On the beach
Trip Start
Apr 09, 2008
1
33
115
Trip End
Apr 19, 2009
Paraty,
State of Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil
Thursday, July 24, 2008
I got some sleep towards the end of the journey but was woken up at 12.30 to find we had arrived, two hours late and four hours after we expected to arrive. Very tired we trudged around the little town looking for the place we wanted to stay. We ate pizza and went promptly to bed. The next morning much refreshed we got up for breakfast and headed over to the bus station once more to take a small bus along the coast to a beach
Beach
. It was absolutely beautiful, clear water and all the stuff you expect. In order to get away from the piles of umbrellas and restaurants we decided to head for the other end of the beach which involved climbing up and down slopes through jungle for about 20 minutes. Spent the day on the beach relaxing, reading building the obligatory sand castle (which due to a bad choice of location was invaded around 1420 (PM) by the ocean and was abandoned by the inhabitants who retreated to higher ground. The sea was cold but not cold like the Bristol Channel and I was not put off swimming until a big wave chased me back to shore. Ok, so the waves weren't big like on a surfer video but they were about my height again above me and I am six foot nothing. The sun disappeared behind the mountains and we headed back through the jungle to the only bit of beach still with sun. By the time we had made it back through the jungle there was no sun left so we sat in one of the beach huts and ate some delicious fish cooked in a vegetable stew. And took the bus back to Parati. I was absolutely freezing by this point in only my swim shorts and a t-shirt all I could do was wrap my towel around my legs and wait to get back to the hotel. Back in town that night, after putting lots of clothes on, we ate Esfihas a Brazilian triangular bread thing stuffed with meat or cheese or whatever you want really and pretending to be Turkish.
The next day we woke up earlier and had time to walk through the town center before taking a boat out around the islands surrounding Parati. The town is incredibly beautiful as is the water, I intend including lots of photos to illustrate so I don't need to tell you. We swam in the sea, which was cold but exciting, from the boat you could see that the other swimmers were almost completely surrounded by stripy fish but after you jumped in you could no longer see them
Parati from the boat
. At two places we stopped near a beach and had the chance to swim to shore or take a dingy. I swam. On both beaches I built sand castles (obligatory!). The food provided was much better than I expected but when we arrived back at shore we found out that food was not included and were faced with a hefty bill. I was not happy at all. But despite trying to get away with it we paid up in the end. It was only 15 pounds but 53 Reals is a lot for a meal. For example that night we walked around the town looking for a restaurant and found various places that looked delicious including an Argentinean one run by a German and an Italian restaurant run by an Italian, we chose to ate here. We had a kind of crab cake baked in its shell and at my request we ate Spaghetti with fruits of the sea, including muscles, squid, baby octopus, prawns and cockles which considering I don't (or didn't before this) like seafood I was quite proud of myself. I also decided to try sushi before I get to Japan.
On the bus back to Rio we passed a shop called Los Pirates (The pirates) it sold boats the big white yachts they have in Plymouth etc. but notably the boats were stacked on shelves forty foot shelves three shelves high that is three boats one above the other. The expense and effort of getting boats onto shelves like that is mind-boggling. Got some more sleep and arriving back in Rio took a taxi back home.
