As it was Leah’s birthday weekend, we decided that this should not go without miss and booked a room on an island called Ilha Grande. We’d heard lots about it and couldn’t wait to get there, a proper oasis, no roads, no cars a proper little remote island. We were told to take extra money, not because it’s expensive but because there’s no cashpoints on the island. To get over to the island we needed to catch the once a day ferry from Angra Dos Res, which in itself was a challenge.
Buses in Brazil seem to have the most stupid turn style right in the middle of the bus where some fat, over opinionated bint sits, whilst listening to samba music on her phone and grunts at people when they ask for a ticket. Now, this turnstile is a bitch to manoeuvre when you’ve got your towel and wallet in your hand let alone when you look like a turtle with an extension, equipped with your 75kg backpack on your back and a rucksack on your front! To expect some patience and some consideration from this woman would be I guess, expecting too much. She does have some samba music to listen to and chocolate milk to drink, so I guess I’m the fool for expecting it!
I was going to dedicate a whole post on the blog on my view of Brazilian people, then after I started writing it I realised that it would be wrong of me to bundle them all in together. So, I won’t! But I will dedicate this rant to people that work on the bus network!
Our first poor experience of these people started in Rio, we got to the Rodivario (Portuguese for bus station, I know – check me out!) again poor signage didn’t help us but we needed to get our tickets to get to Paraty and there was no obvious ticket office apart from a little shed (Lonely planet was of no help it said there was a little shed out front selling tickets). So off we go, like turtles and we approach these 3 women with the view that they may be able to help direct us to the relevant ticket office, no! First of all they refused to acknowledge us (by totally ignoring our existence!) Then, Leah stood in and with her best Spanish asked for two tickets to Paraty. I know, they get people asking them for things in broken Portuguese/Spanish daily but there’s no need to be so rude about it. What happened next was actually the rudest thing I’ve ever seen. Two of the women leave their colleague in the shit and alone with us and this last woman shakes her head, gets her big ass finger out and waves it in our face indicating NO! Then puts her big ass finger to her mouth to tell us to shut up and corrects us on our pronunciation of Paraty (it should be pronounced Para-chee), so we walk off cheesed off, insulted and mouthing some obscenities at her.
Once we were off the bus, we needed to find the port to get the bus. Now my powers of deduction are en par with Hercule Poirot. The port has to be near the sea and will generally have big boats in it I think, so rather than asking some local drunk I decided that I knew better, we’ve now managed to pick up two guys who are getting the ferry over to Ilha Grande too so we set off, safe in the knowledge that I know where we need to go. After 5mins of wandering aimlessly in 30 degree heat I give in and decide it would be better to ask for directions – fortunately for my pride I was leading our troop in the right direction. We turn a corner and are at the port, we’re aware that we have 2 hours to wait but as true brits we thought it better to be a little bit early!
As we’re making our way to the (empty) ticket office this dude comes up to us and offers us
an alternative to being bored for the 2 hour wait, it becomes apparent that he’s no expert magician prepared to entertain us with his magic card tricks but has another “Super Fast” boat that he can take us over the island on and it will leave in 10mins but it’ll cost R$25. Like the money conscious travellers we have become, I point out that the ferry is only R$7 and we’re prepared to wait two hours for R$18 (Note – at this time I became the voice for our group of 4!) so we walk off in disgust towards the ferry cool as cucumbers, knowing that this dude had plenty of room for haggling. Our group of 4 now becomes 5 with this guy hot in pursuit, instantly he tells us that he’s feeling kind and that he can drop it down to R$15 but we must not tell anyone else on the boat that we’ve had it cheap, again I nominate myself as the voice for the group and point out that he must be able to reduce it a bit more as its still double the cost of the normal ferry, he gives in and takes it down to R$10. So we agree and head towards the dock expecting some speed boat that will get us there in minutes, sadly this is not to be. We were greeted with what resembled the titanic having been resurrected from the ocean floor with a few bits of wood added to make it sea-worthy, we eventually set sail and over 2 hours later we get to the island.
After getting off the boat, we try and find our hostel in amongst the hundreds of restaurants, shops, and other hostels. I have to ask the question – if you see two people sweating, looking like turtles do you think it’s appropriate to ask them there and then when their clearly not interested if they would like to go scuba-fucking-diving? No, nor me. So why this one guy did I don’t know but it was met with the international look of – “Leave us alone butt”. After 5mins we decided to down tools, find a bar, get a drink and send one of us off to find the hostel. Being the gent I am, I suggest to Leah that she should sit down while I go and find the hostel. However, women weren’t burning their bras for nothing in the 60’s and Leah insist that she should go and do it and who am I to argue, within seconds I’m sat down my book is out of the bag and I’ve got Pedro getting me a beer. Leah returns later sweating and exhausted to tell me that she’s found it but it’s a bit of a walk…
We finally get to the hostel and are introduced to the lad that runs the place who looks not that much older than Leah’s nephew Iestyn. His name’s David and it became quickly apparent that he’s a bit of a wide boy and can you get anything you want legal or un-legal. After filling in the necessary forms we go to pay to be told by David that the hostel doesn’t accept cards and he’s a cash-only kind of guy! Balls – we don’t have enough money to pay for the hostel and eat and drink for 3 days plus as I’ve said there are no cashpoints on the island! However, David does have a plan and that plan is he’ll come with us to the mainland on Monday and we can get cash out for him there and then – sorted!
After a huge thunderstorm, that’s good enough to make Shaggy and Scooby jump into bed together we wake up to a clear day with not a cloud in the sky – not a bad day for Leah’s birthday! We booked a boat trip to one of the famous beaches on the island, called Lopez Mendes. Our boat picks us up directly from the jetty at the hostel and we’re greeted with one of the whitest beaches I have ever seen – so crisp from the previous night’s storm it’s like walking on snow!
The photo just doesn’t do it justice but you can at least see how deserted it was and how stunning the views were….
We celebrated Leah’s birthday night with a BBQ at one of the many bars on the beach, called Café Do Mar (Which we’re told is legally different to the famous Ibiza bar, even though the sign looked exactly the same!) We finally left the bar at 2am after drinking as much Brahma as they could throw our way to celebrate Leah's Birthday in style! (Lianne/James – No Rules! ;-))
When it finally came to leaving on Monday morning we were confronted with really bad rain, which made leaving the island tolerable. The walk to the port, soaking wet and our bags soaking wet made it less tolerable however. We’re currently sat in the local bus station waiting for our bus to Sao Paulo which is going to take 7.5 hours! Hopefully we can sleep or it’ll be a killer game of eye-spy!
Will let you know what Sao Paulo had to offer…
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