Ilha Grande: Part 5 of 5

For those thinking of going to Ilha Grande one day, here is what you stand to gain, if you manage to see the sun and find the right path. Pretty okay I guess:

Photo courtesy of here.

I took my time on the way back, looking at flowers and bugs and hoping to see some kind of wildlife even though it was raining. Initially I didn’t see much, but I kept hearing chirping noises in the trees. The chatter turned out to be monkeys, dozens of them. In fact, I realized that I had heard these chirping noises pretty much the whole time I had been walking but I hadn’t once just stood still and looked up.


If you’ve ever experienced dense tropical foliage, then you probably know how annoying it is to try to take pictures up into the trees. Everything is either too dark, too fuzzy or both. Worse, trying to capture animals leaping about overhead, without a good quality camera, is nearly impossible. But after some persistence, I got this:

Not an award winner, but clearly a monkey, beating out my other hundred or so photos by factors of between 50 and 500,000. I do not envy nature photographers; that is one brutal job.


I spent the next hour walking with my eyes on the trees, slipping, and falling a couple of times on the muddy path, once almost taking out a couple coming up the hill towards me. Soaking wet and covered in mud, but triumphant with my monkey photo, I returned to town and was ready to make plans to continue on to Rio.


Ilha Grande has a lot going for it. If we had had better weather, we probably would have stayed a bit longer and tried to get further away from the main town. You can hire a guide to take you to some more far-flung areas of the island, and there are small boat tours that might be worth taking when it isn’t raining. There are a whopping 102 beaches on the island. Bird-watchers and monkey photographers will love the immense, relatively untouched national park. The down side is the cruise ships that come in every day from December to March. The woman who ran the hotel told us that May is a much nicer time to go. Although it’s colder, there is less rain and no cruise ships. The town is busy, but friendly enough and I still feel that, in spite of the down sides, it was a worthwhile stop.


One final view of the main bay without cruise ship clutter.

Next stop, Rio.

Ilha Grande 4

The next day my wife was feeling lethargic and I was feeling adventurous, so I left her to the balcony and the beach to go jungle romping. I had two goals. I wanted to find a waterfall and I wanted to get a look at Praia Lopes Mendes, supposedly one of the most beautiful beaches in Brazil. I took a quick look at my guidebook before heading out to see if they had any recommendations. All it said was, if you head off the beaten track, “poorly marked trails and poisonous snakes can make things challenging.” Well, I didn’t plan to go off the main waterfall and beach paths so no problem. Of course, about 25 minutes out of town, the beaten track starts to look less and less well-trodden. Gradually the edges of the path close in, to points where you have to walk through high grasses and shrubs. Perfect “challenging” poisonous snake territory. I’m not normally one to be easily worried about silly things like The World’s Deadliest Creatures (!) but there I was in middle of nowhere, by myself, no longer entirely sure I was going in the right direction, imagining snakes in every bit of shrubbery, trying to remember what you’re supposed to do in the event of a snake bite. . . When suddenly, a couple bursts from a bush around a corner of the path, wearing nothing but their respective Brazilian swimsuits (read: tiny bikini and not-quite thong-like mankini). If they didn’t die on this path, then I probably wasn’t going to either. Eyes horizontal, I gave them a respectable nod and forged ahead.


I did find the waterfall after a couple of wrong turns, and a helpful park guide. It was small, but a pleasant place to sit for a while and watch more scantily clad survivors struggle down the slick mud slope, so they could splash around in the pool.


I did a bit too much camera experimenting, so most of my photos are either too dark or too bright.

I finally pulled myself away to go and look for this special beach. With some more wrong turns and some more asking fellow trekkers, in my zero-level Portuguese, for directions, I eventually found the wrong beach.


Here it is, as seen through my camera which has no wide-angle or panorama capabilities:

Nice enough to sit for a while but nicest beach in Brazil? I think not.


I prepared myself to try again, but it had started to rain once more and it seemed kind of pointless to try to get a beautiful beach photo in such poor weather. So, I started the trek home.