Paraty

ihana.com - big trip - diary - brasil - november 2002

 

Paraiso

Nuclear power

Mountains and islands

Monday 25 - Thursday 28 November

We left Rio and headed west along the coast road towards Angra dos Reis. This part of the coastline is mountainous, very green and the little bays are full of islands. Many of these islands are privately owned by the rich of Rio and Sao Paulo, the rest are expensive holiday places. We found that Angra was hardly picturesque, just a service town for these islands and not a nice place to spend any time. Just along the coast we found Paraiso, not quite a paradise but nice enough to stopover for a night in a cheap beachside campsite behind an old blokes shop. Three weeks after we passed by Angra a big mud slide buried the homes of 1500 people.

Paraty, another...

...colonial town

 

Paraty is the main colonial town on this part of the coast and a popular tourist spot. We found a good campsite near the beach. The sea is none too clean due to the nearby river putting out silt and the usual pollution and its very shallow, you can walk out for 300 metres or so. However, there's plenty of colonial architecture and some old churches, one of which is close to the shore and when the tide is particularly high, the sea reaches up to the door.

 

Wicked orange caterpillar tries to eat the tyre

 

The usual...

...door...

...pictures

Coming out of an internet shop, we found a note on the landy inviting us for a cup of tea. We arranged to meet Luke and Monica, an English guy and his Brazilian doris the next day but while we were having a beer that evening along they came having checked out the web site and found it so wicked that they couldn't wait to meet us. Instead of tea we got a can of Guinness which went down well and had some interesting talk about real life in Paraty. There were a couple of stray dogs nearby and we mentioned that Brasil seems to have a distinct lack of dogs - maybe we could import some from Mexico... This turned out to be due to the local pooch population control method of hanging strays from trees in the main square and generally doing away with them on a regular basis.

Luke had a little terraced house which cost about 10,000 quid and was enjoying his easy life in Brasil selling body piercing jewelry, B picking up some bargain pieces. In comparison, a restored colonial mansion in the centre was available for a mere $600,000.

Nice lamps...

...bright lamps

Deserted beach at Caraguatatuba

After a couple of relaxing days we headed off along the coast in the direction of São Paulo, spending a night by the beach at Caraguatatuba in a place run by a miserable old bloke with wizened legs who seemed to be confined to wheeling himself about on a giant skateboard.

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