Tom and MarJean in Brazil: Mission 2

Another week in paradise - this week we took a trip with Cristina and her family to Paraty. It's a city by the ocean between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, with beautiful bays, islands, and beaches. They own a boat, so we slept on the boat each night. Friday was a holiday, so we got permission to leave on Thursday to go up early. So, we did work a few days before partying... We stayed from Thursday to Sunday morning and then came back home to São Paulo. A fun note - the name of the boat is "toatoa", which sounds like 'tou a toa', which means "I'm doing nothing, just hanging around wasting time."

Cristina worked with us in the travel department until a week ago, when she asked to be let go - so that she could take advantage of unemployment and other benefits, which is common here in Brazil. We miss her a lot because she was always very nice and very helpful, especially to Mom who helped her with VISAs for England and other things. Mom always brings treats to work on Monday and Cristina would always wash the container or pan and give it back clean, etc. So, it was a double pleasure to go with them on the trip. It was Cristina, Douglas (her husband), and her two daughters, Tábata (18) and Ana (11).

I'll put all the pictures at the end to make things easier to follow. The first two days we spent going around in the boat to different areas and beaches, swimming, then eating churrasco (BBQ) all afternoon. Saturday night we went into the quaint little historic part of town - it was like going back in time. The streets were made of stones (not neatly carved stones, but big round ones that were even hard to walk around on). The buildings were of 1700's architecture. It reminded me of San Francisco - buildings close together, a caricature artist, a man-statue painted gold (only moving when you put money in a can), another man spray painting futuristic space scenes with moons, and of course, a lot of souvenir shops selling magnets and key rings!

Here are the pictures to enjoy!

These are just on the trip to and from Paraty:

This is just one type of many flowering trees in Brazil, and the
cool thing is that different colors flower during different
seasons of the year! This one was just covered in yellow.

Some of the islands and beaches:

Mom swimming with Cristina, the water here was really green

Some of the boats we saw:

This one "Sussurro" (Whisper) was together with us.

This is Douglas with a little get-around boat they tow along

They had a lot of older tourist boats that hold about 50 people.

Yes, this is photo-edited, cool old boat though...

This is the "Toatoa" that we were on

These are of an old ruin of a mill - it was used to get the sugar water from sugar cane and make "cashaça" - a famous liquor here, like Vodka (they tell us).