1ST - 8TH NOVEMBER

In between getting off the bus from Teresopolis to getting on the bus to Parati at Rio bus station, I had my Ipod stolen. My beautiful, slick, full of brilliant music Ipod was no-longer in my possession and I was deeply unhappy about it. It could have been worse as that was the only thing stolen, but stolen it was and believe me I shed many a tear for my lovely little Ipod. Thankfully Rob has most of the same music on his I-River, so I haven’t lost many tunes (except all of the ones I had just downloaded and a few others I got from Russ while in Canada) which is a blessing in itself but I loved my little poddy and felt lost without it.

Needless to say the bus ride to Parati was glum as was the rest of the evening. Once we got there we checked into a hostel type of place, Pousada do Careca, recommended in Lonely Planet, then decided to head to the nearest bar to

drown my sorrows. We had a few beers and watched a very tense local game of football on the TV, the bar we had picked was a favourite with the locals so it cheered us up having the pleasure of watching a game of football with them all. They were extremely friendly and made us feel very welcome.

We woke the next morning to see rain clouds looming and not long after getting up the heavens opened and it rained pretty much for the rest of the day. This didn’t do a lot to lighten our mood so we spent a very chilled day mooching about and checking out the local streets near to our hostel. Paraty is a lovely little place a true old colonial town. Now it seems just like a touristy town but this hasn’t detracted anything from its charm and the cobble streets certainly take some getting used to, especially in the pouring rain. There are endless shops selling a multitude of things and window shopping was