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Thanks to some sweetly negotiated legislation, Paraty was the only port out of which gold and diamonds mined in Minas Gerais could sail from Brazil to Portugal. Paraty is well known for its beautifully preserved two story homes from the colonial period, an ostentatious display of wealth at the time. In 1822, Brazil gained independence from Portugal, and gold, production of which had been dropping off for years, stopped being shipped off to Portugal. Paraty remained wealthy through the exportation of coffee and the production of cachaça, also called pinga, a sugar cane liquor. Paraty at one point had over 250 distilleries for cachaça alone, keeping pirates well-stocked and happily sloshed in their local hideouts. For a town whose first church was dedicated to freed mulattos, the end of slavery in 1888 changed its fortunes completely. Paraty’s decline was immediate and led to a mass exodus. The town’s population fell from 16,000 to 600. For almost one hundred years, Paraty was essentially forgotten. Like Sleeping Beauty’s castle, Paraty awoke preserved in 1975 with the completion of a road from Rio de Janeiro. Largely protected by its status as an UNESCO World Heritage site, the historic center is blissfully free of cars, if occasionally congested by donkey-drawn carts. Although you will walk around the town center, getting to Paraty requires a car. I arrived in Paraty well after sundown, much delayed by rainy runoffs and sparse lighting on the highway from Rio de Janeiro. If you are driving into town from Rio, be sure to leave early in the morning to ensure safe driving conditions. The road is narrow and winding, the signage poor and visibility in the rain next to non-existent. Despite poor conditions and no sidewalks, locals walk and bike along the road well after dark, and you will have to take enormous care not to run anyone over. Once in Paraty, finding lodging if you have not arranged ahead is more tiring than difficult. The local custom is to follow a guide on a bicycle who takes you around to pousadas he has agreements with until you find one you enjoy. After a long drive, the process was time consuming and left me run down and famished. I chose the Parque Hotel Pereque, Av. Beira Rio 70, and trampled to my room through dense foliage that seemed more appropriate for a rainforest than a pousada courtyard. Once in my room, I dropped to sleep on a bed piled high with white linens under the wide wooden beams of a traditional colonial hacienda. The following morning, refreshed by sleep and curious at the songs of the birds outside my window, I stepped out from my room innocently enough. Immediately, I was taken aback by the incredible flowers that surrounded me, hidden the night before by darkness. I felt like I was staying in an arboretum. Flowers in all colors of the rainbows, sometimes more than a foot across, covered every corner of the courtyard. The walk to the breakfast room, an open terrace next to a pool, was breathtaking. I enjoyed my coffee and mangoes in the sunshine, amazed at the beauty of my environment. After a week of rain in Rio, I was thrilled to have the sun on my face and joked with the hotel’s owner about outrunning the rain. His face fell a little as he told me quite seriously, “It’s only sunny in the morning, miss. There will be rain by the afternoon.” True to his words, the rain came just an hour later. Paraty’s stony streets, cobbled together hundreds of years ago by slaves, are apt to flood during heavy rains and the uneven steps are friendlier to Havaianas flip-flops than heels. Rained out of a trip to any of the
nearly 65 islands off the coast, I decided to explore Paraty’s many art
galleries, where you can still make a smart investment on an “art naif”
painting. Translated as Naïve Art, the bold colors and simple, narrative
figures are representative of a Brazilian style that has become increasingly
respected by international art critics and collectors in recent years.
If artifacts are more your cup of tea than art, shopping for traditional
crafts is better in colonial Paraty than in modern Buzios. The localization
of the shops in the small town center makes a comprehensive shopping excursion
easily managed. The Rua da Lapa is a great place to find an assortment
of stores for engaging in the 500 year old tradition of gringo trade. In
Tranco Tupi, I found an astoundingly good collection of Amerindian crafts,
including ceremonial headdresses, spears and jewelry. Nautical
enthusiasts and decorators would enjoy Docas Paraty on the Rua Comendador,
which specializes in individually crafted and painted boat replicas. The
Emporio da Cachaça on the Rua S. Costa does justice to Paraty’s
past as a liquor capital, with yards of bottles for sale and sample, and
even dry folks can enjoy the beauty in the shades of the liquor lined along
the walls.
If you are hungry after shopping, the town center if filled with interesting restaurants. You will find Japanese, Thai, Brazilian and Italian cuisines, among others. There are airy cafes that have live music and cold beer in the evening. But after passing a vendor in the Matriz Plaza selling “American Hotdogs”, I could not resist sampling the fare to find out what they felt was an authentic American dish. I was given a hot dog piled so high with condiments I had to laugh…hasn’t every American eaten a hot dog at a baseball game topped with beets, carrots, peas, corn and mayonnaise? Experiencing American cuisine culture, heavily diluted, when abroad can be an adventure in itself…whether it is potato burgers at McDonald’s in Ireland or beet-flavored hot dogs in Brazil. That evening, as the splash from puddles soaked my legs with rain, I walked past white colonial houses painted with blue, yellow and red trim to a small building called Teatro Espaço near the harbor that holds a world class puppet show. The life that can be infused into inanimate objects through practice and skill is captivating, and the Grupo Contadores de Estórias bills itself as the only in the world to use direct manipulation, or hand puppets, to tell intricate and emotional stories. The show was a poignant respite from the usual American evenings spent viewing the latest blockbuster. A word of caution to those traveling with small children: while a puppet show can seem an ideal outing for a child, the story that night was rather explicit, so be aware. Ask the staff when purchasing tickets whether the content of the story that evening is suitable for small children and then culturally interpret whatever they say to fit your own background. Although very small and undeniably quaint, Paraty is surprisingly well equipped to handle foreign tourists, arguably even more so than Rio de Janeiro, and there are English language websites, travel guides, doctors and realtors. Andrade and Cermelli, which specialize in real estate and yacht brokering around Paraty, speak English and have a very respectable office (www.acparaty.com.br). Paraty’s tourism website, www.eco-paraty.com can be very helpful and includes listings of apartments, houses, businesses and ranches for sale and rent. The name Paraty originally came from the Tupi Indian word “Paratii” which is a kind of fish found in the bay, but in Portuguese it sounds like “For You.” No matter what you are looking for in the far side of the world, Paraty will have some kind of paradise for you. The following are the previous articles Elienne wrote for the magazine:
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In The Rain ~ 