Big Island, Big Reward

The emerald-hued coast of Brazil between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro can't be described as anything less than majestic.  The Atlantic seems to rise up to meet the brilliant green coastal slopes as they plunge into the sea.  This spectacular view is what we were greeted with every morning from our rainforest lodging on the hillside of Ilha Grande.

After hitching a ride to the historic sea-side town of Paraty, taking a couple hour bus ride to the small port-city of Angra dos Reis, followed by a 90-minute ferry ride, we finally arrived on the shores of Ilha Grande, the largest of a smattering of islands just off the coast of Brazil's mainland.

The village and bay of Abraão.  Mainland Brazil is in the distance.

Being awakened by parrots isn't such bad vacation wake-up call.

Making progress on my 52 in 52...

Breakfast of champions

Now-a-days Ilha Grande and its more than 70 scattered beaches is tourist mecca, filled during holidays and summer weekends with day-trippers from Rio, wandering hippie back-packers, surfers, and Argentines on a cruise-ship stop-over.  But that wasn't always the case.  Though never continually inhabited, even by indigenous populations, until the 1800's, the island has served many purposes in its short civilized history.

A short walk from the largest town, Vila do Abraão, one can find the ruins of Lazareto, a quarantine facility used for immigrants from Europe as a way to keep cholera from making landfall.  This same building was a used later for a number years as a jail before being imploded.  In some of the tinier inlets, small beach communities exist, as do the remnants of long-gone sardine canneries.  On the south side of the island, facing the open sea, in the town of Dois Rios, lie the remains of Brazil's Alcatraz, the Instituto Penal Cândido Mendes (IPCM).  The prison was active for roughly 100 years until it too was imploded in 1994 (notice a pattern here?).  Dois Rios also goes down in infamy as the home of a wealthy plantation owner who, from the relative isolation of his location, supported the continued trade of slaves well after its national prohibition.  Without the economic stability of illegal human trafficking and the jail, Dois Rios is a now sad shadow of its former self, albeit one with a gorgeous beach.

Praia Lopes Mendes - at around 3km long, this white-sand beach is touted
 as one of the most beautiful beaches in the country.

The remains of a window from the imploded jail at Dois Rios.

The Instituto Penal Cândido Mendes' outer wall.

The 200 year old aqueduct in the jungle used to bring water to the
quarantined immigrants just outside of present-day Abraão.

There are no true roads on Ilha Grande, save for the dirt one connecting Abraão and Dois Rios, and the only vehicles on the island are government related, so the only mode of transport from one site to another is by trail through the rainforest or water taxi along the shore.  Ilha Grande has found a balance; its tourist infrastructure is intact and healthy, but so is its ecology.  Whether you're looking for wildlife and rustic communing with nature, a candle-lit shrimp dinner on the beach, a look back in time, or a day of rowdy drinking surrounded by thong and speedo-clad revelers, Ilha Grande can deliver.  The reward is simply getting there!