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Published: August 4th 2006
With a steaming hangover and after only 2 hours sleep, we woke at 4.30 to grab a cab to Rio´s terminal omnibus only to be given the run around trying to find the right kiosk to buy our tickets. Eventually we navigated our way to the right departure point and boarded our 3 hour coach to Angra dos Reis, the port at which we were to get our ferry to Ilha Grande.
Having known a little Spanish already, we found the portuguese of Brazil a totally different prospect and it was beginning to knock my multilingual confidence. Thankfully we were lucky to meet up with a lovely Belgian couple who spoke good Portuguese and spent a couple of hours sitting at the port waiting for our ferry.
As we sat on the front of the schooner soaking up the sun and watching speedboats shoot through the blue waters, the 90 minute journey to the island was an absolute pleasure. When we arrrived at the main town on the island Abroa and docked at the jetty, a friendly brazilian from our pre-booked hostel kindly carried Claires backpack and took us on a short walk along the beach to our hostel
Aquario.
On arrival it would be an understatement to say we were pleased to find our double room at the hostel was situated literally about 3 yards from the water with the only things between us and the sea being a palm tree and a hammock! After ditching our belongings in the room it was only a short wait before a BBQ on the hostel veranda where we met a few fellow travellers and learnt about what there is to do on the island.
After a decent bbq, we walked into the main town of Arbao where a festival was taking place. To our surprise the festival was a kind of tranny wedding ceremony followed by about 20 minuites where the locals danced around in circles to traditional music. One guy in particular who we had seen shouting and kissing his male friends earlier was spectacularly drunk and skipped through the crowds waving his arms around and tried to focus his eyes.
The next morning we decided to do a 2 hour trek through the jungle to get to Lopez Mendes the best of the islands beaches. Ilha Grande which until not so long ago was a
Local Festival
...lots of cross dressing going on!prison island, has no roads and only one car (Police) which presumably can´t go very far.
the rest of the island is dense jungle which can only be navigated on cleared paths like the one on which we walked. Although we thought we would be able to do the trek in less time, the sometimes steep trail ended up taking the full 2 hours and passed down and through two different beaches on the way which we both mistook for Lopez Mendes.
When we finally arrived at Lopez Mendes however, it was obvious that it had to be the nicest beach on the island and possibly the nicest beach we´ll ever go to! For about a 2km, the crystal blue waters lapped onto perfectly flat and blindingly white sand and all backed by lush green jungle palms.
As we walked along the shore, small white crabs scuttled back to their holes in the sand and unlike the brown sugar like sand of Ipanema, the dulux white sand here was as fine and as soft as flour. Oddly, on the lower sections of the beach where the water had flattened and hardpacked the sand it squeaked like a squash
Where jungle meets water...
We kayaked to this small bay from our hostel. court does when you dragged your feet!
After several hours of swimming, sunning and watching surfers we noticed a man further down the beach walking along with what appeared to be an Iron bbq shaped like a UFO. As he passed we asked him what it was and he sat with us to demostrate it was a Swiss percussion instrument called a Hang. For about an hour the man "Elmar" sat with us and drummed away a tune which he claimed to have played every day since the instrument was given to him. Whilst playing the oriental sounding drum and letting me have a go, Elmar explained how he lived a nomadic lifestyle of sailing around the world on his yacht "Otre Vez or another Again" and either finding his own food from the jungle or growing his own vegetables on board!
Although Elmar offered us a ride back to Abrao on his yacht, we instead opted for the faster ferry and said goodbye to our nomadic friend. As we waved him off and watched dolphins jump in the distance, it was crazy to think that save for his yacht and his surfboard there are people in the
world who can live such an appealing but simple life without need for much money. Still, that evening we were pleased to be buying a monstrous pizza and drinking large quantaties of beer with the Belgian friends we met at the mainland port!
For our second day on the island, we decided to take an organised boat trip to the Blue Lagoon where we hired snorkelling equipment, flippered around the boat amongst thousands of brightly coloured fish and picked giant orange starfish from the clear sea bed. After swimming with the sea life, we chugged around to another bay for a game of football with our overly competative Captain before walking to a neighbouring beach via an old church which was once frequented by pirates. On the way back to the hostel our crazy captain unfurled his own pirate flag as we watched the sun go down.
With the next day being our last full day on this beautiful island, we awoke early as we wanted to take advantage of the free Kayaks at the hostel. After piling our belongings into a bin bag we jumped into the two man kayak and paddelled our way around the nearest
Lopez Mendez Beach..
...could have stayed here for a long, long time. peninsular to a beach we had seen from our hike to Lopez Mendes. Unfortunately, although the kayaking was great fun, the water at the beach we headed to was full of debris so it wasn´t long before we decided to scrap the canoe and head back to the hostel so we could catch the boat back to Lopez Mendes.
Luckily the boat left our hostel moments after we´d docked the kayak meaning we were able to spend our last day on the nice beach again. When we got there I decided to hire a surfboard for an hour and ran into the waves with confidence I would be able to pick it up in no time. Unfortunately, my confidence was misplaced and I spent about 30 minutes getting hit in the face with the board and having my ankles torn apart by the leash! Although there´s no photographic evidence after Claire saw how rubbish I was and gave up watching, for the record, I did manage to stand for a split second on one occasion!
Having given up after a second try, we walked along the beach for one last time before boarding a boat back to the
Nomadic Elmar.....
...demostrating his beloved Swiss percussion instrument called a Hang. hostel with our crazy captain from the day before. When we arrived back at Abrao, our Captain dropped off everyone who wasn´t from our hostel at the main jetty, then turned around to his colleague and screamed "now smoko!" before lighting a joint and telling us how much he liked his job!
For our final evening there was another BBQ at the hostel only this time there were about 30 names on the list rather than the 10 on our first night. As it turned out, about another 50 people turned up presumably from other hotels and it turned into a huge party where the drinks were flowing a little too freely and the hostel brought in disco lights and a DJ who managed to mix 60´s rock n roll with Techno!
The next morning we both and particularly Claire felt pretty darn lousy and had to walk with our bags back to the jetty to catch an early ferry back to the mainland. As we sailed away from Ilha Grande we saw about 15 dolphins diving out of the water and playing for a group of tourists on a nearby smaller boat. As the island moved away
into the distance, we talked about the next time we would visit this amazing region.
Now for the next part of our journey, we caught a bus in the nick of time for an 8 hour journey to Sao Paulo where we had to stay one night before flying to Buenos Aires the next day. On arrival in Sao Paulo we then had to get another bus to the International Airport on which the pervy driver greeted Claire with an "Ola Sexy" and then a taxi to our hotel for the night!
Completely shattered after 14 hours of hectic travel, we ordered room service in our relatively luxurious hotel before going to sleep for one last time in Brazil. Although we had not been able to see much of this huge country it is certainly somewhere where we would love to come back to and explore further.
...Tommorow, Argentina and the much anticipated city of Buenos Aires!
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Claires Dad
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Good to see you both looking well fit! The scenery is amazing and I'm not even there. Justin and Michaela (and Noah I am sure) say they are avid readers of this blog so keep them coming. Maybe you should do a podcast as well!!! Have fun Dad