Paraty: Let’s Get Rugby League Drunk

Paraty

After 5 memorable weeks in Chile we flew into Sao Paulo for what is no doubt going to be one hell of a hectic month whilst the World Cup is on. But it is the reason we are here.

We met up with Big Al in Sao Paulo and introduced him to our way of travelling – usually the cheapest, and often the longest way of getting to places.

In hindsight we may have been better off staying a night in Sao Paulo, as the big fella had just come off about 50 hours of travel, and due to the size of the kid, he rarely fits on planes, let alone sleeps on them. But we didn’t. And after a local bus ride, a couple of trains, a 3 hour wait and a 6 hour bus ride we finally made it to Paraty late that evening.

Colours of Paraty's Ports 

Paraty is an old colonial town on the coast, filled with uneven cobble stone streets and surrounded by 50 something islands. We spent our first day on a boat cruising between the islands, making a few stops at a couple of the sandy beaches along the way.

One of Paraty's many islands

First beach stop

One of the benefits of having Al with us for this leg of the trip is that Nic no longer has to keep me amused by throwing the ball with me. Don’t get me wrong, Nic is usually keen to throw the ball around for a good 10 minutes, but unfortunately that usually isn’t enough for me. So with Al in tow, Nic gets some time to herself while me and the big fella amuse ourselves for hours on end like two dogs chasing the same ball. I suppose one of the negatives for Nic is now me and Al spend a good half the day talking sports. But you have to take the good with the bad, hey!

The following day we made our way out to a waterfall called Cachoeira do Toboga which has two different sections of the falls. One they call Tarzan Falls which has an 8-10m rock to jump off, and the second, Toboga, which you can slide down. We spent a few hours at Tarzan Falls before heading down to see what Tobogo was all about.

Tarzan Falls

After standing around for 5 or so minutes trying to get an idea of how and where you slide down it, one of the local lads comes strolling in, complete with budgie smugglers and a cheeky grin. He proceeds to splash water around, wetting the areas of the rock not already slippery as f_ck, then gets a run up, hits the slippery section and surfs his way down the rock, with nothing but his feet and budgie smugglers. Fair to say we hadn’t expected that! We then proceeded to make little kids of ourselves sliding down the rock on our arses, backs, stomachs, but no one could manage the stand up.

Toboga Falls

That night there were a number of football friendlies on with Brazil accounting for Serbia in the first match and Australia facing Croatia in the second. We had been steadily drinking with some Sydney lads who were somewhat more into their football than us. And on this particular night, somewhat more into their drink as well. After a rousing rendition of Advance Australia Fair, one of the lads exclaimed, ‘Let’s get rugby league drunk!’ Apparently this is a fair step up from your standard drunken behaviour, with only ‘State of Origin Drunk’ sitting higher on the drunk scale.

That gave us a nice little insight into what will no doubt be a nightly encounter once the World Cup begins.