A boat named Victor

The sky was clouded over, but our hopes were high for a boat trip around the islands off paraty. The weather held as we negotiated a price with an amiable local chap and set off on his green and yellow painted boat (use some artistic license on the one above).

Feeling like the jet set with our own privately chartered cruiser, (well a wooden vessel with a noisy motor), we headed around the coast stopping at coves and jumping overboard to swim.

The thick jungle which heads right down to the beach side gives a really tropical sense to the place, even when it started raining and the sky clouded over.

But the sun returned again as we pulled up at a small remote restaurant and ate like kings, watching a turtle play at the piers edge.

Green gunk with a view

3 hours south of rio is the colonial town of paraty, founded as a stopover from the Minas Gervas goldfields in the 19th century. A beautiful seafront perched at the front of mountains tumbling down into the ocean... and here we were covering ourselves in green gunk in the sea. We´d seen the locals taking handfuls of the stuff from the sea floor... and after some hypothesising we reckoned that it was dead mulch from the abundant greenery around.

Anyways feeling cleansed and glowing we hired a kayak for a tour round the bay and then headed off into the cobbled street and painted houses for dinner