Paraty

To be pronounced: Parachee. Ha ha! Paraty is de -wait for it- lightful. De-lightful! (Insiders joke for anyone who has ever watched how I met your mom). Anyway yes, Paraty is lovely and I highly recommend that if you ever go to Brazil you come and visit this place.

Curitiba continued to be wet and rainy the day I left, so in the end I never got to ride the tourist bus. I got the bus into town and was heading towards the bus station to buy my ticket to SP. I knew there was a shopping centre on the way so I decided to stop off there hoping to find food. It did indeed have loads of restaurants and so I picked the first one that looked good and stuffed myself pretty literally. I was so hungry I just wolffed all the food down, and then I went and had tea and orange juice and desert somewhere else. I ate it all so fast though that I made myself feel really sick, and for a while after that I just had to sit down and let it pass. Silly me! The shopping mall was fun though. It provided shelter from the rain and cold, and it was fun to see all the crazy Christmas decorations, totally excessive, with Father Christmas, and fake snow and all. It even had a skating rink inside it!!! That was totally impressive and was in fact quite entertaining to just stand there and watch the Brazilians try to make their way around it. So random! But I guess they like their tatse of winter too, even when it's technically summer here. Anyway, I got my night bus to SP and made it safe and sound. This was a noisy night bus and people were chatting all the way which I just couldn't understand. I still haven't found the optimum bus seat yet either as sitting right a the front means you can hear the bus driver's conversations. It also means you get to see just how erratically they drive. Still, I reached SP safe and sound early in the morning which is when I wrote the previous post. Funnily enough after having said all that about the bus loo, the next bus loo I got was quite the contrary. For a start it was grim, but also I couldn't open the door. When I finally made it in, I got stuck in it and had to knock on the door and get the french tourists to let me out. HA HA! How embarassing!!!! The bus ride was long and slow, mainly because to get from SP to Paraty the bus has to take small country roads. I am amazed at how jungly the Brazilian vegetation is. I had expected it to be sort of normal trees and grass like in Europe but actually all the vegetation I have seen until now has been jungly and tropical and amazing. Also it has been much more mountaineous than I expected too.

The Brazilian coast is truly beautiful. This incredible jungly tropical surroundings, with mountains and ocean all together makes it impressive. It's just such a shame that it's so grey and rainy: AAAAAAAARGH!!! On our way over the bus got stopped and pulled over by the military police. Just a routine check for drugs apparently, though they didn't bother with my passport or my bag or anything. And apparently they have dogs to sniff the bags down in the hold. Interesting anyway...Then I reached Paraty and walked to my hostel with my backpack (henceforth reffered to as the muchilao). The hostel is truly lovely, right by the river it has a little tropical indoor garden with benches, hammocks and a pool (really the size of a rather large bath tub) and it's just so quaint. I will poste pictures soon. The only downside to it are the cockroaches which my roommate told me she had seen in the bathroom (eek!) and I actually saw one myself too. I'm scared the damn things are going to crawl on me and even more so now I know they can fly. GROSS!! but oh well....it's nice other than that. Today my roommate and I walked around the old colonial centre which is truly lovely, and just discovered the boutiques, the waterfront and all the rest. I promise pictures will come soon! Anyway I think that is all for now but stay tuned to the delights of Paraty. Only problem being the rain or the cloudy weather......