Old town by the sea

Our free walking tour in Paraty at 1030 was led by an Argentine of English ancestry.  That explained his very good English with a posh accent.  The English group was small but the one led by his Portuguese-speaking counterpart was much bigger.

He gave a good history of the city, explaining how it grew because of gold then coffee.  And how it became a ghost town when the new railroad took business away from Paraty.  It only came back to life in the 195os when people from the big cities woke up to the beauty of the place and started buying up the properties.

The homes built during the heydays of Praty had some design features:

• Pineapple decorations on the verandah; the more the better/wealthier!
• Freemason patterns.
• Trumpets which drained water from the verandah floor down to the street below.
• Pointed pagoda-like roofs on the corners.
• Semi-cylindrical roof tiles were made by slave women by shaping the mud on their thighs.  Hence their sizes vary.  The local expression for something made unevenly is “made on the thighs”.

Streets in Paraty were built below high tide levels.  Steps lead from the street into the houses.  The idea was that twice a day, the sea would take the rubbish from the streets out to sea.  All good in the days when everything was biodegradable.  Today, many streets have been raised; only the edges the town near the coast get a bit of the high tide now.  But on rare occasions it is possible to paddle through the streets of Paraty.

Paraty was the centre of the slave trade in the southern part of Brazil.  Another interesting thing I learnt was that slavery was abolished not because of humanitarian reasons.  With European immigration, they found that immigrants were cheaper than slaves.  No need to buy them for a start, and no need to feed them.  Immigrants make their own way to Brazil and are self-sufficient on their own pay.

Near the coastline, we saw the home of the great great grandson of Emperor Dom Pedro II.  The royalty were exiled but he made it back and served in the Air Force.

During the tour, there were a few noisy helicopter interruptions.  The guide explained that Sao Paulo has the highest number of helicopters and helipads in the world.  During the weekends, many shuttle rich people to their holiday homes here.

The tour was only an hour.  We walked to nearby Praia do Pontal for a drink.  The water wasn’t too nice as it was close to the mangrove.  We took a simple “per kilo” lunch before having a lazy afternoon.

A few things I have noticed so far:

• Paraty is the first place in Brazil I’ve noticed some native American people.
• Like all of Brazil, there are so so so many pharmacies!
• It seems people speak to me (as a foreigner) in Spanish when they realise I don’t speak Portuguese.  Perhaps it is the most common or likely language they use for non-Portuguese speakers.  It is the most “international” language on the continent I guess.  Or maybe they were just speaking Portuñol, a mix of Portuguese and Spanish used when the speaker of one attempts to speak to the other.