Paraty and the road to Sao Paolo

Day 4 – Paraty & the Road to Sao Paolo

So here I am again writing on the coach on the way to Sao Paolo having spent the night in a small quaint little coastal village called Paraty. Paraty was not quite what I had envisaged from the lonely planet’s description but I couldn’t complain about the setting with a beautiful sea view and beach, some lovely colourful flora including some rather nice orchids and interesting sounding birds and the village itself was a quaint little place with some lovely little churches, cobbled streets and colourful doors, houses and buildings. I especially liked the river with pretty little houses and hostels on one bank and nice grassy palmed lawns on the other with a lovely backdrop of jungle and mountains. Steve told me it reminded him of Thailand which is one place still on my list of places to visit.

The locals too were friendly and seemed used to seeing tourists probably because this was the stop off point between Rio and Sao Paolo so there were plenty of backpackers, notably Brits and I also recall hearing quite a number of French speaking people which I didn’t expect for some reason. With all these tourists meant there were many hostels of varying attractiveness and prices depending on their location. Unfortunately, due to our budget we picked a small hostel in the centre and the room was extremely dingy with only just enough room for the double and single bed inside. Even with the fan going on the ceiling it was sweltering and I was not looking forward to sleeping in there that night. To make things even worse there were loads of mosquitoes and Steve and I had already seen a poster warning about dengue fever so we spent a good while eliminating any mossies we saw before going out for lunch.

After lunch, Lee declared himself unwell and returned to the hostel so Steve and I agreed to do some exploring. We wandered through town looking like a pair of happy snappy Chinese tourists taking photos of everything and anything we saw walking through and taking photos in each street we passed. We then decided to walk up the hill to try and get a picture from higher up where we spotted the bay so we headed back down and found the beach which was a nice sight with nice fishing boats and some yachts in the bay. There was a long spit out into the sea which we walked out to the end of and took some good photos from. By this time we were both rather hot and bothered so we decided to go swimming. The water was a little dirty but the locals were all enjoying themselves in there and it was refreshing to take a dip. The water was very warm and you could stand up for a good few hundred metres out to sea. After our dip we continued to walk around a little more. Walking alongside the river bank was pleasant and it was here we found an empty public basketball/football court so we decided to go and buy a football and play a bit of one on one but when we returned we found 3 young boys playing and within minutes we had agreed to play them. It felt good to play with the youth of the best footballing nation in the world thinking to yourself one of these youngsters could be the next Ronaldo or Kaka and they certainly weren’t short of tricks although I’d like think we taught them a trick or two ourselves. After playing for a few minutes more boys turned up and we had about 5 a side by the end. One big mistake I made was playing in bare foot like them and within moments of removing my trainers I had acquired some huge blisters on the souls of my feet which hurt severely but I enjoyed the game nonetheless. At one point I slipped in a puddle and landed flat on my back which was sore enough as it was from sunburn due to the inability to reach that part of my back and Steve did the same but he stood on the ball and fell on his back so the both of us were hobbling around like a pair of old men towards the end of the game! Certainly must’ve been entertaining for the rest of them watching us red raw and hobbling around. On the way back to the hostel I could barely walk and every step was excruciating but I didn’t mind, I’d experienced pain like it before from football and knew it was only a day or so until they started to heal again. I just wasn’t looking forward to getting back to the boiling hot cramped room full of mosquitoes. We certainly made sure we wore our mosquito nets! It was a shame about our room though because the guys in there were very pleasant and spoke excellent English and we had free wifi and breakfast too was included in the price so it helped ease the discomfort of the sleeping conditions. They even provided us with an extra fan and were very apologetic in the morning for the mosquitoes.

Next we faced the long coach journey to Sao Paolo which we are on now, yet more beautiful bays and lush forested mountains that I just can’t get bored of, many will sleep on these journeys but I don’t wish to as I want to take in everything around me. Such an amazing place and amazing country, all the photos in the world don’t do it justice, you just need to experience it for yourself. Next stop Sao Paolo, can’t wait, Brasil’s 2^nd biggest city and according to Steve the 3^rd biggest metropolis in the world. Should be good J