2 Girls in the World: paraty

Remember the days when weekend posts and pictures were up by Monday…Tuesday at the latest? Well, those were the days before my Spanish classes. Urgh, I’m definitely at the point of defeatism with my lessons, but hey, we all knew it was just a matter of time.

I digress.

Our weekend in Paraty was a lovely one. It is a lovely little town with beautifully maintained colonial buildings and when the tide comes in it actually floods some streets. They call it the Brazilian Venice…

I had gotten a recommendation from a friend for a hotel and although they were fully booked, they put us up in what may or may not have been the owner’s house. It was a great condo and just a few steps from the hotel where we had breakfast and played with stinky dogs. Wow, this entire town is full of docile, stinky, scrappy little strays-

I of course fell in love with them all. It turns out the new cohort loves a stray even more than me though and she may or may not have let a dog lick her on the face that we later saw digging through a bag of garbage on the street. Good times.

Friday night we had dinner and strolled around the town. Okay, more like stumbled around the town. The old stone streets do not make for much strolling. I swear everyone around me was looking up and walking like normal human beings, but we looked like paranoid giraffes walking through landmines. Whenever I hear the phrase “mean streets” my mind won’t go to NYC or Compton- it will immediately think back to Paraty…

There was a contemporary art festival going on, so we grabbed some beers from a vendor and enjoyed the light/music exhibition (and awesome people watching) in the main square after dinner on Friday night…

We had planned to take a boat trip to neighboring islands on Saturday and horseback riding on Sunday. The sun disappeared pretty early on Saturday, but we still enjoyed having our own little boat take us around…

Our captain or skipper or whatever, Andre, was sooo nice and made an awesome caipirinha…

We had lunch in a hut on a tiny beach, saw some sea turtles and Jules and the new cohort even did some snorkeling. I stayed on the boat and took pictures…

The water was freezing, the fish were all visible from the surface and there was not a speck of sun anywhere. As I watched them both shiver the hour ride back to town, I knew I had made the wise decision.

We loved the day so much we skipped the horses and called up Andre on Sunday morning to do it all over again! The sun was out a bit more and we lazed around on the boat and had lunch at little restaurant on a rock in the middle of the water. Jules even enjoyed having her own little private island for a while…