Posada Flor De Paraty

Paraty is another old colonial town - originally the port for gold mined in Ouro Preto on its way to Europe. The cobbled streets are paved wiht huge irregular stones making walking along tem rather hazardous to ankles. Cars are not allowed in the old town (or maybe the suspension is destroyed too fast) so its just bouncing lurching bicycles, and ponies pulling carts - one of them ...

... floating restaurant. $14 for fries! enough said. We were the poor Americans here and ordered beans and rice. It was delicious. Because of the bad weather, our charter boat ended up leaving 3 hours early. Thank God. We got back to Ilha Grande, got some food and wandered the streets. Our ferry to the mainland was early the next day so unfortunately for Katie, we could not go to the All-Night-Reggae-Party on the Beach. We also had a Marathon to do.

... surroundings, consisting of one to two story colonial buildings, painted in light tones and highlighted by bright colored window trim, which front cobblestone streets. After early economic success in the 1700īs as the primary regional export port for gold to Rio de Janeiro, Paraty has stumbled through a few other sporadic periods of economic prosperity, one based on coffee in the early 1800īs, another on cachaca production in ...

... bus to Sao Paulo and then on to Iguazu Falls in the evening on an overnight bus that takes about 18 hours or so.. And that will already be the end of our Brazil trip as we will be staying on the Argentinian side.

All in all, Brazil is a really cool place from what we ve seen which isnt actually that much, the people were really friendly, food was great, the beaches amazing and the weather fantastic apart from today.

... seriously my bum and arms have taken the brunt of this exercise!! We got up to another lovely breakfast (not as nice though this time as there was another couple in the pousada so we didnt get table service this morning!) We lazed around for the morning chatting to David and his wife Jimena - David is originally from Arizona but his wife is Brazilian. They are really nice and giving us tips on where to go. We hung out in hammocks and comfy chairs ...

... to the green lagoon, for some more snorkeling, but the waters looked less impressive than before, and we'd dried off by then, so weren't too keen on going back in.

We ended up back at our hostel for dinner and drinks, bumping into two girls whom we'd met way back on our trip across the Bolivian Altiplano - small world indeed! I made an unforeseen mistake of petting a dog on the beach whilst walking back to our hostel earlier that evening - that same dog ended up sleeping ...

... zet je gewoon de strijkplanken buiten en kun je daar je biertje op kwijt. Slim. Het onvermijdelijke moment kwam daar en we stonden er weer moederziels alleen voor in de grote boze stad. Let's get out of here, want de conclusie was toch wel dat Sampa met zijn 22 miljoen inwoners eigenlijk wel een beetje saaie stad is. En voor mijn moeder: Sampa is volgens de Lonely Planet gevaarlijker dan Rio, dus we hebben het overleefd, geen reden meer om te zenuwen. De volgende dag vertrok ...

... the first day before setting sail and honestly, it was lucky we had our shades on as during the Captains welcome-on-board speech, our eyes were rolling in the back of our heads and 10 minutes later we were out like a light even missing the call for dinner ( I dont think Reemah or I have EVER missed a meal!!) Sad to say goodbye to the ship but so excited to get back on dry land, a normal bed and sadly, I was completely ecstatic about doing all my washing!! Hmm....

... us that because of the prior week's torrential rains it was not possible. Looking at our map and seeing that only 10 kilometers separated us from Paraty, Jill, completely out of character, said, "I'm game if you are." And of course Jay was. One and a half kilometers later we learned that the man had not been lying, as a crevasse crossed the entire road. While executing a 3-point turn to get out of there, part of the road was washed away, and we ...

... in the small harbour are all brightly coloured and you can hire them for the day to go out to the near by islands or just up and down the coast, bizarrely a lot of these small vessels have attached sun chairs to the roofs so you can climb up and sit in them while you are sailing. You got to hope that they are fitted strongly and that the water doesn't get choppy as the boats are only about 15 feet long and their roofs are ...