Paraty is about 4 hours on the bus from Rio...we decided to go there for a long weekend to celebrate Lulu's birthday. We left on the 6am bus which meant I had to get up at 4.45!! I was actually very sensible and decided not to go out on the Friday night in Rio as we all know how useless I am with a hangover! I think I must of slept most of the way as the journey seemed really quick!

Paraty combines a historic centre with beaches and mountains and was a beautiful setting! The historic part is all cobbled streets, horse and carts and beautiful buildings. We decided to stay by the beach which was a bit of a trek up hill from the centre but was a cool setting and the hostel was pretty good, not bad for my first hostel experience anyway!

Saturday we sunbathed on the beach and then went into town for dinner at a cuban restaurant which was cool...early night as we were all tired! Sunday we decided to hire our own privte boat for the 7 of us and had a nice 4 hour cruise around different islands and beaches and did some swimming and snorkeling. Sunday night we decided to stay in the hostel and make our own food and drinks and after playing cards for a while a group of Brazillians invited us to play 'ring of fire' which is a card/drinking game which was highly amusing and good fun the more drunk we all got! On Monday we went inland to a place where they have waterfalls and a natural waterslide (photos on facebook) which was awesome! At first I was debating whether to go down it or not but I'm glad I did as it was well good fun! Later some local kids came down and they were actually surfing down the rocks by foot which was really cool! I took some videos of this which I will post on facebook when I get the chance!