Paraty, Brazil

A conference took us to Brazil last month… and what better thing to do than to take a couple of days off and enjoy what Brazil has to offer: lovely tropical fruit, beaches and enjoying a new place and language.

We decided to leave the hustle and bustle of São Paulo behind and move a bit further north and along the coast to Paraty, a lovely colonial town with cobbled streets, nestled in between the sea, the mountains and the jungle.

My dear vegetarian and vegan friends, worry not, Brazil has LOTS of options for you. Not very many people speak English and that makes things a bit more difficult, especially if you don’t speak Portuguese (although Spanish is often close enough). But they have plenty of buffet and “per kilo” restaurants, which is a buffet which instead of having the “all you want to eat” format, requires you to pay for the food you pick by weight. Almost all of these have beans, rice and plenty of potatoes, mandioca (yuka) and salad and veggies to quench your hunger. We also found a place that served us Vegetarian Moquecas, a coconut milk and Dende (we think this is the palm fruit) based sauce with veggies, rice and tapioca sauce.

Veggie Moqueca

We ate amazingly. Fruit wise, we also had lots of mamão (papaya), green coconuts, watermelon, mango, abacaxi (pineapple), bananas (very tasty, fruity and tangy ones) and orange juice. Drink wise, Caipirinhas were in order. They are made from Cachaça which is a type of rum made from sugar cane. They mix them with sugar, and lime juice in the traditional cocktail or alternatively you can also have them with other fruits like mango, pineapple or red berries. One of our caipirinhas came with what looked like a wooden stick but it was actually sugar cane (very interesting to eat, especially because it was sweet and refreshing and mixed with the alcohol it made a great combination!).

In Paraty we had 2 days and decided that one of them we would take a bus to Laranjeiras and then go for a long walk to the Beach Os Antigos. The walk was about 6.5km or so each way through forested/jungle paths. The beaches were lovely, clear water, excellent temperature and some small waves to play.

On the way back, we did a detour to a waterfall (Cachoeira Galhetas). Then made our way back to Paraty and had dinner at Beco da fruta (the lady there is an excellent cook, not that we were hungry or anything!). We moved onto Pub Van Gogh, a burger place ran by a very affable Uruguayan guy. They have veggie burgers, live music (Brazilian is a very musical language) and drinks (we found out there that precisely on that day it had been 9 years since we have been together!).

The second day, we went for a Kayak trip around the Paraty bay. We visited a couple of the nearby islands and collected some colourful shells on the beach. Then we went for a walk around the beautiful town centre. There are many quirky shops and art galleries and the cobbled streets and houses are very well kept.

Mosquitos… there were not really any… but still, one of us seems to attract any insects nearby and managed to get herself about 40 souvenirs and a very swollen knee…. She says it was worth it though.

Some more photos in below slideshow: