Beach Weekend - Ilha Grande

Don't miss our posts on Iguazu Falls and Rio de Janeiro below. Click "Older Posts" at the bottom for Iguazu Falls.

Almost the entire island of Ilha Grande is a Brazilian national park, apart from a few small villages. As our boat pulled up to the main village of Vila Abraao we were greeted by calm, clear green-blue water and lush, green jungle-clad mountains. It was perfect. Mountains, jungles, and wildlife (more monkeys) for me, and beaches for Steph. We were both happy. The town of Abraao was a really cool little town too. There are no cars allowed on the island (other than government vehicles), so you get to lazily stroll the sandy streets without having to dodge taxis and motorbikes like we have come to be accostomed to in South America. The 7th of September is Independence Day here in Brazil, which is a Tuesday, so accomodation was hard to come by starting on Saturday for the long weekend for the locals. Our first night (Thursday) accomodation cost about $25 and doubled every day so that our third night was $100! Ouch. It was worth it though, as you wouldn't want to go all the way there for just a night or two. There's lots of stuff to do on the island, from boat trips to remote beaches, snorkeling, surfing, hiking, and of course sitting on the beach. As usual we opted for a free activity - hiking across the island to a beach called Dois Rios. The hike was about 5 miles each way but fairly easy since it was along a road - about 2.5 miles moderate slope up a mountain, then about 2.5 miles moderate slope down the mountain. The coolest part was hearing the howler monkeys calling to each other across the valleys. We never saw any close up but did see some on a few occasions from a distance. By the time we got there the sky was overcast, so the beach wasn't as pretty as it could be, but we did have it pretty much to ourselves. Steph laid on the beach while I explored and did some body surfing. Good stuff.

Vila Abraao

Dois Rios beach

For our second day we did another long hike, this one to a very popular beach called Lopes Mendes. We read that it is the prettiest beach in all of Brazil (so says the Ilha Grande tourist guide), but we'd have to see for ourselves. There were tons of water taxis taking people over there, but the hike was supposed to be shorter and easier than the day before, so we did that. While it may have technically been shorter, it certainly wasn't easier as there were a lot of steep slopes both up and down. Somebody told us it would be 2 hours, but we hiked fast and passed a lot of people, so when we reached a beach after an hour we figured we must have made it in record time. After consulting the map and double-checking, we were dismayed to realize we were only half way. Two hours was pretty spot on, and we walked fast. We promised ourselves we'd take the water taxi on the way home. That quickly went out the window when we saw the huge waves and the guy renting boogey boards on the beach. We spent our taxi money on a board and spent the day swimming, laying around, drinking Guarana (our favorite Brazilian soft drink), and generally wearing ourselves out.

futbol on the beach

I tried to somehow gesture to the water taxi guys (who spoke no English) that we had no money left and would pay when we got back to Abraao. If you ever play Charades with me don't be on my team. We hiked back. The last 30 minutes were in almost complete darkness. Not fun.

Our last day on the island it was cold, windy and rainy, so we weren't sad to go (plus we were exhausted and sore from the day before). We're back in Rio now, just hanging out at our hostel getting ready to leave South America behind. We went to Copacobana beach this morning, but the weather was not nice so we just walked around a bit - at least we can say we went! For lunch we decided to go all out for our last South American meal and went to one of Brazil's famous churrascaria all-you-can-eat restaurants where the servers walk around with big hunks of meat on sticks. It cost over $20 each so we stuffed ourselves to the rim. Steph had never been to a similar restaurant (like Fogo de Chao), so she enjoyed the red/green card they give you to let them know if you want more meat. It was really good and we're glad we did it. Now we won't have to eat again until we get on our 11 hour direct flight to London tonight. Woohoo! They speak English there, if an inferior form of it. We won't get to savor it for long, as we only have a few hours before our flight to Rome (we'll go back to London later). In just 2 days Steph will be having spaghetti in Italy! And that brings us completely up to date with our blogging! Hooray!