Paraty

Life is very calm in Paraty

Paraty is in the State of Rio and is the second seaside stop for us. This is one of the places from where gold coming from the interior was shipped to Rio de Janeiro. The town has a long history of fortification, piracy and rumoured hidden treasures. Nowadays it is a very charming old colonial town with a lot of small shops and delicious restaurants.

Paraty is also a very well known place for Cachaça, a special kind of white spirit made from sugar cane. There are more than 1300 different types of Cachaça in Brazil and we’ve been to some shops there carrying a selection of 600! We obviously had a few tasting sessions and we really liked the different declinations of the drinks : white, barrelled matured, or flavoured (chili, fruits, coffee, etc).

Matching bike and wall

Beautiful cobblestone streets in the micro-center 

What a selection!

We stayed in a nice hostel (Backpackers House) only 100 metres from the bus station. The welcome was very warm and the breakfast was amazing. Pablo, the boss is Argentine.

Paraty has a lot to offer and we decided to do one of the traditional boat tours to see a dozen spots on different islands and actually stop at 4. The boat (Rei) was very comfortable and Giselle was adorable. She really added a cultural and historical taint to the explanations and that’s a plus for me. The lunch on board looked amazing although we did not have it since we had brought our own sandwich lunch. Thanks to a lucky draw we got a free Caipirinia. We chose the Orange, Mango, Passion fruit one and it was the best we’ve had so far.

A family enjoying the day out at one of the islands

Amazing summer rain

The stops were very nice and the islands were very peaceful. If the sun had been out I think it would have been absolutely perfect and the colours would have been astounding. But it was not to be. It actually started raining very hard and they had to zip up the protection around the boat so that we would not get wet.

One of the restaurants we went to was a beautifully decorated eatery with live music. We each had a local sea food specialty. Roxana had camarones (shrimp) accompanied with stuffed vegetables while I had grilled fish, tapioca and rice. It was delicious. There was also something that reminded me of Mauritius: pickled chili in oil (piment confit). There were three kinds of chili, the small red and green and a small berry shaped red one. No need to tell you that only a few drops of that oil is enough to spice up the whole meal.

This oil will burn skin, mouth, tongue and
God knows what else tomorrow  morning

Everything looks and tastes good!

One of the very picturesque features of Paraty are the street vendors selling all kinds of home made cakes. They push this big cart full of all kinds of goodies: passion fruit flans, chocolate fudge cake, tapioca cakes with coconut topping, manioc pies with cheese and sugar baked on top and my favourite: grated coconut cooked and crystallised in sugar and then coloured. We have the same back in Mauritius (gateau coco).

One evening we were lucky enough to stumble upon a carnival band rehearsal. While walking on the main street we heard the feverish rhythm coming from a primary school and we went in. The band, about 10 of them, were busy rehearsing for next month’s carnival. They had all kinds of trumpets, saxophones, drums and cymbals. It was great to see and hear them and that gave us a small taste of what is to come soon.         

For more pics of Paraty