Fried cheese and sickbags please (or, the lovely town of Paraty!)

Paraty, our next stop in Brazil, is a beautiful little town four hours south of Rio. It is on the coast, and so is endowed with beautiful beaches backed by stunning mountains. Unfortunately, the bus route into town is also on the coast. The undulating, hilly coast. Can you guess where this is going? The travel sickness which has bothered me my whole life but which was relatively little trouble on the direct highways of SE Asia returned with a vengeance. There was vomit. We had no bags of any kind. A cardigan took on a role it should never be asked to perform. The people around us stared resolutely out their windows, in an attempt to deny the horror surrounding them... The whole situation was extremely unpleasant, and later progressed to a new level of awfulness when we spent two hours walking round town looking for a hotel. If you've ever wondered what it's like to try and haggle over room prices in Portuguese while wearing clothes drenched in your own vomit, go ahead and ask!

To focus on the original point of this post - not bodily fluids but the loveliness of Brazil -Paraty has a charming and well-preserved historic quarter, with narrow cobbled streets, white-washed buldings and frangipani flowers draped over lanterns. There seems to be a photo opportunity round every corner. It felt very European - at times it was hard to believe we were in Brazil and not Spain or Italy. The sheer scale of the landscape around was the giveway - everything seems more dramatic, from the acres of blue sky to the towering mountains and crashing sea. The town also reminded us of Hoi An in Vietnam, the difference being that other tourists were virtually non-existent. This is of course different in high season, and at weekends apparently the town fills with Brazilian tourists, but when we were there it was incredibly peaceful. A relief after the frenetic bustle of Rio.  We were the only people staying at our hotel, and ate breakfast alone at a massive colonial-style table, complete with candelabras and classical music in the background.

Paraty has an interesting heritage, involving pirates, slaves and Portuguese explorers. We climbed a dusty hill to an old fort where the pirates used to hoard their gold. There wasn't a lot to see but the views were spectacular. The beaches nearby are meant to be wonderful, but we couldn't afford to get a boat to the more distant ones and in any case we were beached-out after Asia. Instead we just walked to a nearby beach, where the thick jungle actually crept up against the sea, and mangrove trees sprouted amidst the waves.

The main and most enjoyable thing to do in town was wander around the old town and sit in the square with olives and caiprinahas. To cut costs in the still painfully expensive Brazil, we tried to eat mostly at per kilo restaurants, with the locals. These work kind of like buffets, except the cost of your meal is based on how much it weighs. We add some more of the ubiquitous and amazing feijoada (bean stew) with chicken. By this point we were also connoisseurs of salgadoes - fried snacks sold at the lanchonettes (cafe-juice bars) on every corner. The typical salgado is extremely cheap, hot, and involves both dough and cheese somehow. They also include toasted ham and cheese sandwiches and hot dogs. By virtually living off these, and by doing very little, we just about managed to get by in budget in Paraty. However, taking into account the exorbitant price of transport in Brazil, we came to the reluctant conclusion that in order to afford the rest of our trip in SAmerica we would have to hightail it to the border. We did manage a few more stops in between, so updates on Sao Paulo and Curitaba to follow!