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As I write this, it is now our 7th and final night here in Ilha Grande, Brazil. Grande meaning 'big' in Portuguese is for a sure a correct way to name the island. So big in fact that to get to the beaches, you need to catch a boat or walk a long way. Spending the last seven days here has been fantastic and we would love to stay on and explore more around here. The weather has been hot and sunny every day, the people are friendly, the food is great and there are an abundant amount of beaches to visits day after day. One of the locals we met has been living here for 12 years! So different to the life I know in Melbourne.
To arrive on the island, we caught a bus from Sao Paulo to Angra dos Reis, where we then caught a ferry from the main land to the island. This was a few days after Carnaval had finished and so it was still a very busy time. We hadn't booked any accommodation here but there were still a few rooms available and we walked around and checked out the prices of a few places. It is surprising how much nicer some places are that still charge roughly the same price for places not as good. We ended up staying in a couple of places in the end, a long story not really worth telling but they all had their pros and cons. We have stayed in 16 different places now since we started our travels. Packing, unpacking and getting used to differnent levels of comfort is becoming more and more normal.
….. It is now a few days later and I am back to writing this blog about Ilha Grande. Time is so scarce for me to sit down and do this but it's important to me so I make the time when I can. When we do have time to spend on the computer, it is more importantly needed to plan the next destination so blogging doesn't always come first. We're perhaps doing a little too much, but talking to other travellers here, we are actually spending more time in places than a lot of other people. We want to make the most of each destination, so spending a day not doing anything feels like a waste of time, so we are out and about every day. But we are now changing this thought and will be spending some more time taking it easy. I am certain that the last six weeks is the most amount of walking I have ever done.
Ilha Grande was by far the most relaxing time of the trip so far. Highlights would be swimming in the crystal clear waters at Lopez Mendes, eating freshly cooked fish, tasting the delicious Acai berry, taking in the beautiful tropical scenery and feeding the fish while snorkelling at Blue Lagoon. One night we had one of the best pizzas I have tasted on the beach, while near us we saw our first capoeira dance. I have never seen this style of dancing before and it was memorising. Almost like karate and dancing, but much more gentle. It starts of very slow and then becomes much faster.
Beach life here is far different to how I know it in Australia. It is however more adventurous and the weather is much more consistent. To get to the popular surf beach, Lopez Mendes, you need to get a boat that takes about an hour, and then walk for roughly 20 minutes through the forest to the other side. Along the way we saw the cutest little monkeys that where not much bigger than my hand. Lopez Mendes was so nice we ended up coming back here another day, and on the boat, we met two Australians who lived just around the corner from us in Richmond! We never actually met one another in Richmond but found out this information while chatting on the boat. We spent the afternoon together on the beach, but sadly these guys where leaving that day.
Adventurous moments of our time here would be the day we walked to one of the beaches on the other side of the island. We had a map and it said it should take roughly 2 and ½ hours to get to the other side. We were up for the walk and so off we went, but what we didn't expect was how steep the walk really was. It was getting pretty tiring already and then while we were walking, just a few meters ahead of us was a huge snake! It would have been about 3 meters long and it was black and thick. We saw it there, stopped and turned around the other way and luckily so did the snake. We have never seen a snake in the wild before, and this one was massive. We continued our walk though and kept an eye out for creatures along the way. We were getting pretty high up and the cloud cover was very low in some points which created beautiful scenery. After 2 hours and a bit we finally got to the beach and it was picturesque! The beach here is called Dois Rios and it has two rivers that flow out of the forest on both sides of the beach. There are large rocks in the river where people were jumping into the water, a little bar in the distance playing music, palm trees scattered around and then there is the sparkling blue ocean. It is amazing, probably one of the most beautiful beaches I have seen. A place where you would come and spend the day or afternoon and probably not want to leave. But we had one problem, it was already the middle of the afternoon and we had to make sure we could either get a boat back or leave enough time to walk back before it got dark. There was only one boat taking people back and we didn't have enough money! Nooo! We had to walk back over the steep mountain and we only got to spend about 20 minutes on the beach. The walk back felt like forever but we made it. We should have left earlier to make the most of it, but we can't plan every day perfectly.
Another day we booked what we thought was a snorkelling trip, but it was really more of a boat trip. We still got to go snorkelling, but we didn't really see that many fish. We spent a lot of time on the boat, however there was nice scenery and we stopped at some tropical islands for a swim along the way so can't really complain about that. We also stopped at Blue Lagoon where fish almost ate out of our hands. We fed them while snorkelling and they came up so close to us. This was a nice day but wasn't really what we had in mind, we had hoped for more snorkelling and less time on the boat.
So after 7 days it was time to pack up again and we left feeling more refreshed than how we did when we arrived. Leaving a beach holiday I find has mixed feelings of feeling recharged and refreshed, but somewhat sad about leaving the beach behind. But we aren't going home, we are just going to another destination, Rio de Janeiro! Another city to explore, more maps to digest, more sights to see, foods to taste and yet another bed to sleep in. I just hope my legs can get used to all this walking!
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Pamela Neill With all that walking you two will come home very fit I'm thinking!