In my excitement to go somewhere new, I rushed to book us seats on a bus out of town at 11am Tuesday morning. Except, once Wolf looked at our receipt, he gently pointed out that I had actually booked us on a bus ARRIVING at 11am. Which meant we got to leave the house before the sun rose to make our 7am departure. Whoops :) I hoped my mistake would be worth a little lost sleep by the time we got to our next stop – Paraty. And I think it turned out well since we had an awesome stay in this little colonial town on the southern coast of Brazil.
In fact, the only excitement related to our bus ride was the driver. The guy may have been driving a huge tour bus, but I’m convinced he thought it was a sports car. The drive from Rio to Paraty along the coast is gorgeous – ocean on one side, lush jungle-covered hillsides on the other – but what will stand out in my mind is how much my fingers ached from holding on for dear life as we accelerated into every turn. I guess maybe his strategy was to have the fewest number of tires touching the road at any given time in order to decrease friction and increase speed. Whatever the goal, we made the trip in what I’m sure is record time.
Poor Wolf arrived in Paraty with a major caffeine-withdrawal headache. After a few days in an apartment without a coffee maker, my poor man was suffering, so we splurged for a cab to take us across the little town to our hotel. We had opted to stay a bit outside of the old town to save some cash and in hindsight we made a perfect choice – our hotel was certainly out of the main town center but also across the street from the beach, very peaceful, and although pretty basic again, it was exactly what we needed.
world by westy 