Paradise...

And Ilha Grande really is. We left yesterday, luckily it was raining otherwise it would have been VERY hard to say goodbye. 4 days of sun, sea, diving and having good, clean, fun nights have certainly helped the post-Rio exhaustion that everyone seems to get - it´s been awesome.

The location of our hostel helped - it was a gorgeous place RIGHT on the water´s edge, with a view most people would have paid much, much more to wake up to each day. There was a great little bar area, and all the people there (much like Rio) were lots of fun and very lovely.

The main town is really sweet - condescending as that sounds, there´s no other way to describe it. It´s almost like Disney Brasil - there are little wooden signposts that point you to various pousadas (like Brasilian B+Bs), gorgeous little shops and houses painted in gentle pastel colours and set admist palm groves, beachfront restaurants (with really adorably incompetent waiters, who act like they´ve never done it before and are only filling in for a friend) and a little white churche in the centre of the main plaza. So pretty.

The beaches are to be expected - but still stunning. They´re fringed by palm trees and looking out over the green sea, which is cold but refreshingly so. The weather has been awesome apart from one day, when we were diving so it didn´t matter! The diving was great - one fab wreck dive with some great swimthroughs, appropriately eerie and a well-preserved site so very identifiable, and the second a reef dive with lots of great life (particularly 2 HUGE angelfish and a spectacular flying gurnard with vivid blue ´wings´). The nightlife is great - on Saturday we could chose between a full-blown Brasilian rave (got to be seen to be believed) or a fiesta in the main square (where it was also free to get in) - so caipirinhas were a-flowing!

We had to leave eventually - and after a nice long 20 hour trip, we´ve made it further south to Florianopolis, which is to be our last stop before we head over the border to Argentina at Foz do Iguaçu. More from here...