Paraty

(Pronounced “Para-Chi” in Portuguese… don’t you feel cultured)

I know you all are dying to know… Yes it was raining when we arrived.

Devon and I went to Paraty to sit on the beach, relax, and tan before the craziness of Rio de Janeiro and Carnaval. One could say this little trip was meant to be our “Calm before the Storm.” Unfortunately Paraty is right next to a small rain forest thus it “stormed” everyday. Who would have guessed that it would rain a lot by a rain forest? Because of the stormy weather… we did very little calming (tanning, reading and relaxing on the beach), and a lot of storming (dancing, singing, limbo-ing, partying on pirate ships, and everything else that “storming” involves).

I think it’s time for a detailed list of the 5 best parts of our “Calm Storm” in Paraty.

5. Trinidade

Trinidade (Pronounced Trini-dajee in Portuguese… Cultural Lesson #2) is a gorgeous beach town, conveniently located right next to our beach town. The water was crystal blue, the views were astonishing and the waves were epic. I know this might sound crazy… but I did not pass my time in Trinidade tanning, from the minute I arrived to nearly the minute I left, I swam in the blue ocean water trying my best to body surf the occasional huge wave that passed by.

4. Power Outage

After a long cloudy and rainy day on the Pirate Boat, the pirate boat adventure will be developed later in this top 5 list, I jogged home, actually it was more of a trot, in anticipation of taking a nice warm shower then sitting in a hammock and reading. My hopes and aspirations for a hot shower and a nice relaxing book reading session were squashed because all of the power had gone out in the hostel. When I arrived in the hostel, the staff was lighting candles and strategically placing them in various nooks in the hostel to provide sufficient light to safely walk around the hostel.

Normally a powerless hostel would make my face look like this : ( because power is essential to many important hostel activities… like hot showers, and light for reading books in hammocks, however we took our lemons, (the power outage) and made really good lemonade, (a huge dance party). Now I know you might be wondering how we had a dance party with a power outage. Don’t you worry I will explain.

Background- Devon’s lady love, Manders, gave him an i-pod speaker that runs on the power of AAA batteries, so while we were sulking about there being now power. Devon grabbed the i-pod speaker, be gifted to him by Manders, and his i-pod, made everyone sit in a circle and choose two songs to play through the speaker. At first people were modest with there song choices, for some reason everyone is so self conscience about what music they like… until they find out that everyone likes their music, then they are an expert on just about every music genre there is. Anyways, finally a guy we’ll call T-Bone, decided to break the trend of people trying to play hip modern songs, and he played “Rocket Man” by Elton John. The initial reaction was… “Are you Serious?” Then the “Are you serious?” Turned into a small head bop, which turned into a knee stomp, which turned into me kind of singing the chorus, which finally ended with everyone belting the chorus and dancing their little hearts out. After “Rocket Man” everyone unleashed and started playing the cheesiest songs from the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and today. Shout out the Manders for gifting the i-pod speaker to Devon.

3. Music Festival

Paraty hosted a huge music festival the last two nights we stayed there. Funny enough all the bands we saw played cheesy American songs from the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and today, as well as American blues. A huge group of us went to the concert and danced for literally four hours straight it was awesome. This Awesome-ness of the concert dance session we had, solidified the formation of Team Rum.

2. Team Rum

Rum was the drink of choice in Paraty… well I had Cuba Libres minus the rum and lemon. If you haven’t tried this mixed drink, I highly recommend it, seriously it’s so good you cannot even taste the alcohol. Anyways since Rum was being consumed like Pirates, T-bone decided to teach a group of us, excluding me, a song he wrote about Rum. This song brought the start of something beautiful… Team Rum.

Team Rum is a group of worldly travelers, who dance, sing, and from time to time consume rum, or Cuba Libres sin el rum y el limón. Team Rum… I will miss you.

1. Pirate Boat

It was a cloudy, cold, and rainy day so we decided the best thing to do would be to spend five hours outside on a pirate ship and island hop around Paraty. We mustered 12 backpackers from our hostel, and hopped aboard Favio’s Cruise Ship and explored the beautiful islands around Paraty.

Straight up the weather was awful… I was freezing from start to finish of this paradise island hopping adventure. Nevertheless we managed to have an absolutely amazing time. Here are the top 3 reasons why the Pirate Boat adventure was the number 1 activity of my top my top 5 activities in Paraty.

1. Favio- When you hear the name Favio I know the first thing that comes to mind is a beautiful image of a muscular model with long blonde flowing hair, complemented with a seductive accent. Our Favio was a beast, not in a jacked and tan threatening kind of way; he was a big fat hairy sweaty beast. This short man weighed no less than 350 pounds. Although Favio was a whale of a man, he sang like an angel. He entertained us with soothing Jack Johnson esque songs throughout the entire boat trip, and from time to time he would stop his lovely singing to explain important facts in both Portuguese and English of the different islands we passed. All in all “Fabs” was a great man

2. The Deck- The upper deck of our ship was high and large enough to dive off of. So we spent every minute we were stopped jumping off the top deck, into the gorgeous blue ocean. The deck made the bad weather much more bearable.

3. Life Jacket Mega Fun- After being on the boat for 4 hours everyone started to literally freeze so our group decided to camp out in the kitchen area of our boat. While we were shivering in the kitchen, two little Brazilian girls grabbed two life jackets and started playing with them. Devon quickly noticed how much fun the girls were having and declared that we needed to put on lifejackets and have a little bit of fun. After 10 minutes of entertaining the idea we all decided it would be a good idea to see just how fun these lifejackets were. Let me tell you, everything is better in a lifejacket. We danced, sang, waddled, took photos, and even blew the whistles attached to the life jackets. Next time you are freezing on a pirate boat, definitely play with a life vest.