Life in Flip Flops: Ilha Grande

Ooooooohhhhhhhh!! I got to recapitulate 2 weeks worth of travels! Madre mia! Vamos a ver...

Tuesday 13th January 2009

Was it a Tuesday? Whatever - we woke up in Isabela´s appartment in the neighbourhood of Botafogo (very close to the Pão de Azúcar) in Rio de Janeiro. We planned to go to Ilha Grande - a 193 km squared (tropical and virgin) which is 3 hours away from Rio de Janeiro. It has a reputation as one of the greatest beaches in Brazil (one in about 10,000 most beautiful beaches in Brazil...they all are!).


Nico, came over in the morning with some breakfast and in the space of one hour we booked ourselves into a campsite, found the bus times, packed our bags and were out the door to catch the bus to Angra dos Reis - the port village from where we shall take a bus.

We took a three hour bus ride to Angra dos Reis - a small fisherman´s town south west of Rio. From there we hoped onto a local´s fisher boat and enjoyed a sunny one hour ride to this famous tropical island.

On the left is the fisherman´s port - it smelt wonderful! The sign says that it is forbidden to camp outside of a designated campsite. Ilha Grande is a natural reserve and they take its conservation seriously. So seriously that there are no cars and no roads AND they only got electricity installed in the year 2001! Paying by credit card is hard to do. The place is virgin...

On the right, is an example of the type of boat we took.

I took time to meditate about life and digest everything that I have seen, done and have been feeling. Being so grandiose I fell asleep in the sun and woke up to see the shores of Ihla Grande.

Lush moutains with dense trees, turquoise green sea and deserted little creeks of sun tanned sand. How could a heavenly place be so close? I don´t think I actually realised what was there. I think at this point I was simply mesmerised.

We got off the boat and jumped straight into the sea and enjoyed a cool beer before heading to our campsite. We walked a couple of minutes, stopping every two seconds to take pictures, as every sight, every angle was worthy of a photograph - or more like, so beautiful that we wanted to forever capture it and never forget it.

Walking uphill through trees and little muddy paths, we reached one of the greenest campsites I have ever been to - Campsite "Bem Natural". Tired from witnessing nature´s preserved "spectacle", we got to the top of the hill just in time for sunset. We sat down on the terrace, with a celebratory beer and it was right then, right then and there that I could not keep my emotions in any longer. Tears built up in my eyes and the reality of this surreal environment, and my presence within it, hit me and I never felt such tranquil and overpowering joy as that moment.

We met a young Brazilian biologist by the name of Manuel who was walking through the whole of the island in the space of 10 days. He gave us ideas of discovering the island, its hidden caves and waterfalls - as opposed to lazing about all day on the beach. We decided to "do the walk" and discover the natural beauties of the island, instead of limiting ourselves to the sceneries and views.




A little incident happened that night, in the form of high winds and threats of tropical storms. We were anything but equiped for such an event. Thankfully Nathalie woke up (as opposed to my overpowering love of sleep which would have excluded me from any knowledge of flooding tents) and we witnessed our more prepared and organised neighbours covering their non waterproof tents with big plastic sheets. They kindly gave us one, which we attempted to fix it onto the tent with our bags and stones - which nevertheless got blown away by the wind - and we went back to sleep. All that was absoltuly useless to know - it didnt even rain!

We set off in the morning at approx. 10 am, after having decided to hike 11 km until we reach another creek (4 creeks away). Off we went (in our flip flops) for a very hilly and sometimes steep hike through the mountains. The walk was beautiful, refreshing and especially EXHAUSTING! It was very hot and we sweated all the day. Obviously we didnt have much water with us, so between the three we had to ration half a bottle of (now warm) water, in the hot humid weather. I think that from the combination of not having adequate shoes (and therefore hurting my poor little ankles), the lack of water, carrying our overnight bags, and the irregular rocky grounds - it was the hot humidity which caused us most fatigue. Nonetheless - well worth it!!

After god knows how many hours of walk and sweat and joyful torture we reached what I hope was our goal, but was only the first creek. There we guzzled water and cooled down. On the creek there was nothing but fishermen knitting up their nets and painting their boats while a couple of kids played in the sea.













Before heading off we were told about a small waterfall, so off we went for a little dip.

Indeed it was a very little waterfall, but its freshness and great necessity is not to be unrecognised!

We continued again to another creek, which was more beautiful than the last. Here our hunger grew and we began to flop onto the beach for a siesta. But luckily Nico spoke to a fisherman who accepted to give us a ride for free until the next beach. We sprung to the occasion and hoped onto the boat. Here he gave us fresh pineapple slices which must have been the most delicious ones I ever had!

On the photos below are: flowers that grow randomly on many trees, me on our saviour´s boat, the cute floor on the quay before catching the boat, the beautiful beach where we unfortunetly spent only a couple of minutes, and an example of the type of paths we walked on (with my resistant pedicure from Santos over 2 weeks ago).




This is all I have time to write for today. I should really write less but dont want to forget anything! All I can say is that we were incredibly lucky that day, cos not only could we not have made the planned 11km (I think we had managed 4km! In flip flops may I add...) and we received help from many people along the way AND found an accomodation in our final destination (which we did manage to get to in the end, thanks to a speed motor boat! :) We also ate like famished bushmen and did get a siesta on the beach.

That night we stayed at a chinese run hotel where there was a huge buffet and a party going on. We sampled some of their "cocktail" which was a combination of red wine, condensed milk and strawberry. Sounds revolting but you´d be surprised... it was so good that we were hanging aroung the jug, celebrating our luck and dancing all evening to 70s disco! It was a hilarious night filled with kids from some kind of kids camp. Here is the logo of our cool "pousada" (with mine and Nathalie´s feet!) We had a great time and went to bed, exhausted from our day´s effort. As the following morning was overcast, we decided to return to Rio (I think we were all secretly too tired to afront another day´s hike!)
We took a boat and a bus back to Rio on the 14th of January and once back at Isabela´s house - we crashed! Utterly crashed! We couldn´t even communicate properly together! Besides we needed the rest, as we had planned to go to Teresopolis the following day to hike and rock climb the natural reserve park!

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