Hiking in Paraty

(post by Peter Hartman)

Paraty is one of the original Portuguese settlements on the Costa Verde between Sao Paulo and Rio de Janiero. Founded by the Portuguese in 1500s grew as a transhipment point for gold from the inland Minas Gerais back to Portugal. Paraty has gone through several economic boom-and bust cycles in its 500 year history. After the gold production declined in the eighteenth century Paraty boomed again in the 19th century as coffee plantations were developed inland using Paraty to export coffee. Then the town experienced another depression as railroad and road connections were built inland and the growers bypassed Paraty for the ports of Rio de Janiero and Santos near Sao Paulo.

The town remained economically depressed until the tourism boom with the construction of a direct highway connection to Sao Paulo and Rio in the 1970s. Now Paraty, a town of 35,000 inhabitants, hosts 250,000 visitors a year. And, as you can imagine, this supports a lively mix of hotels, restaurants and bars in addition to tour companies offering sailing trips along the huge Bahia do Paraty and treks into the ring of the majestic Serra do Mar mountains on the west. Paraty is one of those rare resort towns which maintains its original character despite the hoards of tourists. 

One of Paraty's outstanding features is the original, remarkably well-preserved warehouse district near the shore developed to store the gold, coffee, sugarcane and other products from the interior for shipment. The rough cobblestone streets are lined with one-story warehouses that were used to accumulate the gold and then the sugarcane and coffee for shipment to Europe. The tourism boom has provided the wealth to renovate the old warehouses. Today, this district hosts many small shops and restaurants. There is even the Museu de Cuchaca which boasts a collection of over 5,000 bottles of the potent local sugarcane-based liquor.

Originally the walls of the warehouses were punctuated with doors as the only opening onto the street. These were just warehouses after all. Over the years the lower half of many of the doorways were walled in to create windows and a second story added to many of the single-story warehouses as they were converted to residential space. Now the warehouses hug the narrow streets to form to form block after block of sinuous whitewashed street frontage with the door and window frames painted in bright festive colors.  The old pre-industrial warehouse streetscape strangely prefigures the post-industrial landscape of tilt-up business/industrial parks and logistics centers with their continuous lines of loading docks and roll-up doors that dot the outskirts of most American cities.

On our second day several of us decided to explore some of the surrounding country on foot. The person at the local tourist office suggested a circular trail starting from the town of Laranjeiras about 30 km from Paraty. The entire trail is actually a two-day hike but he pointed out a series of nearby towns we could hike to and then turn back depending upon the time. He gave us a small map that showed the trail as a thin squiggly line coming out Laranjeiras, the end of the line for the #1040 Colitur bus from Paraty.

So, with only minor trepidation, we were off to the bus terminal, a cacophony of the sights, sounds and smells of people going to points near and far. Finding the right bus was fairly straightforward with the help of some friendly locals. People hopped off and on as we made our way, the bus being apparently the only form of transportation for many of the people in the surrounding countryside.

It was easy to find our stop since the driver just stopped the bus and everyone got off. We confirmed the time of return in severely fractured Portuguese and headed up the trail which took off right from the bus stop. Immediately we were struck by the dense vegetation of the Atlantic rain forest crowding the trail on both sides. The trail was remarkably well-maintained, with steps and railings in the steepest parts. As we ascended the trees, vines, brush, ferns and banana trees were so dense we could only see a few feet in from the edge of the trail. We could hear the calls of rare and unseen birds.

We walked about 6 km and up 300 meters along what seemed might be a bluff above the ocean – our little map wasn't a great orienteering aide. Then all of a sudden and to great excitement we spotted the ocean way below us through the trees on the side that fell off a steep cliff down to the shore. As we moved along the view of the water kept expanding. Finally as we rounded a curve we saw our destination – the beautiful Praia do Sono, the gleaming white beach spread for about 2 km along an intensely blue lagoon right below and in front of us. We climbed down a series of steep steps and followed the trail onto the beach.

Sono is not really a town. It is nothing more than a collection of several dozen vacation rental houses with a number of open-air cafe and bars set back in the trees away from the beach. There is no road to it. The only access is by our trail or water. Most of the houses appeared occupied by families judging from the number of little kids running around. It looked like Just about everybody got there from the ocean. There were a number of small boats with outboard motors resting on the beach along with one that said “water taxi.”  We did see a few people on the beach who had walked over on the trail with us.

We got there early-afternoon just as the cafes were starting to open and fill up with people drinking giant cans of ice-cold Skol beer. As tempting as it was to stay, have a couple of beers and lay on the beach or jump around in the waves, we made our way back, up the steep staircases, away from the water, into the rain forest, for the 3:30 bus to Paraty.