Parati / Parachi / Paraty (who knows how you pronounce it!)

We jumped back on the boat and then minibus for a 3 hour or so trip to Paraty, or Parati or Parachi, depending on who you speak to it has a different pronounciation. Ilha Grande would take some beating but we had heard good things about this next destination; Shame my feet were still getting bitten to bits, seems I`m tasty after all.

Parati itself is a quaint little fishing town with good food and beaches and a lively atmosphere. Its a bit old school with cobbled streets and funny little houses and shops.

With a free boat trip booked with our ticket we organised back in the UK, we thought we`d have a cheap day. After being assured our boat was at the pier we wondered down and couldn`t find out boat `The Sir Francis Drake` anywhere. Wondering where it was and if we`d been screwed over we ran around with precious little time trying to find out boat. With numerous flip flop mishaps we finally found it right at the very end of the pier and jumped about. (The boat below isn`t it by the way, we just thought it was a cool looking boat with the Brazil flag and colours!)



Once again we visited some amazing beaches and lagoons, with water clear as can be, tropical fish surrounding the boat once the engines were switched off. I was all beached out after Ilha Grande but Jen was after an awesome tan so she ventured out on a little dingy which was one of three options.....Dingy to beach, jump in the lagoon, or chill on the boat in the shade.....guess which one I chose?!

So off Jen set on her dingy for her own little piece of paradise, looking like she was deserted on a beach. Our mates had moved on to other places missing Parati out so it was just the two of us, depicted in this lonley photo!

The next day however we bumped into some people we knew on a jeep tour of the area which took us to some natural springs, waterfalls and cachaça distillaries. The jeeps were pretty cramped but at least they were cool as they had no sides.

We saw some pretty cool water falls on the jeep trip, building us up to Iguaçu falls which we would visit in only a few days.

There was a natural water slide created by the water running over some rocks which everyone could treat as a proper water slide. The tour guides would grab an arm each and throw you down so you got a bit of momentum. Here`s two of our English mates who went down together, I`ve never heard a girl scream so much......until it came to Jen. Off she set, propelled by the guides only for her to turn around and go down backwards. Trying to correct herself whilst looking over her shoulder, all she could do was let out a little yelp and splash down at the bottom the wrong way round, hitting both her ankles on the rock she just slide down. She`s still nursing the scrapes days later but is thankful that the scrapes missed her tattoo!

Gregorio, our tour guide, took us all to a cachaça distilly where we were all allowed to sample which ever ones we wanted. There were some nastier ones made purely from sugar cane, Brazil`s favourite called `Gabriella`which was flavoured with cinammon (which I personally thought was poo, sorry to any Brazilians reading this!) and then some sweeter ones made with fruits, the pineapple one was bad ass. 

Good old Gregorio was pretty good with his English, giving info on everything in both Portugese and English and sometimes Spanish where he good. However he spoke quick and didn`t realise that he kept switching between languages without noticing.....no one had the heart to tell him, instead we just smilled and nodded!

 We of course had to get a photo in the distillery of a massive barrel with a Brazil flag on it!