Trindade

Paraty reminds me of Key West and Bethany Beach. It's a family place like Bethany, with a slightly older historic old town, the bars of Key West, and the bikinis of Miami Beach.

When I arrived in Paraty, it was late, I was tired, and my phone was almost out of battery. I had no hostel booked beefier I was a night early, but I planned to just go to my hostel for the next night and ask if they had a free room.

However, I met a bunch of German girls on the bus who were going to this fancy hostel called Che Largarto. I knew that I was supposed to go with them, and not wander the streets by myself. They smelled like fate.

Che Largarto is not a real hostel. It's half hostel, half hotel, and its a whopping $22 USD a night in a market where most hostels are $9-$12 USD a night. But oh. The mattresses are thick and squishy, the pillows are substantive, the sheets smell and feel clean, and the bathrooms are ensuite. They have a beer garden and a pool out front.

Most of all, they have air conditioning. On high. I slept fantastically and woke up feeling refreshed.

The first day I went on the boat, which provides free drinks and cruises around to all the islands. It was gorgeous. The rainforest covered mountains in the background, the bright blue ocean... It was a fabulous day. I met a couple of other English speakers traveling alone, and we met up for a samba party later in the evening.

Like always, people are very confused by my ethnicity. Many seem to think I'm from Argentina, which I'm flattered by, because it means my Spanish is getting good and I speak with an Argentinian accent. In Argentina and chile, when people struggled to pronounce my name, I often became 'Alen, or Haylen. Here, I am Elly. They can't do it. It's OK, I can't pronounce a single word in their language.

The next night I moved to my $9 hostel I had already booked, and what a difference. The thing that made it intolerable was the lack of AC. I woke in the middle of the night in the 14 person dorm because all the bodies were producing so much heat there was steam in the room. It was like sleeping in a sauna. The next day I booked back into che lagarto.

Today me and my Paraty crew took the bus to Trindade, the nearby beach town with "much more beautiful beaches than paraty."

They weren't kidding. The scenery took my breath away. We hiked through the rainforest to a natural pool, took a boat across the bay, and basically tanned and swam all day. We drank coco Gelado, which is when a coconut sits in ice water long enough for the water (milk??) to get very cold and icy. Then the seller takes a giant knife, carves a hole in the coconut, sticks in a straw and hands it to you. It's so refreshing.Read more