While in Brazil, we picked two islands to visit: Ilha Santa Catarina and Ilha Grande. We first arrived in Florianopolis on Ilha Santa Catarina after a long night bus ride from the Iguazu Falls. The bus ride was a bit odd. At one point, the bus got stopped in the middle of nowhere and some heavily armed police came in and made straight for one specific guy. Luckily, he didn’t make a drama or react in a stupid way, as a battle on the bus would have been a bit scary! They searched his whole stuff and the guy next to him, apparently couldn’t find anything and left again. Weird…and a bit scary. Was that guy still potentially dangerous but they had to let him go since they didn’t find any proof? Or was it a false tip the police received and the guy totally innocent. Things we’ll never know… Later at an actual stop, a lady came in with her husband and claimed we were sitting on her seats. Well, we showed her our tickets – we were right! Seems like the bus company sold those seats twice, but for some reason the lady got mad at us for this. Lol. Of course we just stayed seated – let her talk to the driver and sort this out! Funnily enough, the whole situation ended with us being upgraded to 1st class and giving our seats to her. Why they did not move her, I don’t understand – but we were certainly not going to complain about our awesome upgrade!

From Florianopolis, we took a local bus to the smaller town Barra da Lagoa where we had booked our accommodation for the next few nights. Barra’s beach is about 8 km long and only the first part was rather crowded. The good thing is, most people are lazy – so walking just a little bit further you will have an amazing beach all to yourself. There’s also some natural pools a short walk from town, but I found these quite disappointing: overrun and it wasn’t even real pools…

 

One afternoon, we took a hike to Praia da Galheta which turned out much hotter than expected. We took quite some water but in all honesty, it was just too freaking hot for a hike! The beach was quite pretty when we arrived, however not as deserted as we had expected. I guess quite some people walk here from Praia Mole which can be accessed by car, and was even busier. We cooled off in the ocean, relaxed a bit, walked further to Praia Mole and then took a bus back into Barra da Lagoa. It’s definitely a nice hike to do if the sun is not burning down as much as it was when we visited.

 

The rest of our time on Ilha Santa Catarina was spent mainly relaxing on Barra’s beach. We had originally wanted to do more hikes on the island, but transportation by bus takes quite long with many changes and weather was just too hot the whole time. Don’t get me wrong, it was great for a beach vacation, but just not so much for any extended hikes…

From Florianopolis we took a flight to Rio for a couple of days, from where we afterwards made our way to Ilha Grande. Even though (or maybe because?) we booked a direct shuttle, it took us forever to reach the island. We definitely prefer going on our own vs. organized tourist shuttles… Weather had been bad in Rio the last 2 days and the outlook for Ilha Grande was not great so we got a bit worried about our beach time. We immediately fell in love with Ilha Grande though: an island without streets, a relaxed little town with all the main accommodation. Even though it was high season, it didn’t feel overrun but had its charm.

 

Our first day was rather grey, so we only managed some shorter walks when it at least dried up a little. First, we hiked past some smaller beaches and not so pretty ruins up to a waterfall which was surprisingly nice! Luckily we had brought our swimsuits as it was perfectly refreshing!

 

Later, we hiked to Playa do Abraazinho which was a bit further than expected and you had to walk in the water quite a bit since it was high tide. Because of that, unfortunately the beaches were almost gone, just very narrow strips of sand were left with way too many tourists on them.

Next day, we woke up to blue skies. Nice surprise! So we decided to take on the most popular hike – which would lead us past a couple of pretty beaches all the way to famous Lopes Mendes beach. It was a sweaty hike in the heat with lots of humidity, but nice because you had some places to cool off along the way. I really liked Palmas beach, probably my favourite of the day! Next was Pouso beach – between this beach and the village of Abraao there are regular shuttle boats and at the end of the day we opted to take one of these back instead of hiking back all the way.

 

Just about 20 min further from Pouso is Lopes Mendes beach, a beach that in our opinion is a bit over-hyped. It’s definitely a nice beach, but as mentioned, I preferred Palmas beach. Also, on this side of the island there were strong waves and currents, whereas the other side was nicely protected and calm.

On our last day in Ilha Grande, we decided to take on Pico do Papagaio, the Parrot Mountain, the highest peak of the island. Even though we started reasonably early, it was already super hot and after only about 15 min we were both soaked in sweat! It ended up being the sweatiest hike I’ve ever done. Luckily we took enough water. Unluckily, while we came closer to the top, more and more clouds came in so that we didn’t see anything at all at first. We were literally stuck in the clouds!

 

Super annoying after such an exhausting hike! We decided to eat our lunch and wait around for a bit. Fortunately, some of the clouds disappeared for a bit so that we got some views at least! The views were nice, but not the most amazing, so I’m not sure I would do this hike again.

 

After enjoying the local beer festival at night, we took a ferry to Angra dos Reis next day, and a bus further to Paraty – this time by ourselves, no package tour.