By the time we finished touring Rio, we were citied out for a few days. We headed to one of Rio’s three airports to pick up our rental car from Avis. When we were in Cusco in 2023, our Thrifty Car Rental had been hidden in the Hertz office. We were on alert in Rio for where Avis could be hiding but we had to give up and ask a competitor where it was hidden. The employee directed us out of the main airport into the “mall” to a company named Unidas where we finally found our Avis car. Driving along the Brazilian coastline was amazing and the views were beautiful. I had discovered the UNESCO city of Paraty (logically pronounced Parachee in Portuguese) online and it was described as an old city with quaint shops and eateries. Following the GPS, we drove down a dirt road to our unassuming hotel. Walking into the hotel, we entered a peaceful, hidden getaway. Our hotel sat on a canal surrounded by nature and had a pool and a restaurant. Brazilian hotel rooms in the countryside are utilitarian so ours had two beds, white walls and a bathroom. I sweet-talked the receptionist into bringing Bill a chair so he had somewhere to sit and I decided I should sell some paintings to the hotels in Brazil because their white walls needed some love. The first shock of Paraty was the restaurant prices. We were in the middle of nowhere Brazil but evidently the tourists flock to Paraty because the restaurant prices reflected the prices of fine dining in Paris. We settled on eating at our hotel restaurant which was a little better priced and spent the evening watching the boats on the canal.
The next morning, we walked over to the old town to peruse the quaint shops and eateries. As we visit more and more UNESCO sites, we have decided that no one from UNESCO ever visits these sites prior to giving them the label. Paraty was no different from any other small town we have visited. It had cobblestone streets, a square and a few small churches. The quaint shops were full of Chinese junk and the eateries were small coffee shops. We wandered for an hour which was more than enough time for the complete tour. After the disappointment of Paraty, we needed some alcohol. For the afternoon, we booked a tour of a local cachaca distillery. Cachaca was the local alcohol of Brazil and was used in all their most popular drinks. When I made our reservation at Maria Isabel distillery, the only instruction I received via Whatsapp was to “look for the gate and be sure to close the gate so the horses do not get out”. Bill parked the car on the side of the dirt road where more cars had parked and we walked along until we found a gate with a horse staring at us. Figuring we had found the correct spot, we entered, closed the gate and wandered down the hill to locate Maria Isabel. Maria was exactly what you would expect from a cachaca maker in the middle of Brazil. She was feisty, energetic and spoke no English whatsoever! Much like others whose language we do not speak, she seemed to think if she just continued speaking in Portuguese, we would eventually learn it. So, we began our tour in Portuguese. Halfway through the tour, a Brazilian man with a US girlfriend joined our group so he graciously interpreted for us. What we learned on our tour was that cachaca is rum. The Brazilians say it is not rum but it is distilled from sugarcane and tastes, smells and looks like rum so we were suspicious. During the tasting, we were joined by a few more groups so we enjoyed sampling some rums and chatting. When we left Maria’s (carefully closing the gate behind us), we drove to find the fishing village of Prainha which reportedly had good seafood restaurants. After we parked, a few locals pointed out a sandy trail that wound around the bay so we headed that way. We walked about 10 minutes and came upon a hidden beach. Since it was later in the day, we shared the spot with a few locals at the restaurant. We ordered fish nuggets from the menu thinking we just needed a small snack. When the waiter arrived, we had a huge basket of fish nuggets! It was an entire fish! With beer in hand and more fish than we could eat, we enjoyed the sunset before heading back to Paraty. We arose early the next morning to make our way to Angra to catch our water taxi to Ilha Grande. The area of Angra has over 360 islands and Ilha Grande was a popular vacation spot for locals and tourists. Our water taxi held about a dozen people and dropped the others at stops along the waterfront on Ilha Grande. We were the last stop and disembarked onto a deserted beach with two small hotels. The only way to get to this area was by water taxi so we felt like we had landed on Gilligan’s Island. We checked into our hotel which was basic (again, two beds and white walls) and headed to sit on the veranda by the ocean. At that moment, we knew exactly where we would be the next day. A group of divers came in on a tour in the afternoon so we were able to join their lunch buffet which even had chocolate cake! Life could not get any better. We spent the next day watching the life of the island as boatmen worked on their boats and fishermen headed out for the daily catch. I was in heaven as I spent the day taking pictures of dozens of herons and egrets that lined the shores (sadly, all my pictures were lost in the computer crash). At the day’s end, we wandered to our room and settled in for the night. Just as we crawled into bed, the electricity went off. No AC, no fans, no CPAP for Bill. South Americans have not yet discovered window screens so opening the windows fully was not really an option because of the mosquitos. We suffered for about 5 hours when the electricity finally returned so we could get a few hours of sleep before catching our morning taxi back to the mainland. Join us next week as we head to Petropolis to follow in the footsteps of Brazilian royalty!
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AuthorSally Miller Archives
May 2024
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