February 26th
– February 28th
Thierry, Matilde and I
decided to travel together from the Island of Santa Catarina to Paraty (via
breakfast in Sao Paulo's bus station) and after an 18 hour journey up
the coast, it was lovely to see the hammocks of our beach-side
hostel. It was not so nice, however, to find out that the hostel,
like much of the town apparently, had a water shortage. This felt a
little ironic when it started to lash it down on our arrival although
looking at it positively, the bad weather made us stay in and sign up
for the hostel's dinner where we met some great people.
I hit it off straight
away with a girl in my dorm, Luciana, from Buenos Aires. Whilst I was
sorting my stuff out, she rushed in to tell me there were four
firemen from Sweden in the hostel. Soon we were eating dinner across
from two of them and Luciana was suggesting we all rent a boat
together the next day. I knew immediately I was going to have a lot
of fun with this girl.
After dinner at the
hostel, the rain cleared and we headed to the main square at the
typical Latin American going-out time of about midnight. Paraty is a
gorgeous town and walking along its cobbled streets at night, with
its colourful colonial buildings lit up and street vendors selling
cakes from carts, is magical. After a drink in the square, we moved
on to a little bar which had just enough space and the right amount
of people in to get stuck into some Latino dancing. It was a good
crowd - Luciana, the Swedish firemen, or “fireworks” as Luciana
liked to call them in her sweet Spanish mis-translation, a group of
English girls, a Peruvian/Swedish lad, a few Argentinians and a bunch
of Brazilians. I'd been doing my usual dirty style of dancing
barefoot again so Luciana and I had to make a detour to the sea to
wash our feet before returning to our waterless hostel at around 3am
(my supposed early-to-bed night).
The following day, the
boat trip that Luciana had mentioned over dinner went ahead and eight
of us in total set off on a beautiful wee boat which had the most
perfect upper deck for sun bathing on and came equipped with
snorkeling gear, colourful cushions, floats and a big bowl of fruit,
which went well with the bread, cheese, ham and beers that we had
picked up from the supermarket on the way. We spent the afternoon
making stops alongside different islands, diving off the boat into
the water, snorkeling and devouring our food and drink supplies. A
thunderstorm brought us to shore at around 5pm after an afternoon in,
pretty much, paradise.
Luciana told me that
Paraty was celebrating its 340th “birthday” that
coming Saturday. I think I'd actually been drawn to the town in the
first place because I kept reading Party for Paraty so I felt like it
was a calling to stay an extra day despite making half plans to go to
Rio on that day. We, the “boat group”, had a great Saturday
afternoon at some nearby waterfalls whose rocks are so smooth you can
slide down them into a small but rather ferocious pool. Luciana went
first and it was quite a frightening but equally hysterical sight.
Her sunglasses went flying, she screamed the whole way down, and was
somewhat uncontrollably transported between the different rock layers
to finally plunge into water and relieve me of the laughter pains in
my sides. Soon we all followed, sliding and laughing and entering the
water in a number of uncontrolled ways. The boys were in their
element trying out different chain formations but it was the locals
who really showed us how it was done by sliding down on their feet!
The party in Paraty
didn't actually turn out to be that much of a wild event. Getting
dressed for it was, however, a lot of fun. Luciana allowed Matilde
and I to choose a dress each from the amazing selection she had
crammed in her suitcase which is a real treat after wearing the same
limited pieces of clothing for the past 7 months. Whilst we were
trying on dresses, Luciana complained that her toe, which had been
bashed in sliding down the waterfalls, was starting to hurt and we
slowly watched it turn from red to blue to black. After dinner at an
all-you-can-eat buffet place, where Thierry in true backpacker style
nicely polished off 5 plates, we decided we should get Luciana's toe
checked out and headed for the local hospital. The toe turned out to
be fractured and the doctor bandaged it up so Luciana could still go
out dancing. By the time we found the others from the hostel and
figured out that the party wasn't actually anywhere close to the
centre of town, we gave up on the idea of tracking it down and just
headed for a nearby bar to wish Paraty Happy Birthday in our own
little way. Got to bed around 5am and had to be up at 7.30am for my
bus to Rio. Thierry, Matilde and Luciana sweetly also got up to have
breakfast with me before I left. I had had an amazing few days with
them and felt it was a shame that we had to say goodbye. I did
realise I probably wouldn't be in the best state for welcoming my
sister at the airport that evening but, then again, after being awake
for 40 hours, I figured she may also be in need of a little rest. We
were kidding ourselves, however, if we thought that is what we were
going to get in our 9 bedded dorm in the heart of Ipanema ...
