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Published: August 17th 2011
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We woke up on our final morning in Rio, packed up our stuff, had breakfast and then waited for our transfer to Ilha Grande, which is a small island just off the coast about 2 hours drive from Rio. Our transfer arrived and we got in for another near death ride to the port. After about 2 hours we arrived at a tiny port with a little boat waiting for us to take us the 45 minutes over to the island. We initially planned to stay there for 2 nights but as soon as we arrived and were greeted with the sight of a pristine beaches, little restuarants right on the beach and endless hills of junglesque forest, we immeadiately decided that we were here for the longhaul!
We walked about 5 minutes up the beach to our hostel, where we could literally walk straight out of our room onto the beach! Lovely, especially after all the chaos of Rio, it was nice to have a bit of peace and quiet. As the guy that managed the hostel was showing us to our room, he suddenly pointed to a huge fruit thing up a tree and asked us if we
had ever tried one..tried one, we exclaimed, weve never even seen one of those!! Then in a Ray Mears style manouver, he proceeded to leap over the fench, climb up the tree and chop it down with a knife he just happned to have handy! He carried it back to a table and then got a huge knife from the kitchen and attempted to hack into the thing, it was really weird inside and hard to explain...so check out the picture... it was so big you could pretty much feed a family of four on it! Ben loved it and ate loads, I quite liked it but couldnt really figure out how to eat it properly so just nibbled on a little bit.
We hung around the hostel for a bit on the sundeck and then later on went for some dinner in an amazing restuarant right on the beach called Lau e Mar, where they give you massive fish stew things for two people with rice etc. but Ben insisted this wouldnt be enough so we ordered more food, which we were then too full to eat...typical!
Next morning we decided to trek it to one of
the islands 102(!!!) beaches which was an 8.3km walk away!! But we had been told that it was supposed to be one the most beautiful beaches in the world so thought it would be worth it. We were told it would take about 2 and a half hours to get there but we werent warned that half of the way was UPHILL!! I pretty much complained the whole way, nearly gave up, nearly cried and sweated A LOT but eventually we made it there!! And it was pretty beautiful, it was almost completely deserted and it was bordered by thick forest and we felt like we had stepped into the set of Lost, I half expected a polar bear to come walking past any minute or some black smoke to appear from the forest and eat someone! We set up our perch a little way up the beach and realxed after our looong walk, however, luck wasnt on our side as about an hour later the weather suddenly turned into black clouds and hurricane force winds!! Not ideal on a beach, we tried to brave it for a bit considering we had walked so far but had to give up
and accept defeat and face that long 2 and a half hour trek back! I wish I could say I complained less on the way back but alas, I dont like walking!
When we finally arrived back at the hostel they had an all you can eat BBQ for dinner so we ate loads and then went to bed pretty early as we were so knackered!
When we woke up the next morning, legs severely aching, we said, NO we will NOT walk anywhere today. We had breakfast, which has now become a bit of a routine, I eat one ham and cheese roll (lunch for breakfast! really! why do they do this!) and I have to sit there and wait while Ben eats his body weight in a variety of melons. After breakfast we settled ourselves down on a little beach right next to our hostel and chilled out there all day. We went to a little kebab place for dinner and had a couple of drinks and decided that we should just get drunk that night just for the hell of it...well thats what I thought the plan was...Ben on the other hand was not aware or not taking part in this plan. So I proceeded to get incredibly hammered whilst Ben remained distinctly sober and I had to be put to bed rather early...oops. We did meet some very nice Dutch people though.
Next morning, Ben woke up at a normal time, I stayed in bed hungover and by the time I got up, we didnt really have time to trek to anymore beaches so we just went back to beach from the day before and sunbathed again. For lunch we tried to order some fish and chips from a little beach front cafe but I think we ordered it wrong and ended up with an entire battered fish, which cost us 30pounds!! So much for budgeting! That night we went to another kilo restuarant, had a couple of drinks and went to bed, nothing exciting really.
The morning of our transfer, we woke up and followed said breakfast routine, checked out and had to wait until 1pm for our transfer back to mainland Brazil. They said that something was wrong with the normal boat they use so they took us over on speed boats! They are definitely the way the travel the waves!! It only took us about 10 minutes to get back to shore! Then we got into a tansfer bus and on the road to Paraty..our next destination...
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George Furse
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Epic Pictures
You guys are so lucky, the pictures look amazing. Keep updating the blog.