Wednesday, 14 March 2012

Ilha Grande - March 13th

The showcase beach of Ilha Grande is Praia Lopes Mendes.  This beach is a 2 ½ hour walk from Abraao, but we are rested from our shorter day yesterday and head off.  Unlike the first day which was one long uphill followed by one long downhill, this is up and down as we pass over many headlands and through many beaches.  It has to be said that some of the beaches we passed by were amazing in their own right.  Although we only climbed to 205m today, with all the up and down I’m sure we surpassed the 325m of the first day, and unlike then when we walked on a dirt road, this is really a jungle trail.

We didn’t head directly to Lopes Mendes though.  We had heard that the beach next to it, Sao Antonio, was very good as well, so we went to it first.  And it was good.  Much smaller than the other beaches we had been on, it was good because there was only one other guy there when we got there, and even at its busiest, there was only 7 people there.  The water was good as well, so we stayed there for a few hours, recovering from our long walk.

After lunch we did go to Lopes Mendes.  This is a big beach, and is nice, but there is a crowd on it.  Despite that you can find a place to sit and the water is good.  The waves were pretty strong, but it wasn’t too deep so you could have fun in them.  We stayed there even though it began to cloud over, because we had a boat back booked for 17:00.  This wasn’t from this beach but one about 20 minutes away, but we didn’t really want to walk too much more.  It still took an hour to get back to Abraao on the boat.  Unfortunately the clouding over was so severe that it wasn’t really very good for taking pictures as we had hoped it might be.

In the evening we had a choice to make, go for the cheap all you can fit on a plate place, or the more expensive quality restaurant.  In the end quality won out over quantity and we went and had another great meal there.

No comments:

Post a Comment