Ilha grande

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Geo: -23.141, -44.1613

We arrived at rio airport at 7.30am rio time! Collected our bags and hoped that there was a dude with our name waiting for us! There was a dude with 'Ilha Grande. Genes ' written in some paper but no one else. After a quick look around we went up to him and said 'James??' In an inquisitive way. He responded with a 'si si' so we went along with it!

We headed into rio catching a glimpse of big Jesus now and then but as it was rush hour the traffic was horrific. We met the mini bus which was full of English! Was so nice to understand what people were saying!! We then proceeded back out the way we came from the airport, even passed the airport door (bizarre organisation) towards the port. The road was BUMPY, reminding me of days on the truck but we made it in one piece!

We were then put on a boat with about 20 other people to head the 40mins to ilha grande. The hostel we are staying at has its own jetty so we got dropped off outside our door and were met by Fred the hostel owner! A proper throw back from the 70s.... Lived to relax and drink! Superb guy to run such a place. He showed us the good places to eat and talked us through the variety of boat trips we could do tomorrow!

Our room is lovely and clean and has an ac unit.... All you need really! The view from the window is over the water and is spectacular too! We dumped our stuff, donned our swim stuff and wandered along the beach to find some food as we had not eaten since our rice and fish lunch on the amazon the previous day!

All the bars in town are tourist places so everything pretty much is in English and Portuguese. We found a bar and ordered some fish dumplings (recommended by Fred!) and some chippies!!! Happy girl!

We went for a bake on the beach (4pm and still HOT!!) and then a wander in some tat shops! Now normally I object to James calling them tat shops, but this is tat even by my standards!!

The tiredness hit us so we retreated to the room for a nap before proper din dins.... We never made proper din dins. We half woke up about 8.30ish but decided sleeping was better than eating!! And slept we did!!!

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