Halfway Around and Back Again!

We all know from my previous post that Ilha Grande (“Big Island”) is a beautiful tropical paradise off the coast of the state of Rio de Janeiro. The island lives up to its name and is simply enormous. I managed to do a tour called halfway-and-back, where you spend the day going halfway around the island, visiting various places of interest en route.

You visit the north of the island on this tour. There are five beaches, and you spend about 50 minutes on each beach. The speed boat can take up to 18 people,  Luckily, on this day we only had about fourteen all together on our trip – perhaps due to the overcast day.

Lagoa Azul (“Blue Lagoon”), Praia do Amor (“Love Beach”), Saco do Ceu, and Camiringa are the beaches that I visited on the tour. Depending on the weather, the route can change. On the day I did the tour it was raining, but it was ok. It normally rains quite a lot on the island due to its tropical wet conditions, but often interspersed with lovely sunny intervals.

In between running between beaches, swimming, snorkeling, and getting really wet, we stopped for lunch in the middle of a swamp. It was the most iconic lunch I ever had, and to my surprise they had a vegetarian option (unusual in Brazil outside of the big cities), which was delicious, a lovely moqueca de banana de terra.

I promise this is my last post about Ilha Grande. I do have very good memories of all the unusual places I visited there. Beautiful!