Paraty

We arrived in the rain late afternoon, our pad was just outside the historical town centre and right on the beach. An ideal location. After a quick spruce up we joined our enthusiastic roomie Alex and his pals for a drink at the hostels beach bar before heading into town for a look around. The small historic centre is the nicer part of town with cobbled streets, boutique shops and fairy lit restaurants. We plumped for one on the main square and ordered a mixed grill which would have fed four and was quantity over quality!

Next day the weather was still grim so we took the chance to do some shopping for new swimwear and book a few things. I also thrashed Dan at Shithead a few times over some beers before heading for Italian food that evening which was much better than the previous night!

Christmas Eve we wanted to check out the local waterfalls, you can do a tour but we decided to be thrifty and take the local bus. The first one has a huge natural slide into a not so deep pool at the bottom, we chose to go on our bums but the local kids were going down standing up, pretty impressive and wildly dangerous. This is something we had seen on a lot of blogs so it was quite surreal to actually be there. The second one was a bit of a trek but Dan had great fun jumping off huge rocks and rope swings into a much deeper pool. As we had done it on our own we also had the place to ourselves for a while which was cool. Just as we set off back a local pickup truck offered us a lift all the way home wishing us Merry Christmas as they dropped us off which was lovely.
I had been feeling a little ropey all day and once back at the hostel it really hit me, easily the worst I’ve felt all trip and I threw up for around 7hrs, not ideal. Here they tend to celebrate Christmas on the 24th so although I was in no state Dan went over to a nearby hostel with some other travellers we met for an evening of BBQ food and drinking games. Must have been a good one as he didn’t roll in until 3.30!

Christmas Day, with me still a little delicate and Dan hungover we plumped for a day on the beach right outside our door which would have been lovely any other day but we both found it hard to be away from home. Our lunch of chips on the beach didn’t quite live up to the usual Turkey dinner either!

Boxing Day we caught the bus with the gang to Trindade which has several stunning beaches connected by paths through the jungle and a natural swimming pool at the end, awesome. The waves are seriously strong and lot of people were getting wiped out but the weather was glorious and the setting was idilic, we finished the afternoon with a beer on the beach before catching a bus home.
You can get a bottle of 40% cachaca for £2 so after food we grabbed a bottle and spent the evening learning some new drinking games with Charles from manchester, Grace from London and the hilarious Swedish boys before our bus to Rio in the morning. So although it was tough being ill and away from home at Christmas we saw some amazing places and met some really great people in Paraty, which is often what makes it when you’re travelling.