Ok, so for those of you who don´t read/write etc portuguese, I started this blog yesterday (or at least signed up for it) so that I could send my sister a message, and for this reason, the title of my blog is "que saco fazer um blog", which means, "what a pain in the arse making a blog is".
Anyhoo, since I´m now involved in the "blogging phenomenon", I might as well post something, right?
I am currently in Brazil on a holliday, escaping the editing of a chapter of my PhD thesis. I just got back from a fantastic trip to Paraty, a magnificent historical city in Rio de Janeiro State. The place is a living, breathing 18th century museum, with some magnificent Portuguese architecture from that era. Paraty was the end point in the "Estrada Real", or Royal Highway from Ouro Preto and its rich, rich goldfields. From Paraty, all the gold was shipped off either to Rio or to Portugual, where the royal family filled its coffers. Hooray!
So the area around Paraty is fantastically beautiful, surrounded as it is by the Mata Atlântica, an amazing, dense forest hidden in the mountains that form the Serra do Mar. The mountains and the forest stop, quite literally, where the beach begins, and where there is no beach, the forest stops at the water´s edge. Stunning.
Paraty is also home to an amazing array of islands and hidden beaches, formed by the irregular peaks and troughs of the Serra do Mar. This, you can imagine, makes the area a wonderful place to take boat trips and go swimming in the verdent ocean. Oh, yeah. I did just that on Saturday, diving off the Schooner into the bay with wild abandon. No nasty sharks to worry about here, just starfish on the bottom of the sea, fish (which are all delicious eating, it would seem), and a water temperature that never appears too cold or too warm. Some guy in the 18th or 19th century said that "If Paradise were to exist on earth, it wouldn´t be too far from here" (translated, of course). I think he was spot on.
Yesterday I wandered around the mountains for a bit, checked in on a couple of great waterfalls, and then wandered around (illegally, it would seem) on the old "Caminho do Ouro", or Gold Road, which is a cobbled path that, as said before, goes all the way to Ouro Preto. It´s currently undergoing restauration, and I wasn´t supposed to go there, but i was only there for a bit, so no worries.
Anyway, that will do for now. As you can see, I´m really not that Angry, but I like the moniker Angry Panda. Some bastard took that one before me, so I´ve had to go Angrier. Dammit. THAT makes me angry... :-)
Anyhoo, since I´m now involved in the "blogging phenomenon", I might as well post something, right?
I am currently in Brazil on a holliday, escaping the editing of a chapter of my PhD thesis. I just got back from a fantastic trip to Paraty, a magnificent historical city in Rio de Janeiro State. The place is a living, breathing 18th century museum, with some magnificent Portuguese architecture from that era. Paraty was the end point in the "Estrada Real", or Royal Highway from Ouro Preto and its rich, rich goldfields. From Paraty, all the gold was shipped off either to Rio or to Portugual, where the royal family filled its coffers. Hooray!
So the area around Paraty is fantastically beautiful, surrounded as it is by the Mata Atlântica, an amazing, dense forest hidden in the mountains that form the Serra do Mar. The mountains and the forest stop, quite literally, where the beach begins, and where there is no beach, the forest stops at the water´s edge. Stunning.
Paraty is also home to an amazing array of islands and hidden beaches, formed by the irregular peaks and troughs of the Serra do Mar. This, you can imagine, makes the area a wonderful place to take boat trips and go swimming in the verdent ocean. Oh, yeah. I did just that on Saturday, diving off the Schooner into the bay with wild abandon. No nasty sharks to worry about here, just starfish on the bottom of the sea, fish (which are all delicious eating, it would seem), and a water temperature that never appears too cold or too warm. Some guy in the 18th or 19th century said that "If Paradise were to exist on earth, it wouldn´t be too far from here" (translated, of course). I think he was spot on.
Yesterday I wandered around the mountains for a bit, checked in on a couple of great waterfalls, and then wandered around (illegally, it would seem) on the old "Caminho do Ouro", or Gold Road, which is a cobbled path that, as said before, goes all the way to Ouro Preto. It´s currently undergoing restauration, and I wasn´t supposed to go there, but i was only there for a bit, so no worries.
Anyway, that will do for now. As you can see, I´m really not that Angry, but I like the moniker Angry Panda. Some bastard took that one before me, so I´ve had to go Angrier. Dammit. THAT makes me angry... :-)
posted by AP at 5:35 AM
2 Comments:
I hate you! No bloody crystal clear beautiful water here with boats for us to be diving off. Not unless we drive a few hundred kilometres anyway. Have fun!
I have linked you on my blog. That was nice of me. Wasnt it???
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