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.
Alpaca Backpackers 