Alpaca Backpackers

Today we woke up in possibly one of the worst ways possible. Imagine, you’re lying in bed asleep surrounded by beautiful trees and plants, the sound of tweeting and chirping, and then you feel a tickle on your leg. The tickle of a moving creature. I looked down to find a giant COCKROACH crawling up mine and Jakes’ legs.

So as you can imagine all hell breaks loose at this point – trying to find a cup to put it in, debating whether it’s ethical to kill it. The kind of decisions you don’t want to make at 5am. After much deliberation and some screaming Jake removed the cockroach successfully without and further reappearances (yet).

After the snooze that followed we headed over to the local beach. It was hot, too hot. We sheltered under the shade and chilled, watching the crabs emerge from the sand and muddy banks.

Later on in the day we went on a walking tour through air bnb experiences (amazing platform for booking things to do by the way). We walked around the cute little cobbled streets of Paraty, marvelling in it’s beauty. The couple hosting the tour we’re cool, the kind of people you would expect to see playing some kind of exotic instruments on the streets for money.

The history behind Paraty is very fascinating – it once served as an important trading port for gold, sugar, coffee and cachaça (an alcoholic spirit). Slave trade was once rife here, though. The streets were intentionally laid out in a haphazard fashion by slaves as they knew they would have a better chance of escaping – owners would not be able to chase them or lay weapons down to aim very easily.

When the tide is high here the streets flood. This is because the town was built below sea level to allow for the cleansing of the streets with sea water. Our guide explained to us that hundreds of years ago people would go to the toilet outside on the streets as they knew the water would wash their poops away. This only bred diseases such as cholera – not good.

Today the history surrounds and it often felt like we were being taken back. Horses and carriages roam the streets on history tours, and street performers entertain all day long. It was beautiful. We enjoyed a caipirinha (Brazilian cocktail) back at the hostel where the tour guide worked and chatted to some random folk. They were great. I often feel that those who have travelled are so interesting. I hope we will have some stories to tell when we finish our travels.

If we learnt anything from today, it was that marmosets (Brazilian ones anyway) apparently turn their noses away at tomatoes and lettuce. My friend from home told me off for feeding the tiny baby monkeys wholemeal bread, she said the do much better with watery veg and fruit as a second choice. The trouble is, these monkeys just seem to have a sweet tooth. I understand – I’d much rather bananas over tomatoes too.

Waking up to the sound of tiny squeaking monkeys is an aspect to this leg of the trip I could get used to – the mosquitoes, cockroaches, spiders and giant ants not so much.

We headed back into Paraty today to take more postcard pictures and enjoy the local cuisine. “What kind of exotic Brazilian food did you eat?” I hear you ask. Ham and cheese toasties. Yep you heard it right. We are ashamed of ourselves but they were very good. Sometimes you’ve got to go for the classics.

We had a look around some of the boutique shops, tempted to buy and ship home some of the cutest baby-grows for my nieces. The reality of this meant that the babies would probably be double the size by the time the clothes actually reached them.

Home for us at the moment is on what feels like farmland. You have to literally jump across muddy puddles or find stepping stones – at one point this resulted in my brilliant white converse turning a deep shade of brown. Aside from the monkeys and beautiful shrubbery, there’s also wild horses not too far away. We stopped to take pictures and discussed how we feel like we both might be partially scared of horses – it’s the unpredictability.

We spent the evening in a restaurant on the beach eating a BBQ meat platter. I mentioned to Jake that I was thinking about trying the vegetarian life, but was glad I hadn’t started yet because it would be so hard to do that here. We’ve already eaten some of the best meat we’ve ever had and we haven’t even hit Argentina yet. Good things to come!

Today was supposed to be a really boring day. The weather forecast was rubbish, and we figured it might be a good day to get flights and activities booked ahead for our ongoing destinations. That plan however, went swiftly out the window.

It had rained for about four or five hours solid, it was around midday at this point. We walked to the supermarket with our pack-a-mac’s on (great purchases) and grabbed some snacks mainly just to pass the time. Then we got back, attempted to hand wash our clothes using what we thought was hand wash (turned out to be fabric softener – our clothes still smell good so who cares), and ate our snacks.

We thought at this point, around 2pm, it would be a good idea to go for a low-key walk around the village. We wandered past some shops and restaurants, a church, a football pitch, and then stumbled across a sign for a waterfall and natural pool. Like the typical tourists we are, itching for cool photos, we followed the signs.

This lead us on to an actual trekking trail. We realised about 20 minutes in that we completely underestimated the duration of time it would take us to get to this waterfall. Nonetheless the trail was beautiful. It was so calm, green and vibrant. There was always something to look at. It was however, rather difficult at certain points!

There were some steeper sections to this trail where, if you lost your footing you could have easily ended up miles down a hill somewhere covered in mud. In Jake’s words, it was ankle breaking territory. We went slowly and tried to place our shoes in other people’s tracks, we quite literally put ourselves in other peoples shoe prints.

About 50 minutes into the trek we asked some bystanders on the same trial where we were leading to (because at this point we thought we’d gone wrong). To our surprise we were on the right track. This was lucky, because we were very close to turning back. We reached the waterfall, it was no iguasu falls, but it was still a thrilling end to the trail.

We were reluctant to dip into the freshwater lakes as you couldn’t see below, but we were peer pressured by some locals (who managed to persuade us without even speaking the same language) and surely enough we were in the fall. It was fun. It was actually a lot more forceful than expected, and physically took my breath away (in a good way).

The trek back was slippery, we both had a few of those gasping moments where you feel your foot go one way and your body the other. Luckily we made it out without a drop of mud on our bodies, our shoes not so. I was very proud of myself for packing some sugary jelly snakes as at this point we definitely needed them. What we thought would be a chilled day was actually an action packed one, as Jake said, this is what travelling is all about.

This morning was that kind of morning where you wake up and temporarily forget where you are. It was warm, the sound of the fan above us whirring and the crickets outside were waking for their daily duties. When I realised I was waking up on the beautiful little island of Ilha Grande (which stands for big island – so maybe not so little?) I was very excited for what the day had in store.

We stretched and then had a little gaze out of the balcony from the comfort of our hammock – very underrated by the way, why don’t we have more hammocks in England? By the time we were finished being bewildered by the beauty of the jungle surrounding us it was time for breakfast.

Another good hotel breakfast, lucky us! The fruit in Brazil so far has not disappointed – so juicy and flavoursome. We sat and chatted about what we should do today – we decided we’d have a semi lazy day and explore the local side of Ilha Grande. Since we’re staying in Vila Do Abraão we have most of the shops, restaurants and things to do here on our doorstep.

We had a wander up the coast and through the slippery paths, although I’m not sure you could call these paths, towards a little secluded beach where there were a few locals hanging out. We knew this was essentially a jungle island but we’re nonetheless surprised to see giant spiders and hundreds of little crawling bugs along the trial. We also saw some HUGE beetles, we didn’t even know if they actually were beetles, they were just big and scary.

The weather was pretty pants at the beach so we sat and had a coke in a little wooden bar – coke is universally easy to order no matter the language barrier right? We had previously read that Ilha Grande is the same price as Rio, we haven’t found this to be the case. It was about £11 for 2x cans of coke and 1x portion of chips. Prepare to spend more than in Rio, especially if eating and drinking on the beach.

We headed back after the sun peeped out of the clouds and we managed to get some valuable sunbathing in. Also Jake pee’d in the sea – I told him off for this. We played rummy on the balcony with a beer as testament to my Nan, who taught me how to play and beat me at this game countless times.

I’m excited for this part as I get to tell you about the AMAZING food we ate for dinner. We didn’t even do any research, we just got too hungry to look anything up and decided to go out on a whim – we ended up at Las Sorrentinas. This place serves pasta, which we’d usually avoid in a country not known to specialise in pasta dishes but it looked cute so we went in. The pasta was insanely good! Freshly made, I had the ham and leek carbonara, genuinely hands down the best pasta dish I’ve ever had – yes on Ilha Grande. Who knew?

Stopped off at the pharmacy on the way home (open at 8pm yay) to buy some hydrocortisone cream for my four horrendously itchy bites – what kind of Pharmacist doesn’t bring bite cream on holiday? Anyway I got a big tube and applied it on the walk home, which by the way, involved crossing a stream of water leading into the sea from the mountains. But it’s all good – we have taps outside our hotel room to clean our feet yay.

We woke up early this morning to ensure we made the most of the delicious breakfast at Windsor Leme. Imagine the hardest choice of your day being the decision on what to have in your freshly cooked omelette for breakky!

If there were awards for the best hotel breakfasts, this place should be in the running – fresh fruit, lots of yoghurts, a bowl of rich melted chocolate to drizzle on some mini pancakes, endless pastries, fresh bacon and eggs, mini cheese toasties and, believe it or not, chicken nuggets! Spoilt for choice – so naturally we just had a bit of everything.

Feeling satisfied with our full tums, we headed upstairs to pack our backpacks for our next adventure. Thank god for packing cubes. We checked out and got an Uber to the main bus station of Rio. Sometimes I wonder if using a mainstream taxi company is a bit of a cop out, but the truth is it’s so convenient, safe and cost effective it’s hard to miss out on this option. Even the locals seem to agree that Uber in Rio is a positive addition to the city. It cost us £4.34 for a 30 minute taxi trip to the bus station – not bad!

We pulled up outside Novo Rio Bus Terminal. It was very busy and bigger than we were expecting – but of course busses here replace most of the rail services we would be using at home, so it makes sense for it to be busy with locals and travellers alike. Manned with some police on parole, we didn’t feel unsafe. We bought our ticket for Ilha Grande via Conceição de Jacareí using the Costa Verde bus provider located on the right hand side of the station as you walk in. Not so easy to buy tickets, Google Translate is a good idea to have at the ready. Payed on card, no problemo. It’s great that this city is predominately cashless, we are grateful for this!

The journey to Conceição de Jacareí was surprisingly comfortable, the seats had a memory foam type feel – a little different from the smelly, sweaty school trip coaches we’ve all experienced back home. Aside from the passenger blasting trance music throughout, it wasn’t a bad journey.

We stepped off the coach to be greeted by some tour guides asking if we wanted to purchase private speed boat tickets to get to Ilha Grande, we were sucked by their persuasion and just 30 minutes later (and around £9 each) we arrived at the boat port of the most beautiful tropical island.

Think green, leafy, humid and vibrant – that’s Ilha Grande. A few restaurants with the chairs overlooking the sparkling seas, some workers restoring paintwork on wooden panelling. It didn’t feel very touristic, rather like a working village with lots of smiling faces and families playing in the sea.

A short 10 minute walk to our hotel, Pousada Naturale, and we were suspended in the trees with the sounds of crickets and tiny tweeting birds. A little different from the kind of tweeting we were used to at home. Stunning. Now time to chill and prepare for days of jungle exploration.

Join us as we travel around South America in 2020. We are Jake and Kerrianne, a couple from the UK who quit our jobs with hopes of having a year with less routine, more adventure!