Ilha Grande, Brazil, South America

I got up this morning after a terrible night’s sleep last night. There is a German girl staying in my room who was a little cold last night, so she turned off the A/C. That meant that within a half hour it was absolutely roasting. It also meant that mosquitos had a perfect place to hang out and come bite me. So I was up for most of the night sweating and swatting mosquitos away from my ears. This was made even more annoying by the fact that I paid extra to be in a room with A/C, and it wasn’t even on! I would have turned it on, but of course the switch was right over the German girl’s bed, so I couldn’t reach it. Very annoying!

I went to the lobby at 8:30am and was pleasantly surprised with the breakfast that was served. Fresh juice, some melons, bread, jam, and cereals. Not a bad breakfast for such a crappy hostel. I finished breakfast, grabbed my stuff for the day and headed out to meet the rest of the gang. We met up at 9am and we decided that the weather was good enough to go on this trip, so we paid our money and hung out until the boat left at 10am.

There was a decent sized group of us, about 15, but most of the other people couldn’t speak english at all. The weather didn’t end up being that great, but the rain held off for the day, so it was okay. We were just afraid if we put this off until tomorrow that it would be raining then and we wouldn’t want to go at all.

We made our first stop at a small island where there was no beach. It was called Jorge Greco and this was the one spot today where we had a chance of seeing dolphins. Unfortunately we weren’t lucky enough to see any, but we got to jump in the water and go snorkeling for a bit, so that was cool. We moved on to the next spot and this was a proper beach. It was a pretty long beach called Two Rivers, and that’s because on each end of the beach is a river. Pretty obvious. It was really beautiful, and we spent a bit of time here at this stop. We walked over to an old prison that is now a museum first, and then went to have lunch at this little “restaurant”. The museum wasn’t great because most of the stuff was only in Portuguese. The restaurant wasn’t much of a restaurant, just a few plastic tables and chairs outside, but the food they made was pretty good.

We had a bit of time to hang out on the beach, and then we headed off to our third spot which was another cove without much of a beach called Caxadaco. We got to jump off the boat and snorkel again, but it was just like the first stop we had. Nothing too interesting in the water, just some small fish without much color. We moved on to our last spot and this was the most impressive for me. This was a huge beach called Lopes Mendes, and it is the most famous beach on Ilha Grande. It’s actually on the list of the top 10 beaches in the world. It didn’t look that nice today, but I think that’s just because of the weather. I have a feeling that if we had blue skies and sun, it would be absolutely stunning.

We spent about an hour there and then had to head back to the main town of Abraao. I was pretty exhausted by the time we got back because I hadn’t slept at all last night and then we’d been kept pretty busy all day. I wanted nothing more than to come back to the hostel and take a nap, but that just wasn’t possible. I got back to the room and there were two girls from Sweden getting ready to go out, but they took forever. They also wanted to talk a lot, even though I think I made it very obvious that I was trying to sleep. So after about an hour of being in there and not sleeping, I decided to get up.

I got a shower, got ready for dinner, and went to the lobby to try to use the wifi. They wifi at this place absolutely sucks, and there’s nothing I can do about it. It doesn’t matter where I sit or stand, it just doesn’t work. I thought it might be the whole island that has bad internet, but Gray says theirs works at their pousada, so it’s just a problem at my crappy hostel.

The four of us met up at 8pm at the same tour shop that we had met at this morning and decided to go for pizza. Our timing wasn’t great though because at 7:30pm it was pretty nice out, but at 8pm there were torrential downpours. It was a little ridiculous. It was only a four minute walk from my hostel to the meeting place, and I was completely soaked by the time I got there. Luckily, in this heat your clothes dry off in no time. We went to a restaurant called Fornilha and we had some really awesome pizzas. We ordered two large Mexican Calibresa pizzas, which had sausage and onion, with a little Mexican spice to it, and they were amazing. The pizzas looked really big, but it was such a thin crust that they really weren’t too much for us.

We contemplated getting a third pizza, but Jo also had it in her mind that she wanted a crepe with Nutella, so we decided to go find that instead. We went to a place that was recommended called Pato Crepes, and they did not disappoint. All four of us had crepes, and we all loved them. They were a little expensive, but a perfect way to end a very nice day. And it was also lucky that on our way back to our hostels, the rain had stopped, so I am not completely soaked and getting ready for bed. It’s about 11pm now and I’ve noticed that everyone in my room is asleep again, and tonight our bathroom doesn’t work. No water in the sink or the toilet. This place is getting better and better!