Pousada Águas de Paratii Paraty

The hostel I am staying in has no English speaking people which is good and bad i guess.

today i looked around paraty its a very old Portuguese town - very nice then took a local bus 30 Min's away to a tiny little village called Trindade. which is tiny looked around and had some lunch. then they had one guy that rented surf boards (he also made them) had to walk through the rain ...

... beach (Eugene built an amazing sand sculpture named Sandy!) and having a couple of beers at one of the many stalls lined along the beach. We took the sensible path on the way back following the road making it home much quicker.

The following day was beautiful so we opted for the boat ride. It was an interesting experience deciding which boat to take as they are all lined up at the dock all offering similar packages ...

... and the adorable historic district. I didn´t have luck until the next morning. Walking down the blocks of historic buildings with the twinkling lights, whimsical music and street performers- it was really ethereal.

The 2nd day in Paraty was a beach day, but apparently the weather was not notified. Having been relatively lucky on booking a semi-beach holiday in the middle of winter, our luck came to an end and the sun went away. I had had an awful night of being ...

... and gigantic boxed starfish. It was also good to practice, I was a little rusty with my breathing and buoyancy, and we had a nice hour-long dive. That evening, we relaxed in our room and Mary watched Scarface for the first time.

On June 20, we went diving for real. The boat worked, the sun was out for most of the day, and we would dive our first shipwreck. The wreck was the Pinguino, which was a commercial ship carrying flammable palm wax from Panama to ...

... a looney English guy. As it is a public holiday today we ended up paying way more than we had planned to but were happy to have found a place.

So we walked around for a bit and checked out the beach which was pretty sad tho compared to Ilha Garnde beaches. Some more people arrived in the afternoon and we all went out to a cool place that had 2 for 1 caipirinhas. But instead of sharing we all got 2 and the night ended ...

... inslaan... Bij het volgende eilandje gaf een vriendelijke heks (echt waar, ze deed aan Wikka en wij waren tot haar gebracht door de goede geesten zodat zij haar Engels op ons kon oefenen) een zeeegel aan ons. Nee niet op zo'n freaky manier, maar gewoon een levende in de hand. Echt geinig man, zodra het beestje zich een beetje op zijn gemak voelde, begon hij over je hand te bewegen met zijn prikkers. Lisenka demonstreert bewijsmateriaal C07 ...

Catriona says: Paraty is lovely, staying here til friday now to enjoy beaches & try have the tan ready for Carnaval in Rio! its a really old little town with all cobbled streets in the historic centre, loads of beaches & little islands just off the coast. went to a place today where you had to wade across a river to get to a beach to get a boat out to a small island, its completely covered in thick rainforest except for a few beaches round the edges ...

...ends rather abruptly. And we found this out the hard way. Driving from Sao Paulo to Paraty in our sub-compact rental car with 6 inches of road clearance taught us that there is a place in the universe for Hummers. Just after cresting a hill on SP Rt. 171, suddenly the asphalt was no more and in its place were large rocks, fallen trees and a stream in the middle of the road. We turned back and asked a local whether the road was passable and he ...

... 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 ...

... old aquaduct, the waterfall and old prison. We quickly gave up when the rain got heavier and one of us nearly caused a landslide by sliding backwards down one of the extremely muddy hillsides! Back at the hostel we removed the boys from the couch and took control of the TV remote to watch 3 hours of trash TV... mostly Scrubs and a Grey´s Anatomy double bill! The next day the weather was slightly better and we headed off on a boat to visit some of the other beaches ...