so... i have now told mum EVERYTHING that´s happened to me in the last month or so, and therefore can now tell you guys all about it. If i had written this post earlier, it would have been filled with the gaps from all the things that i couldn´t tell u, so mum wouldn´t fly out here and try to rescue me... seriously. I suppose the things i left out of my rio adventures will have to slowly trickle out in the course of my story telling... so, i last left you at the end of carnavale, exhausted, but replete. Amy went back to teach and I headed to Paraty (not before some thoughtful bint stole my fleece and my trousers...awesome.)
It´s a pretty colonial town on the coast of Brazil about 6 hours south of rio. Not too many shenanigans there, though i did meet some lovely english fellas and one complete arshole of a kiwi. And the mosquitos, holy hell. I ended up sleeping in a hammock with a litre of mosquito repellent slathered all over me and a towel on my face. Since i have witnessed a bastard mosquito actually landing on my freshly slathered skin, i am confident it´s a huge farce of a product, but anyway... at least the view was nice from the deck of the hostel. The heat was so intense, i was up in time to see the sunset, cos it`s simply impossible to sleep.
There are some gorgeous beaches around Paraty, rather than in Paraty itself, so that´s what i mostly did there. Met a lovely bunch of aussies on the way back from one of these beaches (Trinidade), and spent a bit of time with them. Roly, A-Mac and creggo etc. This whole nickname thing is growing on me. In fact, by the time i reached Paraty, i`d had enough of trying to tell people my name and have them look at me like i`d just made a vomiting sound. At home i guess i`m used to saying my name in an anglecised way, but i`d been pronouncing it properly throughout Brazil and frankly, it was exhausting. So since Paraty, I`ve been Keke and it`s worked a treat. People actually know my name now, and it`s changed the whiole dynamic of conversation for me. Seriously, legions of people weren`t starting conversations with me, or saying hi from a distance, cos they had no clue how to say my name... anyhoo, am loving being Keke, though it turns out ´to throw a keke´in castellano spanish, is to throw someone a sympathy bone...how nice. Better take care NOT to use Keke in spain...ahem.
On my last day in Paraty, I went to these cool waterfalls that flow down the slipperiest rocks in God`s green earth. They`re covered in mossy type stuff i guess, but the locals climb up them as though there were stairs carved into them. (and if i`m honest, the lads seemed to do it much more easily than the girls, which makes me mad, but it is what it is.) The idea is, that you climb to the top and take a running leap (or push off on ur bum if, like me, u absolutely don`t trust ur own balance) and it`s like a waterpark ride, and you splash gleefully at high speed into a shallow rock pool full of broken trees at the bottom.
rocky tree-filled pool aka landing zone for waterfall slideAs for sliding down, i mostly did so on my back and after gingerly testing out a crouching/surfing position, wisely decided that i would rather not die so early on in the trip and was contented with my method. The aussies, what with their surfing and all, had a crack at surfing down the rocks, which all the locals were doing with disgusting ease.
some crazy local surfing down the rock
An aussie girl the previous day had apparently tried it herself, slipped, and cracked her skull on the rock and been rushed to hospital, (such as it is in paraty), but it didn´t stop the aussies from going for it. Roly slid down on his belly and got a cut in his stomach, and seemed completely unperturbed by the persistent bleeding. My kind of guy : )
Once we had our fill, bruised, chipped and bleeding, we bussed it back into Paraty, and I got on another bus to Sao Paolo, to see Jorge!
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