Day 10: Ilha Grande, Brazil

At 5am, Dan and I were roused awake by, as he described it, an orchestra of animal sounds (I think blogging has caused me to speak in metaphor and the affect is starting to rub off on him). Anyway, the calls were loud, REALLY loud. We heard chirps, coos, hoots, and howls (the howls coming from the tons of dogs roaming around this island). It sounded like one of those jungle alarm clocks that we couldn't shut off. Luckily, after about twenty minutes, the noise subsided and we were able to squeeze in a little more sleep.

Once officially up, we began thinking about which path we would travel down for our final full day on the island. On our first day we had explored to the right, the second day we went toward the back, so naturally, for our third day we chose to walk left. Once again, we laced up our sneakers, packed up our lunches, and set off.

The trail that we chose was a 45-minute walk to a waterfall. On our way there, we were treated with the sounds of rushing water all around us. Unfortunately, we also kept running into some odd plant that produced a smell akin to extremely offensive body odor (it became the front walker's job to call out, "hold your breath!" each time the stench returned). After a tiring, almost entirely uphill trek, we excitedly came upon the waterfall.

Dan and I enthusiastically shed our clothes to get into some refreshing, cool water. But it was really, really cold. I think we both lasted a total of five minutes before retreating to a boulder across from the cascade.

(I was content with just having the first shot, but the Italian guy taking our pictures was trying to turn it into a photoshoot and insisted we get right under the waterfall)

We hung out for a bit and had lunch on the boulder. Unfortunately, the area didn't get much light and we both wanted our sun. So after about a half hour, Dan and I took off in search of a nearby beach. We rambled along for about thirty more minutes before finally arriving oceanfront. We both quickly got into the water, only to discover that it was covered in a thin layer of oil. Eek! This was definitely not our beach.

At that point we decided to head back the way we came, and then turn off at a sign we had recalled announcing a different beach. We eventually made it to our intended destination, but by that time the area was already shaded over. So at the end of the day, we had done much more sun chasing than sunbathing. Oh well...At the very least, we got in a good workout and some great views.