Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Our bus arrived in Paraty at 1am - not ideal! But we had booked a hostel when we were in Rio which was only 5 minutes from the bus station, so we walked there to check-in. Unfortunately the hostel dorms we had booked were ridiculously small - 6 beds in a room no bigger than 3 x 3m! The night guard turned the lights on to let us into the rooms, only to wake up everyone else in there... they were not pleased at all! After a late and very sleepy discussion, we decided we should move hostels. The night guard rang the owner who luckily spoke English and he turned up 20 minutes later and kindly took us to another hostel a few blocks away - bigger rooms, bathrooms and slightly cheaper. We went to sleep a lot happier!!
The next day after a nice lie in, we walked around Paraty in the morning, which was a lovely beach/fishing town. The streets were all cobbled with cute little shops and cafes and there was a river running through it with fishing boats dotted all around. The river ran into the sea, which looked more like a massive lake with rocks and islands dotted randomly around, and mountains as the backdrop. We all thought Paraty was beautiful and spent the afternoon chilling on the small beach, eating yummy (serve yourself) ice-creams, and then Steve and Lee decided to go canoeing for an hour around the bay. That evening, we decided to grab some food from the supermarket and cook an adventurous meal of... pasta, tuna and veg! How creative! It was tasty though, and afterwards we treated ourselves to dessert at a nice cafe near the river.
We were hoping for glorious weather over the next few days, but unfortunately the next day was overcast. So we decided to visit the ´natural waterslide´ (half an hours bus ride away) which was a massive rock smoothed down by the water which veered off into a pool below. The water was a bit cold for Jess and Elle but the boys both stripped off and climbed to the top of the slide ready to plunge into the freezing water below! We got some brilliant photos and videos of them! There was also one local (obviously a pro) who went down the slide a few times, surfing down on his feet and going down blindfolded!
After a little walk around the forest surrounding the slide, we caught the bus back to Paraty and then walked to the fort, which jutted out into the bay, from where we could watch the sun set. There were rocks right down to the waters edge, so we sat there for a while and were lucky enough to see several turtles swimming around and popping their heads up for air... amazing!
Our third day in Paraty, we decided to catch a bus to Praia de Sono - a beach which you had to walk 1.5km to reach. The weather wasn´t great, so we thought it would be good to do some walking and the beach was supposedly stunning and very remote. What we did not know was that the path to the beach was very muddy, due to the previous few days rain, and that the supposed 1.5hour walk would take us 2.5hours and we would be covered in mud by the time we reached the beach! The mud was an orangey/clay colour and was so slippery (as there were lots of ups and downs on the path) - Lee, Jess and Elle had all worn flipflops (silly idea!) and it was virtually impossible to walk without falling over! With clay between our toes (we had eventually taken our flipflops off as they stuck in the mud and made it impossible to move) we finally reached the beach... although I´m sure it would look stunning in bright sunshine, it was overcast and windy and the waves were massive and the beach didn´t look quite as enticing! Lee almost got swept away trying to wash the mud off his clothes and got drenched in the process! He then had to spend the rest of the day in his boxer shorts!
We also had a bus to catch out of Paraty that evening, which meant we only had about 20 minutes at the beach before we had to head back! Another 2.5 gruelling hours later we arrived back at the bus stop for the bus to Paraty, rushed back to our hostel for a quick shower, change and bite to eat, then caught our next bus to Sao Sebastio.
- comments