A wet and overcast Paraty
There’s this Brazilian town, right. It’s got stunning cobbled streets so rugged horses struggle to walk down it. It’s got beautiful, multi-coloured, 18th century buildings. It’s got pristine beaches and a fun-loving, outgoing, local community who Samba dance all night, with smiles across their faces.
Or so they told us. Unfortunately for us, we brought the British weather with us and it shat it down.
Determined to keep a smile on our faces, we threw ourselves at every activity the place had to offer. Even in the wet, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
We signed up for the cheapest pirate ship ride out to see the famous local islands and ate amazing seafood in the myriad of amazing restaurants the town had to offer.
If you take the local bus out of town, you will find that the area has waterfalls, bridges and streams galore, many of which you can jump off and slide down.
The main jump is a 14 metre boulder jump, which myself and a funny bearded frenchman decided to undergo. I picked the short straw and with my balls neatly tucked up inside my stomach I took the first jump. Exhilarating! But don’t make me to do it again.
The highlight of this excursion being an amazing set of natural slippy slides carved out of the rock, which you can shoot down at breakneck speeds, only to plop off the end into a plunge pool.
Wednesday night we headed out with some locals to their local dance bar, where Rose and the locals showed me how to switch my 2-step into a clumsy 4-step Samba. I have no photo evidence of this and I’m truly glad!
All in all, Paraty is an amazing place, even when gloomy. Hats off to the locals who make it so.
