Diving off Ilha Grande

Diving off Ilha Grande

Ilha Grande, Brazil, South America

I got the chance to go diving today, and it was really fun. I wasn’t sure how the weather was going to be this morning, especially after the downpours we got last night, but it was actually very nice. I got up this morning to find that there was absolutely no water at the hostel, so not only could I not get a shower, but I also couldn’t flush the toilet. This place sucks! The wifi also is still not working, so that’s three days in a row. They’ll be getting a pretty poor review after this, that’s for sure.

I went to meet for diving at 8:45am, and we finally got moving around 9:05am. I met another American on the dive boat named Nick, he’s traveling around South America for three weeks. There were a few of us with dive certificates, and a few just taking their first fun dives. I went out with Nick, a Finnish guy, and our instructor whose name I couldn’t pronounce, or spell.

When we first got in the water the visibility was great, and I was really impressed compared to Paraty. Unfortunately, about five minutes after we got in the water, the currents changed or something, and we went from visibility of about 8m to about 3m. It was a really shame, because at the start we saw some cool fish that I had never seen before, and I thought it was going to be a really great dive.

I saw a fish that the instructor later called a “fake flyer”, but I doubt that is the real name of it. It looked like the body of a puffer fish, but it just hung out down on the sea floor. When it realized that there were people coming, it would start to move and huge wings would fan out from the sides and the wings had an incredible blue color on the end of them. It was really beautiful. At one point we saw dozens of them together, and they were very cool looking.

After the visibility went bad, we had to spend most of the time fighting the current to get back to the boat. It certainly wasn’t ideal conditions, but it was still nice to get in the water for a while. We had some snacks on the boat in between dives, and we moved from one small island over to another island. Unfortunately the visibility at the second dive spot was even worse than the first. We got in and had visibility of maybe 6m and it got down to 2m at the worst part. We even lost our instructor a couple of times, and once she even had to go up to the surface to see where we were because she was lost! It was pretty bad.

We finally got back onto the boat and headed back to land. The weather was quickly turning and it went from a beautifully sunny morning, to a very cloudy early afternoon. As soon as I got off the boat I felt the first rain drops of the day. It actually just misted a little bit and didn’t start raining, so it was fine. I came back to the hostel and my other roommates were gone so I had the chance to take a little nap and just rest in the room.

I got up after my little rest and checked my messages in the lobby to see that Gray and Jo had said they were going into town to get something to eat. The timing worked out perfectly and I was able to go meet them at Biergarten and get something to eat because the food on the boat wasn’t exactly a lunch. After lunch we went to a little beach bar and sat in some adirondack chairs and had some caipirinhas on the beach. It was really nice. We met up with Madalena after the first round of drinks and we all went to a turkish bar to have the second round. While we were sitting in there it started to rain like crazy again, so it was a good thing we didn’t have far to go for dinner.

After our second drink we headed next door to Fornilha again for some of that Mexican Calibresa pizza. It was just as excellent tonight as it was last night, maybe better. I think the caipirinhas really worked up an appetite for us. After dinner we split up and went back to our hostels, and it’s only about 11pm now and I’m already back. I’m pretty surprised that I feel a little buzzed after just a couple of drinks, but those caipirinhas were really strong. Then with the big beer at dinner, that really hit me. I’m hoping I won’t be hungover in the morning because we’re getting the boat to the mainland to head to Rio, and I don’t want to be on that boat hungover.

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