Ilha Grande ❤️

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Within an hour of arriving to this quiet and beautiful island we decided to book another night and stay longer! Ilha Grande is only 3 hours and a ferry ride away from Rio, but the ambience feels like an ocean away. The island doesn’t have any motorized vehicles, only dirt roads throughout the village and hiking trails connect around the island. Water taxi is also an option to get around.



Our first night here we went to dinner and walked around the village to check it out. It started raining so we ducked inside this cute, little restaurant where live music was playing. We decided to have a few drinks to wait out the rain. The rain soon turned hurricane like and the awning outside the restaurant couldn’t withstand the volume of water and was collapsing. As the winds picked up the wooden windows of the restaurant started to fly off the hinges and the electricity was going out intermittently and the band just kept playing! We tried to wait it out for hours but it wasn’t getting any better so we decided to make a run for it!! And by run I mean barely being able to walk through the knee deep flood water and still try to keep track of our flip flops! To make it even more exciting we had to trek uphill to our hostel, which was like walking up a very fast flowing waterfall. We made it back soaking wet, as everyone at the hostel looked at us and said “Meu Deus”. Welcome to Ilha Grande!


Our first full day on the island, we took the water taxi to the other side of the island and trekking through the forest to the most popular beach on the island, Lopes Mendes. Since it had rained the night before our steep up and down trail was super slippery and very challenging. Pictured is us on the beach, with three solo Brazilian travelers we met; Luciana, Cannon, and Gabriela.  





The following day we did a waterfall hike, with our new Brazilian friend, Luciana! This was very challenging as it was super steep and the trail was very mountainous. Lots of up and downs, but lots of cool bamboo along the way. We finally made it though, only falling one time, and we were able to cool off in the waterfall before trekking to another beach to water taxi back. 





Upon taking the water taxi back, the boat police pulled us over! All was good tho, they were just checking papers. Another thing about the island, there are many dogs just running around, and they also water taxi back to town! 







Our final day on the island, we did an all day boat tour which went to four locations. We did a lot of snorkeling, lots of fish but we didn’t see the turtles we thought we were going to see. Pictured is our new friend Annalisa from Italy and Tony from Denver. Tony has been with us since day 1 and traveling just a few days behind us in each location! 





I was trying to not turn this blog into a food blog but this pizza 👍 I cant remember the name of the cheese but boy was it good! We will be in São Paulo for a couple days soon and everyone talks about the pizza there, if it’s as good as this, I’m so excited!!



Overall we LOVED Ilha Grande!!! 

Highlights- the rainstorm, the best self service açaí bar and boat trip!!
Low points- my I phone charger got stolen ☹️ and I got food poisoning our last night



Chao from your two favorite travelers! We are currently in Partay and headed to São Paulo in a couple days. 




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