Paraty Free Walking Tour

Another entry in my series "The Horses of Paraty"

It's my last day in Paraty and I have finally gotten around to taking the free walking tour of the city. The music to accompany this walk will be bossa nova, Samba de Verão, Summer Samba, by Marcos Valle (and so many others) (it's just his version is probably the best known).

The tour did not start until 5:00 p.m., which is late by the standards of these free walking tours. I'm not sure if that is to allow the tourists to sleep off all the cachaça they may have drunk the night before, or if it is allow everyone who has taken a boat tour to get back on dry land before the walking tour begins, but the tour is free. And since it is free, the guide is free to set whatever free hours the guide wants.

I had a little time to kill so I just drank in some atmosphere. As opposed to drinking in some cachaça. Paraty, by the way, is known for its cachaça, which is an alcohol distilled from the fermentation of sugar cane juice. That sounds like rum to you? Well, yes. If it is made anywhere else in the Americas, it is rum. If it is distilled in Brazil, it is cachaça. Why? Because the people who decide these sorts of things decided that it would be that way.

The meeting point for the free walking tour was in front of the Igreja da Matriz de Nossa Senhora dos Remédios, the Church of Our Lady of Remedies. This was the "white" church in town back in the old days when those sorts of things mattered.

It is in front of park, thus this being the meeting point.

The free walking tour was not necessary to find those hidden photogenic gems. The whole city is photogenic. You can mosey about the city and find countless subjects for photography. The purpose of the tour is to learn more about the history of the city.

For example, this was the house of a very rich and prominent family:

What are some clues? The iron balcony, imported from England. Drainage pipes shaped like trumpets, which is so much more stylish than a plain pipe. And the use of decorative pineapples, or abacaxí in Portuguese, which are native to the Amazon rain forest. You thought they were indigenous to Hawaii, didn't you? Confess.

Pineapples were very popular in the Old World once the New World was opened up to international trade. This is because of the shipping times. A pineapple in Europe in the 1600s was more rare and precious than the Florida orange we all used to get in our Christmas stocking in the 1960s.

In the middle of the tour, I spotted this interesting-looking bird.

Anybody know what bird this is? Reddish-brown body. Silver head. I probably should have asked the Brits on the tour, since Brits are much more into birdwatching than are people anywhere else. According to my stereotyping. (Could be the male ruddy ground dove. I googled it.)

We next arrived at the Igreja de Nossa Senhora das Dores, the Church of Our Lady of the Sorrows. This not only was for the white population of Paraty in its colonial years, it was the church for white women only.

This is our guide, Luana, explaining that to us.

Our English-language tour group consisted of four Brits, a couple from India, a couple from Germany (furthering my belief that English is the language of international tourism because we needed some other language everyone could to each other everywhere else) (but no one wanted that language to be French other than the French) (so English one) and, of course, one from os estados unidos, who would be me.

You see those white structures high on the hill? It's a cemetery. A lot of the people buried there died in a massive cholera epidemic that hit the city in the early 1800s.

This is an interesting looking house that was bought, sight unseen, by a member of the Brazilian royal family. Brazil used to have a king, It still has a royal family in case the population wants the monarchy back.

We are right near the waters of the bay. Which means there are trillions of these little crabs everywhere.

It would probably take about six million of these critters to make a passable crab cake and, even then, it probably would have a lot of filler. So why try?

At the end of this street is the Igreja de Nossa Senhora do Rosário e São Benedito, the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary and St. Benedict. Which is a large name for a small church. This was the black church back in the days of slavery and segregation.

Apparently, out of guilt, is has the only gold-leaf decorated altar in Paraty. Unfortunately, for me, the church was closed at the hour of my tour and will not re-open until Sunday at 10:00 a.m. Which is after I'm scheduled to depart Paraty.

This is a library. That also serves espresso.

My kind of library.

And, finally, we come to the signature view of Paraty: Igreja de Santa Rita de Cássia. Church of St. Rita.

The streets of Paraty still flood at high tide. In the old days, this was a mixed blessing. It cleaned the sewage off the streets. But it also meant floodwaters a foot or two deep in the ground floor of your home. So the city fathers of Paraty did what they did in Galveston, Texas, although for a different reason. In Galveston, they did this because of hurricane storm surge. In Paraty, is was to limit the tidal flooding of the city streets. 

If you look at the door into the Church of St. Rita, you notice a ramp. The height of the ramp is the amount they raised Paraty. The streets still flood during high tide, but only the highest of the high tides, which happen on the nights of the full moon and the new moon.

By the way, if you're keeping track of this sort of thing -- and people back in the day obsessively kept track of this very thing -- this was the "mixed race" church. If you did not "fit" in with the white crowd at Our Lady of Remedies, or if you did not belong with the black crowd at Our Lady of the Rosary, this is where you worshipped.

This street was known for being the street of romantic trysts back in the old day. "Romantic," not prostitutes, There was a different street (nearby) for that sort of entertainment,

And with that, the two-hour free walking tour came to its conclusion. I tipped and I left.

I was hungry, but not really hungry. What I needed was more of an evening snack than a meal. I headed to the Pizzaria e Esfiharia Pontal, just on the other side of the Ponte de Pontal next to my hotel.

 

No. I don't know what an "esfiharia" is. Google translate is not being much of a help. It appears to be some sort of open-faced sandwich, which would do the trick. I just wanted enough food so I didn't wake up in the middle of the night starving.

The place seems to do more of a take-out business, as the restaurant was somewhat empty, but the delivery guy kept coming and going.

I had the pepperoni e muçarela. No. It's not a personal-sized pizza. There was no tomato sauce. The crust for the sandwich was excellent, which makes me sad that I did not get a whole small pizza. I wasn't expecting that they could make good pizza crust in a beach town in Brazil. I should have raised my sights.

Time to cross the bridge and head back to my hotel for an evening's sleep.

And, with that, I say "tchau" to Paraty. I came here for relaxation in an entertaining and photogenic environment and, Paraty, you delivered. Obrigado.