Ilha Grande

Ilha Grande is a beautiful forest-covered island, few hours away from Rio. When the sun is shining, it is heaven. When it's raining, Ilha Grande is, well, heaven in the rain. Either way, if you visit the southern hemisphere, make the time to visit there.
In order to get from Rio to Ilha Grande we took a bus to a town on the main land just in front of the island. From there we had a ferry that leaves only once a day to the Island. The bus was supposed to arrive an hour before the ferry, but as most other buses in South America, it didn't get there until an hour after... Fortunately enough, on the same bus with us there was a group of British guys that met one very nice Brazilian girl that knew another way to get to the island. So after 3 buses and a boat, we finally arrived to the island.
The island consists mainly of an Atlantic rain forest and few very small settlments and few beaches. There are practically no cars on the streets, and there are practically no streets either. It seems that the major part of the locals make their living from the tourist industry. There are a lot of restaurants offering tourists menus, and a lot of tourist agencies offering whatever marine activity you might want. Unfortunately, since the high season was over, most of those places were empty and very hungry for tourists. The good thing about that is that the lovely beaches were empty as well.
The most popular beach is called "Lopez Mendez" and there are two ways to get there. You can either take a boat that leaves every hour from the main pier and get there after 20 minutes, or you can walk there through the vast forest, and maybe meet some animals (about 2.5 hours). We decided to walk there and to return by boat. We tried to walk as slowly and as quietly as we could, in order not to scare the animals that were supposed to hide there. We have spotted few small monkeys very far from us and were very excited about that. As we approached to our destination, we saw a couple of tourists feeding all those monkeys from their hands. Apparently, they weren't afraid of us, they just didn't find us interesting without any food in our hands. Although feeding wild animals was against our principals, taking great pictures of them while someone else is feeding them was not.
After about 3 hours we got to the promised beach. The beach was really nice and we spent there about an hour before we caught the boat back. While Lilya was reading a book (together with a dog, as you can see at the pictures), Oren found an amazing scenery. Few Urubus (the big birds) feeding from a dead (but very fresh) sea turtle. His sympathy to the turtles didn't bother Oren while taking enormous amount of pictures.
We wanted to go on a snorkeling tour the next day. The nice guy at tourist agency promised us a sunny day. "Not partly clouded?" Lilya confirmed. "No! Sunny" He promised. The next day started with partly clouded... On this tour we were supposed to visit 3 different snorkeling spots. At the first spot the sun was shining, but the water was quite cold, which made the snorkeling less pleasant. Just when we got to the second spot the sun dissapeared, and all the sky was covered with dark grey clouds. That didn't stop us from getting into the very cool water (after all we were in the Shayetet...). At the third spot we didn't even stop since no one carred about snorkeling anymore.
The next day it was supposed to rain. But we didn't want to waist our time on the beautiful Island, so we decided to hike to the Dois Rios beach on the other side of the island (8.5km each way). This beach was really magnificant. We were the only people on it. The people that said that Lopez Mendez is the most beautiful beach in Brazil, were probably too lazy to go to this one. On the way back it started to rain, but we were prepared to that.
On the fourth day we left the island and started our long and exhousting jorney to Peru. We left Brazil with the feeling that we haven't seen enough of this great and colorful country. Maybe we will be back someday, the football world cup 2014 is there...

Tip 1: Check exactly what are you paying for at the tourist agencies and what does it include, so there won't be any surprises later.
Tip 2: You don't have to order in advance the expansive meal they offer you on the snorkeling tour. Right next to the restaurant they stop at, there is a smaller one with much more decent prices.
Tip 3: A very nice and cheap hostel: Overnativa Hostel. It's located on the main street, 3 bridges from the pier.