Advertisement
Published: February 18th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Phil Collins
Oh, think twice, it´s another day for you and me in Paradise. After our first stint in Rio (which I am holding back from blogging on until after we leave for a second time) we took the popular trip down to Ilha Grande, or The Big Island, approximately two hours south of Rio off the coast.
After a short bus journey we boarded the first boat we saw which had a man enticing us on with shouts of ´beer, cerveja, mucho beer, mucho cerveja´, and we helped out with the loads of cargo being lumbered on board over our shoulders. Not quite the chicken on the lap scene which Emma had in Africa but was still an adventure of sorts. Incidentally all the local trade is done by boat as the Island is an ecological reservation and so most modes of transport are forbidden, boats are therefore a big part of the local culture, there are even taxi boats which are quite novel. A short journey later and we were on the Island, unsurprisingly the lack of cars means a lack of road signs and we got very lost for a while in the midday heat with our backpacks on, perspiration is putting it lightly.
First impressions however, were muito bom.
If Rio had Sugar-Loaf, Ilha Grande has a bit of Meatloaf, in that it is quite literally paradise (by the dashboard lights).....you may have to be a pretty big Loaf fan to understand the poor gag there. Our hostel was set back off the main street amongst plenty of wilderness, more hammocks and bizzarely exercise bars for the Brazillian men who take pride in looking ridiculously toned, as though we needed another thing to make us stand out.
After dropping off our bags we took a stroll across a few of the Island´s 102 beaches, which all seem to have something unique and a different character, we also stopped for a couple of Brazillian cervejas, travelling can be hard work you see so its good to unwind occasionally. History Lesson; the Island used to be famous for being the home of a notorious prison, however it closed down. In my humble opinion being shipped off to paradise doesn´t serve as too much of a deterrent, there was also a fugitive problem as hiding turned out to be quite easy on a totally uninhabited island, all in all just a bad idea.
On our first night we met a
Scottish couple and played some cards, had a few cold ones and had a wander into the hub of the Island, eventually we settled on having a couple of beers on a waterfront hostel terrace and admired the stars, how romantic. On the walk home the Scottish guy thought he saw a frog hopping along the beach, which in hindsight wasn´t the most sensible of assumptions, sure enough it turned out to be a crab and nipped him when he picked it up, genius. That wasn´t the end of our crab escapades for the night, as we saw a mammoth one right outside the hostel, I´m talking the size of a small baby, which was doing its thing, running sideways and crab-dancing...interesting creatures. The Island does appear to house an array of diverse wildlife, at one point people were crowded around what we assumed to be something serious, however it just turned out to be a huge lizard. There is also a constant piercing jungle noise throughout the Island, we could have bottled it and sold it to one of those strange people who listens to wildlife CD´s to help them sleep.
I digress, on our first full day
we decided to take advantage of one of the many boat tours offered on the seafront. We were told that on one we could take a quick walk to a ´muito bonito´ waterfall from the beach, so we decided to take this option. Hmm,...quick walk, the ´trek´, took about an hour and was ridiculously steep, with little in the way of a path. However, after an hour of slipping, sweating and generally dehydrating we arrived at the waterfall and it was worth it if not just to cool down. There were plenty of rock pools around and of course the waterfall itself, which was just plain painful to stand under, however we manned up and took it in our stride, even attempting the odd Peter Andre ´Mysterious Girl´pose, minus the plastic body.
After the waterfall we continued on our boat trip to more stunning beaches, cue bombing off the boat as motion captured below. We were also given an opportunity to snorkel and pick up a starfish, one of the photos shows Sam nearly lifting it out of the water thus killing the poor bleeder, with a face of horror from the guy next to him. They don´t seem
to do a lot though those starfish, other than sink, so would have been no great loss. After taking in more spectacular scenery we arrived back home late in the afternoon, and decided we would just hang around the hostel and get eaten alive by the local mosquitos.
The day after we ticked off another ´to do´ thing on Ilha Grande, which is take a walk to the infamous Lopez Mendes beach, claimed by some to be one of the most beautiful beaches in Brazil, no small feat. We got our heads down and took another jungle walk, this time we were greeted by a bunch of baby monkeys (who had faces of old men) swinging around in the trees, it was quite refreshing to see them in their natural preserve. We arrived at the beach a couple of hours later, I´m no beach connoisseur in all truth but it was pleasant to the eye, had strong waves and an abundance of soft sand. The boat back was very much a Bob affair, plenty of bobbing and weaving by the boat itself, washed down by a bit of Bob Marley, played by resident DJ/Captain ´Shark Man´, so called as
he had tattoos of all manner of sharks all over his body, ranging from your basic Great White to the Hammerhead. Another character.
So that was it, four days in Ilha Grande. Lovely Spot. We just about made it back to the mainland after the boat was stopped by Marine Police with intimidating rifles. Unsurprisingly the conversation was in Portuguese so I have no idea why they stormed at us with sirens and ´pulled us over´, either way we are back in Rio now, blog to follow.
Az
Advertisement
Tot: 0.184s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 13; qc: 64; dbt: 0.1372s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
SamT86
Sam Sparrow
Excellent punditry
The meatloaf comment is the greatest gag you have ever produced, you deserve an award, and I think Gould should be the one to give it to you.