Paraty
Romantic Paraty (pronounced Parachee) with its narrow cobbled street and colonial houses with pretty gardens , fishermen’s adobe cottages and horse drawn carts is picturesque. With a background of jungle mountains many artists have come here and stayed and now have art galleries, many chefs have arrived and opened restaurants or cafes and the lack of traffic means that you are just as likely to round a corner and see an artist with their easel painting the beautiful scene in front of them. On Brazil’s Costa Verde Paraty has traded in sugar cane, gold, coffee and salves and now the trade is tourism. Round the bay of Paraty there are meant to be 365 islands. At night restaurants spill into the uneven cobbled streets and the churches glow with candle light. Around Paraty are some fabulous hiking areas including the Gold trail, the opportunity of trekking into the rainforest or canoeing out to one of the many nearby beaches. I did a short nearby rainforest trek and saw some beautifully vibrantly coloured birds small red, green and blue but could not identify them.
