An
island 150KM south of Rio and off of the coast, Ilha Grande is
supposed to have some of Brazil's best beaches. We had managed to
find an apartment to rent for a week over Christmas. It's really
nice with a good view of the sea, the one problem being it's really
damp. Today it's raining (which is why I'm writing this) and we
found out why it's damp. The roof isn't too great at it's job!
Anyway Ilha Grande is lovely. It only has a few small settlements,
we are staying in the largest, Abrao.
We spent the first full day
(23rd)
preparing for Christmas. They don't seem to be that into it over
here, even though they're all religious, so we had to make our own
decorations, which I think are pretty good. On Christmas Eve we went
to a beach called Lopes Mendes. We decided to walk there through the
forest as there is a well-trodden path to it. After about 10 minutes
Dave was worried when I started swearing and gasping. A HUGE bloody
snake went across the path right in front of me. A local guy who
walked past us a minute later said not to worry as the green ones
aren't dangerous, he tried to pick it up, thankfully the snake got
away. This snake was really skinny but must have been a metre and a
half long. It scared the crap out of me. The local guy told us that
the brown ones are dangerous and we should watch out for them, easier
said than done when walking through a rainforest where EVERYTHING
looks like a brown snake. We spent the next 2 and a bit hours
walking and watching for snakes. Thankfully we didn't see any more,
although we did see some kind of monkey thing, haven't worked out
what it was yet. The beach was definitely worth the walk. It was
beautiful. 2KM of perfect white sand and a really blue warm sea with
big waves. Needless to say we both spent too long in the sun and got
burnt but it was a great day.
Christmas day. What to do? Skype the
family, send a couple of e-mails. Drink. Drink. Drink. We cooked a
nice roast dinner (although they don't have turkeys here, or gravy
apparently) and had a substantial amount of beer. Just like home.
What wasn't like home was that we ate outside on a balcony looking
out to sea. Have to admit I missed the cold weather a little bit as
it didn't seem Christmasy without it but I'm over that now and
looking forward to the sunshine tomorrow.
