Wednesday 9 December 2009
Highlights: Jeep Tour of Paraty, Capoeira martial arts demonstration

This was the first time the group split to do different activities.   I went on a Jeep Tour while Andrew went on a small hike to a local beach and played games like table tennis and had some local alcoholic drinks.

They almost didn’t run my Jeep Tour because of the water over the past 24 hours and I was later to realise why this might have been necessary but we managed to get to all the local waterfalls, the church and the distilleries.   I tried a few drinks myself and found both the chocolate and cinnamon favoured drinks the best.   I didn’t try the Brazilian coffee but my day group seemed to like it.

I got into an interesting discussion about the Inca Trial with Sara from Norway; looks like it will be very rough.   The last stop was the Three Farms which let me see how people lived about 100-150 years ago in rich farmers which had royalty stay.

After the 5 hour tour I returned to find Andrew arriving back from his adventure which stories of stock defeats on the pool table.   Eventually we located Martin who had the key to the room we are sharing together while in Paraty.

Now the night was what I was really looking forward to, a demonstration of capoeira which is both a dance style and a fighting style.   I wasn’t disappointed; it was amazing I could barely see the movements in the second demonstration and when the knives / short swords came out the sparks literally started flying.   Andrew, Martin and Gareth got called up to take part in a practise session which was full on.

Some of the girls got up later for a dance demonstration, Shrina in particular seemed to have a good time as did Kelly. After this we headed out to the Che Guevara club which included leaving at one point to find some Kebabs (mission failed btw) and returning for more beers.   Very late at night we somehow found our way back to the hostel but Kelly and Shrina stayed on for a while longer.