Travelling back to 60's - a hippie town in Rio de Janeiro state, BRAZIL

When I was around 12 years old, on Christmas Eve day I went to a supermarket and decided to wish "Merry Christmas" to all the people I would meet on my way. I'm not sure why I did that - nobody greets strangers in Poland.

One hour ago I went to the centre to eat açai and all the people I met on my way told me "Good Morning" (apart from the central part of the city full of tourists). Such a small thing but it can really make somebody smile.

So this is how Paraty looks like.

When I was leaving Rio on Monday, I didn't know anything about this town apart from its localization on Costa Verde - so I supposed it should be really green all around here (and it is).

This place feels literally like a hippie town from 70's or 80's. So far I was always saying that the smell of Brazil is for me the smell of popcorn sold on the streets, but smell of Paraty is the smell of weed. Yeah, it's illegal in Brazil, but this place feels more like Jamaica.

The town is full of European tourists, you can hear English everywhere on the streets. And it actually feels like Europe - it was one of the most importabt cities of Portuguese colony so the architecture really looks like the one I saw in Portugal. Even restaurants and cafe's look like in Europe - and I haven't found anything like that even in such a big city like Rio.

Apart from European tourists, it's full of Latino backpackers - especially Argentineans which is not good for my Portuguese. But I swear, here are more Argentineans than Brazilians. Most of them work in exchange for accommodation, and also often get some money for playing some instruments on the streets, or selling their arts like hand-made bracelets, and some of them even sell some hand-made cookies.

Maybe this simplicity of people living here makes me feel like in completely different world.

The beaches are also really beautiful here, tho they aren't the best I've seen - also because I really prefer the opean sea/ocean which you don't have here. So another day when I rented a surf board I had to go pretty far away to surf anything. We left at 5.30 am, pretty early but just imagine surfing with the sunrise... Spectacular! Also the waves were a bit too strong for me so it wasn't my best day on the wave, but at least I stood up on the board a few times.

Yesterday I also hitchhiked to another beach - São Gonçalo. It was really pretty there but unfortunately the weather wasn't the best. Neither today, so right now I am just enjoying the beach as the place to write this post. By the way I think that I'm really becoming Brazilian, as now with 20 degrees I'm wearing a jacket... And since the temperature slightly dropped to this 20 degrees few days ago, I got a bit sick.

Tomorrow I'm already leaving Paraty. I'm gonna say goodbye to the ocean for a while, hopefully no more than a few weeks... And I already checked the way I need to hitchhike to São Paulo, so now just wish me luck!