Ilha Grande - March 11th

Ilha Grande is a big island as the name would suggest.  There is really only one town, Abraao, on the north side of the island, and although its beach is quite nice, being close to the town has meant it isn’t really a place to spend the day.  So the only way to see the islands 102 beaches is to get out and walk.  So today we walk to Praia Dois Rios, which we are told is 6 km away on the other side of the island.

As Abraao is backed by mountains, we expect the path to Dois Rios to be uphill, and it is.  But it isn’t a path, it is a road, and we even encounter traffic, a van, a tractor, and a caterpillar digger.  So much for this being a no car island (although technically these are not cars).  The road goes up to 325m and then down again.  However it takes us longer than I expected, but this is not surprising as it turns out it was almost 9km.

Still the beach itself is worth it, as its name suggests it lies between two rivers, but they are about 1km apart, leaving a large beach in between.  You can swim in the sea or in the rivers, and it is quite amazing.  The only strange thing is that there is a whole faculty of the University of Rio De Janeiro just behind the beach.  But it doesn’t detract from it.

A lot of the beaches have boats ferrying people back from them, but this one doesn’t, so in the evening we have to do the same walk back.  As usual it has clouded over, and in fact it rains a bit, so we actually do it a lot faster, and all this despite bumping into a group of Polish travellers and chatting to them for a bit.  In the evening we find what trip advisor advises us is the best restaurant on the island and go for a dinner there which has to be said was pretty good for an island.  Strangely although an island, there isn’t much fishing going on as all the meat dishes seem to cost less than the fish, so it looks like everything here is imported.