Paraty on the beach

Paraty is a small town on the coast a few hours south of Rio. It has two great attractions*. The first is its historic town, well-preserved from colonial times, all cobbled streets (huge, ankle-breaking cobbles) and colourful painted buildings. The second is its position on the coast, with a host of pretty islands and beaches on its doorstep.

* Lilly would argue three, but I can't guarantee that there will be kittens in your hostel here, so best not to use that on the publicity unless they make kittens compulsory.

On our first day here, we just had time to wander round the historic centre and take a few photos before the inevitable rain fell - our seventh consecutive wet day. Even in this English weather, it's an attractive place. Much like Bruges, almost every building is well kept up. In the face of this rain, we nearly gave up and went to Rio, but in the end we decided to make a stand: we're not leaving until we get some sunshine.

Friday was better - the odd glimpse of blue sky, the sun occasionally struggling to break out. We took the bus to Trinidade, a little village down the coast with some beautiful beaches, all of which have the Brazil-trademark little beach bars hoping to sell you lunch. Unfortunately, every single one follows the Brazilian tradition of wanting to serve you dishes for 2 people, which is not ideal when one of you wants to eat fresh seafood and the other expressly does not, so we retreated to the village for lunch - not such a bad thing as it then rained for an hour. Back to the beach, where we saw lots of kids arrive after school to play football and clamber round the headland with surfboards (an impressively aggressive tide was producing large waves and could occasionally soak the unwary person standing beyond the normal tideline, which may in turn lead to insect repellent being washed off their legs and them being bitten by sandflies or their local cousins and itching for several days).

A pleasant day out, and we also got to see some old-school currency - a 1-real note (this is now normally a coin, with the smallest note in common circulation being a 2). The bus driver gave it to me in my change and had the look of someone who has been trying to get rid of something for days. He was quite amused when I gave it back to him 5 hours later to pay for my return ticket. He then had to do a lot of persuading to get another woman to accept it as her change. I like to think it will come back to him again.

Saturday brought sunshine, at last! Our patience rewarded. Our hostel runs a daily boat tour - though I can't imagine it has been used this week - and as the only people signing up for it, we got a bargain private trip. It really is a lovely bay, framed by forested hills. We stopped on one island for a swim, then pulled up to another for wildlife spotting: eels and many dozens of fish in the water, golden monkeys and maybe capybaras on the shore. Our skipper threw bread to the fish, who went into a bit of a feeding frenzy. We noticed that if we threw from one side of the boat, the fish would immediately retreat before coming back for the bread, while on the other side they had no such fears. Soon we realised this was because we were casting shadows on the former side, and when our shadows moved they thought that some of the many circling birds were swooping. The monkeys were particularly cute, golden hair falling over their tiny faces and long, black-tipped tails, complete with a couple of youngsters - I would wager a small guess at golden-haired tamarinds, though I'll probably be embarassed when I google them. A really enjoyable day out, and near-perfect weather until the sun finally went in around 4pm. (Although we did find the answer to the question what's worse than a cafe that only serves dishes for 2: a cafe that only serves dishes for 2 <i>and they're all seafood dishes</i>.

More great weather on Sunday prompted us to get up early for a wander around the old town in proper sunlight before getting the bus to Rio. It's a great scenic coastal bus ride, bays and islands and deep blue water, and a nuclear power plant just for variety... But Paraty was great, definitely recommended for a quick stop or a few days.