Day 84 - Paraty

Paraty was the place to be in Brasil this weekend. The place was rammed, the hostels were booked up, the streets were full and the plaza was overrun with massive papier-maché figures from nursery rhymes. This weekend is FLIC, the internation literary festival that turns this sleepy cobbled village into a haven for publishers, authors and poets for one long weekend of partying.



We spent the first day aboard a little boat that the nine of us from the hostel hired. I've been quite rubbish lately, thinking too much about stuff back home and generally making myself an unsociable insomniac mute. But I perked up when we started diving off the roof of the boat, drinking beer in the sun and jetting away to an island the size of my old flat which had a restaurant on it. That was special.





That night, we hit the town. Drinking in the street while the rest of the boys chatted up Brasilian women (yeah, thanks lads, that was fun). I reckon one of them had the hots for me though. The prettiest one, of course. The place was heaving, and we were very much in other peoples' ways for most of it. But it was electric. A quick skip around the plaza and we headed to a Brasilian "Farah" (I have no idea how to spell it, so if you know, email me). Its basically a completely insane, drunken barn dance, where you change partners every two minutes, and snog pretty much anyone you are remotely interested in (the brasilians are not reserved when it comes to kissing). I didn't get a snog, but I reckon I could have (yeah yeah).



The next day, a few of us headed down to the apparently world-famous beach, Trindade, which was *alright*, but nothing special. Lazed in the sun, as per usual. Walked along the beach, as per usual. This whole beach life seems a little boring for my liking, but its hard to complain when everyone else is stuck at work. So I won't. Excitingly, I managed to lose 50 reals (that's about a tenner) in the sea. Had a good old whinge about it to sam about 15 minutes later, and as I was saying it, she FOUND one of the notes brushing past her leg. We thought they'd be long gone, but then we managed to recover almost all the money. It was truely special. Stuff like that NEVER happens.



We spent the evening drinking in the street again. I spent about an hour on the phone to tristan (on my mobile, yeah, good one dunc), then headed out for a quick one before leaving the others to get drunk and rock up at the hostel at 5am. The next day, Sam Dave and I decided to head to ANOTHER island paradise, this time called Ilhabella. Tough life.