Advertisement
Published: February 2nd 2008
Edit Blog Post
View from our hostel
Ilha Grande - Beautiful! This final blog is loooooonnng overdue as we have been at home for about 6 weeks now! So will try and get it finished.
After Rio we caught the bus down to Ilha Grande (the big island) off the coast between Rio and Sao Paulo. This was a pretty easy transfer compared to some we had on this trip, and only a few hours later we arrived on the ferry to the island.
Ilha Grande is a beautiful island, with no cars, and no ATMS, just beaches, a few shops and restaurants - the perfect place to relax before heading home.
We stayed at a hostel called Aquario - seems to be the place where most people stay here, right on the beach with a natural swimming pool made by building a few stone walls into the sea to make a square. The only downside was the 1km walk from the ferry (as I mentioned before no taxis!), so we had to trudge along the sand in the boiling heat with our packs on. But luckily it was still pretty early when we arrived so it was slightly less hot.
We spent three days on the island,
Dining El Fresco
On the beach on Ilha Grande loads of swimming, eating, reading books, and lying around in hammocks. The hostel does great BBQ nights as well, and has the most gorgeous little private beach (see the view through the window!). Not a lot else to tell here, but this place was one of the most beautiful we have been to on this trip.
The weather was pretty perfect too, so we were not prepared for the rain that was to come.
Next stop was Paraty - a little further down the coast towards Sao Paulo. Paraty is a cute little Portuguese colonial town and is the gateway to loads of islands and beaches just off the coast. Most people come here to take boat trips, and to visit all the close beaches nearby on the mainland. The beach in Paraty itself is nothing special, but the islands are magnificent.
We arrived in Paraty to a whole lot of rain (shock horror!), but naively thought it would pass overnight. We were booked in to stay at Paraty Hostel Casa do Rio but ended up moving out after one night. The layout is not great, and common social areas being right outside the bedrooms, lets just say
we didn't get much sleep with a few drunken Europeans actually sitting on our bedroom doorstep drinking most of the night. (Also the bed was sooo uncomfortable! - tip for anyone planning on staying here). We did ask to move rooms, but the hostel didn't want a bar of it - so we left and found a much better place in the old town for cheaper, which was bigger, quieter, and closer to everything - sweet.
We had five nights booked in Paraty, imagining we would spend these days going on boat trips, exploring the other beaches, etc.
So day two - we moved hostels in the morning, and then tried to explore the town in the afternoon but got caught in a massive rain shower (without umbrella), so had to huddle in store doorways waiting for it to let off so we could get inside somewhere dry.
Day three - Rain, rain, rain - by now we were starting to get a bit of cabin fever, there is only so much reading and sitting around in cafes you can do, and it had been raining non stop for three days now. The boat trips weren't running, we
looked in every single shop in the town (well it felt like it!), saw every pair of Havaianas, and were seriously wondering if we should head straight down to Sao Paulo early.
Luckily on the fourth day it decided to fine up and we got onto a boat trip for the day.
The boat trip was awesome! They are big old yachts (sloops?) and have cushions all over the deck so you can lie back and relax while sailing around the islands. We got on a tour with no other English speaking people - looked like it was all Brazilians, which was interesting as our Portuguese is next to nothing! The boat stopped at four different places for snorkelling, swimming, lunch, and they were all beautiful. The crew threw cooked rice into the water to attract the fish so you could swim right in the middle of them, and we saw some huge orange starfish as well. The water is so so clear, and warm, and the weather was amazing (got a bit excited at it being sunny, and alas, by the time we decided it would be good to put on sunscreen... it was too late - ouch!).
Day five in Paraty we decided to catch a bus to one of the beaches nearby (called Trinidad), it takes about 40 minutes on the bus, well it usually does, our bus got a flat so we had to walk the last 20min or so. Trinidad has 4 separate beaches along a peninsula, one has a good surf break, some have a little bit of surf and some are still, all have white squeaky sand - beautiful. So our final day on the coast was great, we got back to Paraty, packed our bags for what would hopefully be the last time (read: Squashed everything in and forced zip closed), and got ready to catch the bus to Sao Paulo for one night before getting on the plane home.
Nothing to tell of Sao Paulo except that the taxi from the bus station to the hotel was expensive and the city looked sprawling and massive from what we saw. We checked into our four star luxury room with massive bed and bathroom and drank mini bar beer and watched satellite TV for the evening. Next morning the first leg home!
This trip has been so amazing, and we
have been to so many places and seen so many things, but we were also really looking forward to getting home to NZ. We hope you have enjoyed reading our blogs, and seeing what we have been doing for the past four months, it's such a great way to look back and remember our experiences as well.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.096s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 10; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0536s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Sam P
non-member comment
thanks for the blogs guys :-)
Miks and Jas; thanks for blogging your big adventure, its been great reading and travelling vicariously with you! especially as we are a bit UK-bound at present as baby Angus has no visa to get back into the UK, so we cant take him abroad until later this year :-) hope you get settled in NZ; Ems and I will be moving back to Auckland in about 2 yrs. i doubt we'll be able to go trekking in South America but we might take in something a bit more tame by way of adventure on the way home :-) look forward to catching up again soon; regards, Sam