04/02/2020 – Travel to Ihla Grande, Brasil

We got up and had hostel breakfast, even in the midst of a huge power cut they had managed to rustle up a beautiful breakfast of fresh fruit, pancakes, lovely homemade bread and coffee. We chatted to a German girl and her mother over breakfast, and I had my final squeezes with the kitten. Josh and I have seriously discussed adopting the kitten but aside from other issues (aka being homeless) are worried England will not accept a little kitten from Brasil! We packed up, checked out (another trust policy with the drinks here) and walked down the trail to wait for the bus. We got on the bus back to Paraty bus station, and found our bus for onwards travel to Angra dos Reis. Dom and I waited at the station with the bags and the boys went to the ATM as we are not sure what the facilities will be on the island that we are heading to today. We got on our bus and all fell asleep for the two hour journey to ANgra Dos Reis. From the bus station James used his Brasilian sim card to order an Uber to the port. We found tourist information and were pointed in the right direction for the bigger but cheaper ferry boat to the island. We walked down to the port, bought tickets for £3.50 each and got onto the ferry that had seats for about 300 passengers. It was by no means full, but people were obviously shipping across bags of goods for either shops or restaurants on the island. We enjoyed the 1.5 hour crossing to Ihla Grande, and were pretty excited as we got off the boat to a small beach town bustling with an atmosphere that really screams holiday. Souvenir shops, sunburnt people, restaurants and bars and little street stalls. We excitedly found our way to our hostel and checked into our rooms. Feels more like a hotel or home stay than a hostel which is quite nice, and is tucked away down a nice quiet alley, and feels pretty jungle too! We set our stuff down, refreshed, and then very hungrily headed out to find some food. We dropped bags of laundry at the laundrette - all our clothes are sopping wet from the humidity of the hostel in the jungle. Josh chose us a restaurant and we ordered pizzas and cocktails and had a merry old time filling up. The waiter seemed either drunk or stoned and service was comically slow, chilled, and to our pleasure a few drinks were missing from our bill, that island life! We walked home via a supermarket and had a few more homemade caiprinha cocktails in the garden outside Dom and James’s room before crashing into bed.