Day 7. Visconde de Maua -Paraty
After breakfast at the hotel you will be transferred trough the mountainous roads to the coastal town of Paraty.
The historical village of Paraty with its cobblestone streets and churches in a beautiful surrounding countryside was founded in 1667. Paraty grew in the 18th century as a strategically important port for exporting the gold mined in Minas Gerais. When shipments in nearby Rio began to attract the attention and ambition of pirates and privateers from rival European powers, the Portuguese began using Paraty as their safe port for getting their gold to Lisbon. Together with Ouro Preto, the town was part of the Royal Road (Caminho Real or Caminho do Ouro, Gold Road), a route used to export gold in colonial times. It was also an obligatory sleep-over stop for travelers between Rio and São Paulo until the late 1800s, when the inner road was opened. This caused Paraty to be forgotten, stalled in time, away from "progress" and disfiguration and helped it preserve its old city as it was in the past.
Backed by steep, jungled mountains plunging into an island-studded bay, Paraty enjoys one of Brazil’s most spectacular settings and an exquisitely preserved colonial center, recognized as a National Historic Site by UNESCO since 1966. The town's pedestrianized streets are lined with elegant white buildings adorned with fanciful multihued borders and latticed windows that blend harmoniously with the natural beauty that envelops the town – it's a joy to explore.
Brazilian Bohemia- artists, sculptors, poets and writers, started to admire the historical city in a tropical paradise. Paraty is truly an open-air museum!
In the afternoon you will have a guided tour in the historical center of Paraty.