Where's Andrew

CABO FRIO, BUZIOS, ANGRA DOS REIS & ILHA GRANDE, BRAZIL - FEBRUARY 16 - 27

Praia do Forte

I'm up early the morning of Saturday the 16th to go to Cabo Frio. I don't have a bus ticket but I think there are hourly buses so I leave the hostel around 9AM and catch a cab to the Rodoviaria Nova Rio which is the main bus terminal just north of Centro. I buy a ticket for a 10:30AM bus and then grab some breakfast in the terminal. Cabo Frio is a beach side town about 150 kms north east of Rio. It has a population of a little over 140,000 people and is supposed to have some beautiful beaches that aren't quite as crowded as the Rio beaches. My bus leaves right on time but it takes longer than I expected to get there as we have 4 or 5 stops along the way.

The bus arrives around 1:30PM and I find a room in the Pousada Velas ao Vento for $35US per night. I really want to go to the beach and have a swim because I have not swam in the Atlantic Ocean on this trip yet. So, I quickly get settled into my room and put on swim shorts and head to the nearby beach. It's a 4 or 5 block walk to the beach and the beach is a white sand crescent beach that stretches for about 7 or 8 kms. The east side of the beach near town is called Praia do Forte because of the ruins of an old Fort on the nearby point and the western part of the beach is called the Praia das

Dundas. The Praia do Forte is packed full of people and it is the most protected from the wind and the waves. The Praia das Dundas is far less crowded but more exposed to wind and waves and has quite a few surfers and kite surfers enjoying themselves. I find a nice section of the beach a little west of town, it's not too crowded and not to rough for swimming. The water is nice and warm, I would guess around 26 or 27C and the weather is hot and sunny; I spend a couple hours just relaxing on the beach and spending time in the water. I then walk along the beach to Forte Soa Matheus on the eastern point of the bay.

By the time I get there it is almost 5PM so I decide to walk back to the pousada. I guess I was not paying that much attention to exactly where the pousada was and the map that the tourist office gave me is the worst map I've seen on this whole trip. It only shows the main roads in the downtown core and the way it is drawn does not reflect the shape of the town centre. It shows the town as being in a standard grid but the town is not; many of the streets are curved or at funny angles and I seem to be going around in circles. It does not take me long to get within 3 blocks of the pousada but it then take me almost an hour to find it. Complicating matters is the fact I can't remember the name of the pousada so it's hard to ask for directions but I finally find it.

I'm surprised that the pousada does not have Wi-Fi. This is the first time in months that I have not had Wi-Fi and I'm surprised that a place in the modern part of Brazil doesn't have it. In fact, I've only stayed in places without Wi-Fi 5 or 6 times this whole trip. I'm supposed to be getting a message from Hannah from England confirming her travel plans on a trip to Brazil as we had discussed meeting up in a few days to go to Ilah Grande; I travelled with Hannah months ago to the Corn Islands in Nicaragua so it will be nice to meet up again. I've also finished my most recent book on my Kindle App so I would like to

download a new book. Hopefully I can find a restaurant or a cafe with free Wi-Fi. With that in mind, I go to 5 or 6 restaurants but none of them have Wi-Fi and I finally give up and have dinner at a pizza place. On my way back to the pousada, I see a McDonald's restaurant, they always have free Wi-Fi so I'll stop by there sometime tomorrow.

I sleep in a bit and spend a couple of hours writing my next blog post. By the time I'm ready to head out, it is almost noon. I haven't had breakfast and I'm starving so I decide to go to the McDonald's for

a burger and fries and the free Wi-Fi. There's a message from Hannah and she is going to be a couple days later leaving Rio than I expected but we agree to meet up on Ilha Grande on the 24th. I then find a new book to download to my tablet. I also can't figure out why my tablet is showing the time as 11AM and not noon. I finally do some searching on the internet and find that daylight savings ended last night at 2AM, who knew.

I walk back to my pousada and drop off my tablet and then walk down to the beach. I go back to the same not so crowded spot on the beach and spend a couple hours there. Then I decide to walk to the far west end of the beach. It's farther than I think and after almost 2 hours of walking and at least another kilometre to go, I turn back. But I do get to watch some great kite surfing and some of the kite surfers get unbelievable air jumping the waves.

It's almost 6PM when I get back to the pousada, it's a little too early for dinner so I spend a couple hours reading. I then go to a riverfront section of town that has lots of nice restaurants and bars hoping to have a nice dinner. I order some fish that the waiter recommended but it is badly overcooked and not very good. It's disappointing because it was an expensive dinner.

The next morning I check out of the pousada by 8:30AM and walk down to the bus station to buy a bus ticket to Buzios. Buzios used to be a small fishing village about 190kms from Rio that nobody knew about. Then in the 1950s, stories and pictures about Bridgette Bardot vacationing on the Buzios beaches started circulating around the world and almost overnight the Brazilian jetset turned the small town into a fashionable resort. Buzios is located on a small spider shaped peninsula and there are 25 beautiful beaches within a couple kilometres of town. Unfortunately, no buses from the terminal go to Buzios, I need to take a city bus that I can catch across the street. I hate taking city buses with my big backpack. Although these buses are cheap, they are crowded and there is usually nowhere to put my backpack. When the bus pulls up, it is standing room only but luckily there was a little space to put my backpack in front of the first row of seats.

Ilha de Cabocla

It takes almost an hour to get to Buzios and the bus drops me off at the edge of the main down centre. There is a tourist office right where I get off the bus and I grab a map there. I girl who speaks English at the office says she can help find a hotel or hostel. Everything she tells me about in town is way over my price point but then she says that I can get a private room with bathroom for $40US at the Pousada Vila Satiliana less than 10 minutes out of town. My guide booked warned that Buzios is very expensive for accommodations so $40US doesn't seem to bad. This girl offers to walk there with me so I can see it and it's nice. Then when she tells the pousada owner the price she quoted me and there has been a mistake; the rooms is supposed to be $80US per night but the owner agrees to honour the price I was given.

After checking in and getting settled in the room, I head for Praia Azeda for an afternoon at the beach. I grab a couple of empenadas for lunch as a pass through town and it's a beautiful town. Most of the roads are closed to cars and there are restaurants, cafes and bars everywhere. There are also lots of nightclubs, stores for shopping and small art galleries. It's very touristic but despite that, has a nice look and feel. The town follows the contour of Praia Canto and is only about 3 blocks deep. The is a scenic island called Ilha de Cabocla a few hundred metres offshore with a large cruise ship sitting just

off the island. Apparently this time of year there is a cruise ship here almost every day. I walk along the seawall for more than a kilometre and then cut through a residential area before cutting down to Praia Azeda. It's a small beautiful beach that is tucked into a small bay near the very tip of the peninsula. There is no houses or anything around so it has a nice remote feel. There is only a few small structures built to service patrons on the beach with food and drinks. The beach is very crowded and it's very hot so I pay $7US to rent a beach chair and a sun umbrella for the afternoon.

Praia Azeda

With all the little bays and beaches around Buzios, there is always a few that are protected from the wind and waves no matter what direction the wind is going. And today, Praia Azeda is one of these beaches that is protected so there is no surf what so ever. Again the water is very warm, somewhere in the high twenties so it a nice day at the beach. I just have to remember to put screen on after every dip in the water and not drink too many beers. Around 4:30PM, I walk back to the pousada passing through town along the way, it's about an 50 minute walk. I relax in the pousada for a couple hours before walking back to town for dinner at a small outdoor cafe. I like this place.

Add caption

The next day I work for an hour or so on my blog and read for an hour before heading for the beach. Today I'm going to a couple of beaches right at the end of the peninsula called Praia Joao Fernandes and Joao Fernandinho; they are side by side with a small rock outcropping between them. It's almost the same walk to these beaches as yesterday only a little farther. Once again I grab lunch as I cross through town and there is another cruise ship in the bay. Again there are no houses overlooking these beaches and they are quite a bit bigger than the small beach from yesterday. The water is nice and calm again today and this time I don't bother with renting a chair and umbrella.

Praia Joao Fenandes

I stay at the beach until about 5:30PM before finally walking back to town. I'm hungry so I decide and stop at a Subway shop and just grab a sandwich before heading back to my pousada. I was planning on heading to town for a drink that evening but I get wrapped up writing my blog and then reading my book so I don't go anywhere.

I've got 1 more full day in Buzios and I want to explore a few more beaches. So that morning I head to a nearby beach that is closer to the start of the peninsula called Praia Tataruga. It's a nice beach facing north up the coast but it is a little

more exposed and there is a small surf coming in. I stay for about an hour and go for a swim but it's not as nice as other beaches I went to so I decide to try another beach. I cross the peninsula which is about 1.5 kilometres wide and go to Praia Ferradura located at the end of a long inlet. The inlet faces south down the coast and the beach is a large 1km or more crescent shaped beach. Most of the beach is fairly exposed to the wind and some fairly big surf but the east side of the beach is protected and I hang out there for about and hour. This beach is right in the middle of a residential neighbourhood so it does not have the same vibe as the other beaches I've been to so I decide to end my day back at Praia Azeda which is my favourite of all the beaches.

Praia Ferradura

Later as I'm walking back to the pousada, I stop at the bus station and buy a ticket to Rio for the morning. Once there, I will buy another ticket to Angra dos Reis which is about 150kms south of Rio. I spend another quiet evening at the pousada watching a couple of videos that I had downloaded onto my tablet.

The next morning I leave the hostel at 8:45 to catch a 9:30AM bus to Rio. It arrives at about 12:30PM but it takes me a while to figure out which bus company sells tickets to Angra dos Reis. I finally find the right company's ticket office but there is a lineup of about 20 people and only one ticket window is open. I'm hoping to get through this lineup in time to catch the 2PM bus but the line is no moving very fast. At 1:55PM, I finally get through the lineup and I'm able to buy the last ticket on the bus. The moment I have the ticket in hand, I literally run to the platform where the bus is leaving from and within 2 minutes of getting on the bus, it's on its way.

The 150km drive from Rio along the Costa Verde highway is amazing. The coast has all kinds of small towns and beautiful beaches tucked into small bays all the way there. Angra dos Reis is a town right on the coast with a population of over 120,000 people. Its main industries are ship building and fishing. It is also the main port where ferries come and go to the nearby Ilha Grande. It's too late to catch a ferry as it is almost 5PM when I arrive so I need to stay the night but I decide to stay for 2 nights because I'm not meeting Hannah for a couple of days. I walk from the bus terminal to the main part of the city and find a decent room in a nearby hotel for $30US per night. The only downside is that there is no Wi-Fi.

Angra dos Reis

By the time I'm in the room and settled it is almost 7PM and I'm hungry because I did not have time for lunch. So, I go in search of a restaurant and I can't find anything other than a hamburger/sandwich cafe which I reluctantly settle for. The next morning a decide to go for a walk around the downtown core looking for a better restaurant for dinner tonight. I find some nice restaurants tucked along one block of the waterfront so at least I know where I'm eating tonight. I then grab some empanadas and drinks to go and walk along the ocean road that winds it way south out of town in search of a beach. I

walk for a couple hours and find a spot where locals are swimming but there is no beach as the tide is up high right to the seawall and I finally give up. On my way back, I look down into the water which is tight up to the seawall I'm walking on and I notice a sea turtle and over the next 20 minutes I see a dozen more. That's a good sign as we are very close to Ilha Grande and I'm hoping to do some snorkelling there.

I'm about half way back to town and the bright blue skies have suddenly gotten very dark and ominous, I can tell it's going to rain soon so I pick up my pace.

Just as I get with 2 blocks of the hotel it starts to rain lightly and within seconds of getting to the hotel the floodgates open and it is pouring. This is not like heavy rain in Vancouver, it is more like 10 thousands buckets being dumped down at the same time. Within minutes, the streets are under a few centimetres of water. The storm last several hours with lots of thunder and lightning, hopefully the humidity drops a bit after this as it was extremely wet out this morning.

Finally at around 8PM, the rain almost stops so I

take advantage of the lull to head to one of the restaurants I saw this morning where I have Frango Cubana (frango means chicken in Portuguese). I'm not sure exactly how it is cooked so I guess it will be a surprise. When it come, it's in a cheese sauce which looks good but it is so thick and totally tasteless and just dripping in grease; I can barely eat it. So far, I'm missing the good food I was eating in Argentina and Chile, especially the beef. I was eating fantastic Argentina steaks for less than what I paid for this lousy chicken and I had some bad meals in Rio and Cabo Frio as well.

Wharf at Vila do Abraao

I'm up at a decent time to get all my stuff packed and ready to go. Then I walk down to where the ferry docks and buy a ticket for the 11AM sailing for $12US. I then go back to the hotel and an hour later grab my stuff and head for the ferry. The ferry is a catamaran passenger ferry that holds about 80 people. It makes an hour long crossing to Ilha Grande 3 times a day. The weather is beautiful as we cross to the island and the storm last night definitely knocked some humidity out of the air. The ferry is taking us to the largest settlement called Vila do Abraao on the northern end of the island and there is a Cruise ship moored in the bay as we come in.

It is Saturday and not the best day to get a room here as weekends are always the busiest time. I meet a young Brazilian women who offers to take me to some hostels and pousadas. She gets a small commission from the hostel but I don't mind because my guide book has no accommodations for here listed so I'm flying blind. We go to at least 10 different places, everything is either completely booked or very expensive ($75US or more). By now the heat is really getting to me as I walk around with my big pack on, so I finally agree on a small suite with a 2nd double bed in a loft and it has a

Praia Lopes Mendes

small kitchen as well for $60US but I only take it for 1 night. Maybe Hannah needs a room and we can split the cost? If she already has booked something, I will check out room options in the morning as about half of the people here will be leaving tomorrow.

The place I'm staying has WiFi but there is barely enough bandwidth to open Gmail but I'm able to get an email out to Hannah about the room. She sends me a message back a short time later to say that she had already booked a room; she is in 3 week vacation mode and not long term traveller mode meaning everything is pre-planned and pre-booked. No problem, one place that I saw that was cheap said they had rooms available tomorrow.

I decide to explore the town and it is small, probably only 2500 to 3000 people and it is only 7 or 8 square blocks in size. There is quite a large bay on one side of town but not any real nice beaches. Ilha Grande is very mountainous and there are steep hills surrounding the backside of the town. Ilha Grande used to house a large prison but it was closed in the 1960s. Because of the reputation of the island as a prison, it sat pretty much untouched for about 30 years other than a few very small fishing villages along the inside shore facing the mainland. Finally, someone noticed some of the fantastic beaches on the east side of the island, the most well known being Praia Lopes Mendes which Footprint ranks as one of the top 10 beaches in the world. With the islands close proximity to Rio and Sao Paulo, it has quickly become a major destination for foreign and domestic tourists. But so far, the government has not allowed any major resorts on the island so it still has a deserted island charm even though it has become a frequent stop by the many cruise ships that cruise these waters December through March.

Tomorrow I want to go to Praia Lopes Mendes and there are 2 ways to get there; for $12US I can catch a boat there and back or I can hike along a seaside trail about 2 hours. I was originally thinking of the hike but after walking around for more than an hour looking for a room in 90% plus humidity and mid thirties temperature, I decide I will take the boat. So, I'm up early and walk to the Pousada Ilha Grande and get a room for $35US and they promise it will be ready to check-in by 10:30AM. I go back and pack my stuff and check out but when I get to the pousada, my rooms not ready. Finally around 11AM my room is ready, I quickly get changed into beach wear and grab my snorkelling gear, sun screen and day pack and head to town to buy tickets for the boat. The last boat leaves at 11:30AM and I just have time to get my ticket, buy some water and snacks and then jump on the boat just before it leaves.

It takes the boat an hour to get to a bay called Saco das Palmas where we are dropped off. It is then a 15 minute walk over the isthmus of a peninsula to get to Praia Lopes Mendes, this saves over an hour in the boat with an exposed ocean and rough seas. Just this short walk has me drenched in sweat as there is a decent hill to go over and I'm so glad I did not choose the 2 hour hike. The beach is beautiful, the trail comes out on the west end of the beach and then the beach does a slow curl for about 2 or 3 kms to the east and the sand is powder white that gently slopes into the water.

Almost everyone at the beach is at this west end near the trail but I don't know why they don't walk to the other end because this end is not protected at all and big waves are crashing in on the beach. There is a point on the other end that sticks out a good kilometre and protects the last few hundred metres of beach. So, I stop for a quick swim to cool off then walk for about 40 minutes to the far east end of the beach. The water here is nice and calm and there is almost no one here, it's perfect. I just lie and relax for the first hour and a half or so with quick dips every half hour. There is even some trees at the top edge of the beach that offer some welcome shade. I then grab my snorkel gear and head to the shallows near the point, I have been carrying this gear without using it since the Galapagos Islands so it is nice to finally do some snorkelling. There are huge boulders scattered all along the shallows beside the rocky headland, there is not much coral but there are lots of fish. I snorkel for about 45 minutes and the highlight is 4 or 5 large sea turtles and a group of 5 squid.

By the time I finish snorkelling it is time to grab the rest of my stuff and start back to where the boat dropped me off. It takes almost an hour to get there and I have just enough time for another quick swim to cool off before the boat leaves at 4:30PM. By the time the boat gets back to Vila do Abraao and I get back to the pousada and have a shower, it is almost 6PM. Once again my pousada does not have internet and the internet was not working at the other place this morning. I know Hannah was due to arrive around 5PM and I know the name of her hostel. I head to an internet cafe in town to see if she sent me an email but the bandwidth of their internet is so low I cannot open Gmail. I decide to walk over to Hannah's hostel and she is right there in the courtyard when I get there. She's just arrived so we decide to meet in town at 7PM so she has a chance to get settled.

We meet in town at 7PM and find a nice looking restaurant with a patio. It's great catching up with her as it has been a long time since I saw her on Little Corn Island and we have a nice dinner. We are both a little hungry still and decide to go to a desert bar for some cake; we both order chocolate cake and we get the 2 biggest pieces of cake that I have ever seen. We should have ordered 1 and split it because we both don't even eat half of our pieces. Tomorrow, Hannah wants to go to Lopes Mendes and I want to do a snorkel tour. So we agree to meet up tomorrow evening, Hannah will send me an email about where to meet and I will check emails at a internet cafe after my tour. There are 4 internet cafes in town so surely one of them will have decent internet connection.

The next morning I'm in down at the waterfront by 9:30AM checking out tour options. Every tour company offers the same snorkelling tour for the same price of $75US and no one will discount. It's a bit expensive for snorkelling as I have done 2 tank scuba diving trips for less but I'm here and I want to go snorkelling so I book a tour. The tour leaves at 10:30AM in a speed boat with 8 of us plus our guide/captain. Everyone on the boat is Brazilian except me but one couple and their 30 year old daughter speak English. We cover a lot of the island along the inside coast and stop at 5 or 6 places for 45 minutes each. There more reef here than I saw at Lopes Mendes but it still not near as good as the Caribbean or the Galapagos. There's a fair number of fish with the highlight being a sea turtle, a couple of squid and some really interesting bottom fish with long pectoral fins that looked like wings.

We are back from the tour by 5:30PM and I decide to check for messages before going to my pousada. I end up at all 4 internet cafes and I could only get one place's computer to load Gmail and I could see a message from Hannah but it crashed before I could open the message and then I couldn't get it to open Gmail again. I don't see how these places survive with this kind of internet as every place I was at was dealing with 2 or 3 people having the same problem as me. Even small island in the Caribbean like Little Corn had better internet than here. So I head to by room and have a shower and get changed and then go over to Hannah's hostel. She's not there but I write her a message to meet me at 7:30PM along the waterfront. I wait there until 7:50PM but no Hannah. I'm guessing she didn't get my message. I have dinner at a nice pizza place on the main walk of the waterfront and I'm hoping to spot her but no luck.

The next morning I decide to head back to Lopes Mendes. I head to the waterfront area a  bit early hoping to check my email but once again all the internet places are useless so I catch a 10:30AM boat to Saco das Palmas. When I get to the beach, I go back to the far east side of the beach like last time. I'm about half way along the beach when I see a lone penguin on the beach ahead of me. I walk right up to it and take a couple pictures. I know penguins on the Pacific side go as far north as the Galapagos which are right on the equator but I can't help but think this guy is lost this far north on the Atlantic. I'm sure he doesn't like the high twenties water temperature either.

I try and stay out of the sun as much as I can today because I burnt my back yesterday. I thought I put screen on every time before snorkelling but I guess it washed off quite quickly and my back is pretty red. This is the first time I really got a sunburned this whole trip. By 1PM the beautiful sunny day has turned into a cloudy day with a threat of rain. I decide some more snorkelling would be in order since I saw more in 45 minutes here than I saw all day yesterday. I end up snorkelling along the rocky headland all the way to the end of the point almost a kilometre away and it takes close to 2 hours to get there and back. It was fantastic, I saw around 15 sea turtles, tons of fish including some big ones, a bunch of puffer fish and 3 small schools of squid. The largest school had 19 squid of various sizes, they let me swim right up to less than a metre and we just stayed there staring at each other for a few minutes. When I first saw them they were gold in colour and looked like they had diamonds on top of them, at one point they turned vibrant purple and then they turned pink and seemed to have a yellow light inside them. They were always lined up in a perfect line always facing the same direction and they seemed to change colour in unison. The largest one was about 25 cm long and it seemed to be checking me out as much as I was checking it out. I so wish I had an underwater camera because they looked amazing.

By the time I'm back from snorkelling it is time to get back to catch the 4:30PM boat. Once back in town, I try and check emails but 2 of the internet places are closed and the other 2 tell me the internet is not working the second I walk in the door. I once again leave a written message for Hannah at her hostel to meet me in town without any luck. It's too bad, she's come all this way and we only see each other the one evening. She is heading back to Rio to meet her sister who is flying in and they're going to spend a week or so in Rio with her dad who is in Brazil on business and I'm heading to Paraty which is another 100kms south down the coast.

The next morning I'm down at the dock at 9:30AM and I buy a ticket on the 10AM ferry back to Angra dos Reis. This ferry is a large old one that seats a couple hundred passengers. It takes more than an hour and a half to get to Angra but only cost $2.50US. Once in town, I walk 20 minutes in the rain to the bus station. Luckily it is only raining lightly so I hardly get wet. I then buy a bus ticket for the 1PM bus to Paraty and within minutes it is pouring rain.

More on Paraty and my way south to Uruguay next time.