Blogs from Ilha Grande, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, South America - page 15

Hi everyone! You will be pleased to know that I woke up on Monday feeling great, thankfully my unfortunate (and painful) reaction to the Caipirinhas was short-lived. So, we decided to head off to Ilha Grande that morning. It was a gorgeous day and we were all set for paradise! We had booked a double room at the Aqua´rio Hostel and when they offered us a "direct" transfer from our hostel in Rio for 60 Reais each, we jumped at the chance- how could we decline such an offer when they promised us a swift journey to Angra dos Reis and a 12 minute speedboat ride from there, direct to the hostel. So off we went in the little white van... 45 minutes later we stopped to pick up another two transferees. Transferees from hell... complete ... read more

Hola...hope you are all well. After the hustle and bustle of Rio we decided on a week of relaxing on the beach and headed for Ilha Grande. It was paradise, there was only one car on the island which belonged to the police man and we had to walk across the beach to get from our hostel to the restaurants and shops. It was quite basic on the island and even after a week of cold showers it was still hard to leave. We got quite into the local food there and can report that Jake can now eat Dorado fish, tuna, melon and passion fruit (a whole new world is literally opening up to him). Our hostel did an all you can eat BBQ in the evenings for 20 reais which sounded good in theory ... read more

Yippeeee!!!! Finally we´ve found some sunshine on the island of Ilha Grande (pronounced Gran-gee, Portugues is officially a crazy language!), about two hours south of Rio. The island is absolutely beautiful, not the most impressive beaches in the world, but the setting is just gorgeous, backed by impressive rainforest reminisant of Cape Tribulation in Australia. We didn´t have the best start on the island, as we arrived on the island at full moon when the sea goes mental and high tide engulfs all of the beach and some of the inland walkways. It was a blessing in disguise because it meant we couldn´t walk around to the hostel we´d book and found ourselves a much better located posada (guesthouse) for the same price that was absolutely lovely. We figured to hell with socialising in a hostel, ... read more

(Nick) Thursday 21st June - the Uruguayan town of Fray Bentos is on the must see list of any wandering lover of meat pies. Unfortunately I missed the place last time, with Richie in Jan 2005, due to time constraints (though we did consider hiring mopeds to get there). The second time I missed Fray Bentos was in the early hours of this morning, where we dropped off some bleary-eyed passengers around 03h30 before arriving in Montevideo around 07h00. Having checked into our hotel, we went on a day trip to Colonia del Sacramento, one of the key places of interest in the country. Ironically, the weather we had this time (in Uruguay´s winter) was better than when we were there last time in Summer; there were bright blue skies and verdant fields, ideal for the ... read more

Seems like a while since i did one of these, however here goes... Ended up heading to an island down south to learn some scuba-skills, which involved (or so we thought) getting on a bus outside our hostel, and everything beign sorted out for us. Not the case when the entirely useless man working in the hostel doens't actually book anything, and keeps telling you it will all be fine. Well, daniel, it won't be. idiot. Turns out that the bus we'd smugly been telling a couple of swedes that we were going to get came and picked them up, but didn't have room for us. Rubbish. Ended up getting a cab to the coach station, and getting tickets (in portuguese) down to Ihla Grande. Myself and Liam this is, althoguh we picked up an american ... read more