Goodbye Paraty

scene by bus stop

churches

wait. stop. hold everything. more doors.

and windows

never too frantic to stop for a pic -- and also not really believing we'd never make it out of there -- i stopped on my bike to take this 'welcome to paraty' sign's picture

passport panic

at this point adam is not only thinking: wow, what a great waterfall. he's thinking: i wonder where my wallet is. and my phone. and my....passport. they weren't in his backpack. he remembered taking them out to get his money to pay for the water. back to the supermarcado we go. phew. his phone and wallet are there. but....passport....??? not a clue. the only thing we think is that the bike rental shop kept it for collateral while they were filling out his info and we took off on our bikes before we had thought twice about it. what ensued next was a frantic race to the bike shop. down, down, down the mountian we had just huffed up.

meanwhile, my brain: "is there an embassy in Paraty? wait, Paraty is in the middle of nowhere. how far is sao paulo? maybe that annoying lady at breakfast who works at the embassy will help us." we roll into the bikeshop and there she is. deep blue with those comforting words that are our only ticket to getting out of this big jungular wilderness: "United States of America"

wait! i remembered a little dirt path somewhere back aways that might have led to something. eureka. THE waterfall we had come to see.

we had set out on our bikes to find a couple waterfalls. but it was apparent we had missed every turnoff on the map when we got to the top to find this scene.

supermercado

these are our bikes hanging out together at the supermarket. this is adam in the line buying water. it was a hot, sweaty ride.

el manicuro?

we passed a banana man

bikeride

we rented bikes on day 2 in Paraty and got out of town. it was just what we wanted.

harses

Paraty's horses are good for a graze, a gallop or a gear hefting

more doors brought to you by the letter d

no end to doors

door heaven

i am obsessed with doors so the town of Paraty was heaven for me.

rest please

hop in this hammock for a moment and relax. i'm going to do some laundry and clean my house. and get back into church activity. i'll be back.

layered hills

see how magical these layered hills are?

lunch on the boat

don't toss your cookies overboard, but this is what we had for lunch on the boat. it was seriously so good even tho it looks a little too....orange right here. it was fish with shrimp sauce. and potatoes, rice, vegies. this hungry sailor chowed. because i love fish and shrimp. and sauce. and anything that looks even remotely like food.

huts on a deserted island

thus proceeds a more jungular part of our journey. we stopped at a bunch of islands or just bypassed them and learned a bit of history about them. well, the portugese speakers learned a bit of history. and occasionally the tour guide would fill us in. like when we stopped at an island with monkeys.

go to bich

here's one of our schooner stops: beach. when diogo was learning english, one of the phrases he knew was "go to beach" but 'beach' sounded like 'bich'. ha.

that's adam reading and getting sand all down his speedo. speedos, in case you didn't get the memo, are in. and he feels right at home.

a lovely day to schoon

we're on the schooner and bound for a lovely day at sea. here are some nice gals from holland that i talked to. they had just spent 6 weeks backpacking thru argentina and were spending their last week vegging on the beaches of brazil. they had a great report of argentina -- glaciers in the south, desert in the north. someone stole their backpack full of credit cards and passports. it's one of the best parts about traveling -- meeting other fellow adventurers who have even better stories to tell.

our schooner. isn't she a beaut?

day 5: morning

we headed out day 5 - losing all notion of whether it's wednesday, friday, november at this point - to find a 'schooner.' yeah. never really know how to say that word. is it 'skooner' or 'schascooner' or just 'spooner'? kind of embarrassed about that. we found a guy that sold us a cheap ticket for the 10 am schooner. it leaves in 10 minutes. but wait! we motion. i have to go buy sunglasses cuz mine were crushed in adam's bag the day before. the guy motions: "i'll make them wait for you" "ok, thanks, we'll hurry"

he motioned where to get them and we ran, bought and ran back. only to find the 10 am schooner had gone. the curious part: the guy who sold us the ticket was in a little shack about a hundred yards from the boat dock. how exactly was he going to make them wait for us? exactly. no such thing as phones in this town, i gather. so we just waited for the 11 am one. no prob.

daily deliciousness

every hotel we stayed at in brazil had an amazing continental breakfast. but this one at padeiro pousada took the cake. and then gave it back. we had an entire spread of cheeses, meats, cakes, breads, yogurt, milk, oj, papaya, mango, pineapple, jam, honey, butter - all served to us personally on our own table. sorry, i should have taken the photo before we ate...but there's no stopping once food is placed in front of me. i almost couldn't wait till each day was over so i could wake up and go to breakfast again.

Pardeiro Pousada

this is our adorable little bed and breakfast. we stayed here 3 nights. in my guidebook it says it's owned by a former brazilian actor and 'it's one of the best in brazil.' it was indeed the cutest thing on this planet.

bem vindo a Paraty

bam! suddenly we're in Paraty. let me tell you what you missed. we got to san jose dos campos and stayed the night at an Ibis hotel. the next day we went with fabiola and diogo to their gym/pool and worked out with them. didn't do THEIR workout [well, only abs]. but worked out in the same room. and even swam with them a bit. their coach gave me a few tips. ohhh, you kick your feet at the surface of the water, not 3 feet under? ohhhh. no wonder i didn't make the team. thanks coach.

at lunch that afternoon fabiola's father recommended we spend the last few days of our trip 'second honeymooning' in a little historic town called Paraty [pod-a-chi]. we agreed and hopped on another bus for 4 hours and arrived that night in Paraty.

pit stop

i can't believe i'm documenting every bloody thing that happened on this trip. but i like color. and so i take pictures of it. this was our bus and a little restaurant we stopped at. by the way, the bus was super comfortable, major reclining seats, little snack bags, batman the movie with portugese subtitles. how can americans ever feel like they're in a foreign country? our stars and cinema always follow us.