basically lots of various items and interviews from local people of all ages. They talk about how the town has changed, how it´s a lot more difficult to fish nowadays (Paraty is the name of a type of fish) and how tourism has increased work in the town. We then went kayaking as the sea was so calm but as it was raining there was noone else on the water. It was so peaceful and so when a flying fish did just that over the front of my kayak it frightened me to death and I nearly llost my balance. I was soaked by the time I´d finished. We then had to wait until 11.30pm for the bus and so we hung around the hostel and watched Sweeny Tod -in English which was a bonus. The bus took us to Sao Paulo overnight from where we were going south to a surfy town called Florianopolis. Neither of us were too fussed about stopping in Sao Paulo -we don´t have too much time left in South America and there´s loads to see. Besides we probably would have got lost with it being the 3rd largest city in the world -even the bus station was massive!
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