Ilha Grande

OK, I´m finally out of Rio! As much as I loved it, I love even more to be gone. The trip was a magical combination of good luck and perseverance, and Natasha and I ended up at this great hostel... well, outside of it, in a tent. It´s beautiful.

We left Rio on the bus yesterday at 2, and figured we´d be here in time for the sunset. That was my goal the entire time of planning this leg of the trip anyway. Ilha Grande means big island, and that is just what we´ve planted ourselves on. There are a few bars, a ton of hostels and inns, and a tiny little town, on this massive island surrounded by beaches. So anyway.

The roads on the way here are really nice and you don´t do quite so much winding through mountains as between Rio and Sao Paulo, but there are still enough hairpin turns that, when the driver is trying to make record time, make you feel like you´re in a Formula 1 motor coach race. We were laughing saying that the driver had the same sense of urgency as us to see the sunset, so he was chasing it for us. I ended up sleeping almost the entire way then we got here just after 6. The last boat was meant to leave at 6, so we had to figure out how it was that we were going to get to the island. Turns out, the boat was leaving late, so we caught a taxi that sped us through the town on the mainland to the boat dock, and caught it in the nick of time. At that point, the sun was glowing that bright orangey-yellow it gets as it´s on its way down, so we were thanking the winds of fate for our luck in catching it! The boat trip was longer than expected, and absolutely beautiful. At a certain distance, mountains become indistinguishable from clouds in the misty haze from the salty humidity of the air, and when the sun was setting, the entire expanse of our view came alive in pink, purple, blue, orange..... ahhhh it was so perfect! The sea on the way here is incredibly cool looking, dotted with tiny islands along the way, and the coast line is really hilly, making for some really cool views.

Our original plan was to go from Rio to Sao Paulo, then we decided the night before we left that we didn´t want to go to SP again. Natasha said Ilha Grande, I said OK, and niether of us knew anything about it. So the morning before we left, I met this girl outside the hostel who had just come from here, and she recommended this particular hostel to us. It the last possible place on top of a hill, and the streets are pretty sandy so we were treking like mules in flip flops, sliding around a little, carrying our bags and sweating, haha. We were lucky enough that they had only 2 vacancies here, in a little tent close by. So we got settled, went out to find some companions in the hostel, then we hit a bar. It was a really cool outdoor bar with live music. The island is basically a tourist island - the kind of places I try to avoid when traveling, but it´s not a tourist TRAP, it just happens that you don´t come to an island full of beaches unless you´re on vacation. But we found some really good Brazilian music, one guy singing with a guitar and some others doing samba-beautiful. We´ve meet a cool couple-a Greek guy and Polish girl, a french guy, and this morning an Argentinian pair. We´re hiking 2 hours to a beach today. We could take a boat, but we thought you can take a boat anywhere, but you can only walk through the jungle to the beach here, so we´re walking.

So anyway, everything is beautiful here, surrounded by the jungle which is surrounded by the ocean. It smells like a salty jungle, I love it. I´ve got too many people waiting to use this to keep pecking away, so I´m gonig to be considerate.