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Of course pretty much everywhere we've been in Brazil has been like paradise compared to England, but Paraty and Ihla Grande really were like the typical idea that you have of Brazil, sun, beach and jungle!
We stayed with a guy called Athos up in the mountains, where there was an amazing view of the town and the rainforest. Of course we got bitten to s*** by mosquitos, but we managed to avoid seeing snakes! (they'd found an enormous snake in his girlfriend's garden a few days before that the dog and caught and killed!)
Paraty town is really cute and pretty, with cobbled streets and colourful buildings set on the sea front, all within reach of hundreds of idyllic beaches! One of the days Athos took us to Praia de Sono, a beautiful, almost deserted fishermans beach, which required an hour hike through the jungle to get to, but was worth it when you finally looked down from the hill and saw the beach stretching away below you! We had a lunch of freshly caught fish on the beach (literally caught less than an hour before!) and a swim in the sea, and a waterfall that we found about 20 minutes walk from the beach!
Another day we investigated the cachoeira toboga, a set of waterfalls with a massive rock face that the water runs down, creating a natural water slide! We sensible only went down on our bums, as I did not fancy cracking my skull open, but all the local kids (and some of their dads!) went down on their feet as a sort of surfing, which was pretty cool to watch! Apparently they even have a championship in it once a year!
While we were waiting for the bus to go back from the waterfall, sitting outside a shop having a drink, when someone came running down the road shouting that there was a bull on the loose! We thought they wereprobably slightly exagerrating and all stayed outside drinking our beer, until we heard a noise way up the road and a huge bull came storming round the corner, with a guy chasing it! Within two seconds everyone was inside the shop with the shutter down, watching through the tiny window as the runaway bull zigzagged down the road past us! Only in South America!
In the evening we took a cooking class, Ben's christmas present from his Dad, at the house of a Brazilian chef, Yara Roberts! We assisted and learnt how to make traditional Brazilian food with a twist: palm heart puff pastry tarts, amazonian fish stew, mango salad and of course the famous Brazilian cocktails caipirinhas! We really enjoyed the cooking and learning about the culture and the background behind the food, and of course sitting down to our four course meal with our chef and her husband!
Ihla Grande is another beautiful place, and we spent three nights there. We tried to do one of the trails one day and managed to lose the trail somehow... and ended up walking along the deserted beaches, which was nice, and we had a bit of a picnic and a swim, but to get to where we stopped we had to climb over some rocks and wade through some knee deep water to get to the next beach. Trouble is, just like the stupid people that get stranded on beaches when the tide comes in, when we went to go back, the tide HAD come in, and the knee deep water had turned into neck deep water... and we had our clothes on, and bags with cameras and phones etc. The result was that we had to take our clothes off and carry them and our bags over our heads while we tried to cross the water and climb back over the rocks, trying to avoid being knocked over by waves! It also took us a bit longer than we had anticipated to get back and the warning 'make sure your out of the jungle before it gets dark!' was beginning to sound slightly threatening to us, as it was definately dusk! Apart from coming across a whole path of fire ants which I had to hop skip and jump over (they can make you quite sick if you get too many stings) we made it out alive!
The following day we opted for the slightly safer option of a boat trip around the islandwith our friend Kasia from our hostel, stopping at several points for snorkelling, and a underwater cave which involved sort of scooting down a slope of about 60 cm space to a pool at the bottom, where you could go underwater to see the cave fish in the eerie green light, and then trying to climb back up again, in the dark!
It was all good fun though, and we did enjoy Ihla Grande, even the cooking by the light of a torch and a candle after a power cut that lasted 3 hours and started when we were half way through cooking dinner!
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