So Hazel and I have been up to some serious tourism in the most recent months and we decided that we needed some time to relax.  What better place in the world to lounge around than Brazil?

The Beach

Well, we didn’t get there immediately, of course.  We had to do some serious travelling to get to this beach!  Check this out:

• Cuzco to Lima – 20 hrs. by bus
• 8 hours to kill in Lima
• Lima to Santiago (at midnight) – 3 hours
• Santiago to São Paolo – 4 hours
• São Paolo to Rio de Janeiro – 1.5 hours
• Rio Airport to Bus Station – 1 hour
• Rio Bus Station to our destination Paraty – 5 hours by bus

So we definitely worked for our break!  This was a really poorly thought out piece of travel planning.  Both of us were completely wiped out by doing nothing but travel for so long!

Beautiful Paraty

At least we had nothing to do when we got there.  In fact, we got 6 nights at the same hostel, and did nearly nothing the entire time!

Our Hostel

The town itself had a beautiful pedestrian-only historic downtown which was really fun to walk around when we weren’t busy sleeping or putting back a caipirinha at the bar.

Downtown Paraty

What we did manage to do was eat an amazing dinner at Porto, a restaurant named in the top 100 of the WORLD by Conde Nast.  Hazel had a really nice Filet with fruity-spicy brazilian sauce, and I had some delicious raviolis that had spinach and ricotta cheese – it was really tasty!  We topped it off with a banana flambee dessert – flambeed in local cachaça – with a scoop of ice cream.

Even the dogs relax in Paraty

All in all we had a great time doing nothing.  But we didn’t know what a really laid back beach town could be till we got to Trindade!  More on that to come.