I am officially spoiled!!!

We spent last weekend in Ilha Grande (http://br.ilhagrande.com/sys/) with our friends Mara and Rodrigo. I thought Paraty was beautiful. Wow!! Ilha Grande is breath taking. These first two pictures were taken from one of the many boats we took over the course of 3 days. Ilha Grande is another place where it is common to island hop and enjoy the paradise-like beaches. This particular vacation spot is only about 12 years old, which may be the reason I didn't even know it existed 12 years ago when I was in Brazil the first time. The history is that it used to house a state prison. The prison workers were the only people who lived on the island, and the prisoners did manual labor around the island to lesson their sentence, for every three days of work they were forgiven one day from their sentence. Since the island was, and still largely is, undeveloped, we aren't quite sure what kind of work they actually did. There are no motorized vehicles on the island and even the trash has to be sent by boat back to the mainland. In 1994, there was an escape by helicopter of one inmate and after that the prison closed. The escapee was recaptured, but not until 10 years after his escape. Once the prison was closed, the island opened to tourism and is now one of the most popular vacation spots in all of Brazil. The Brazilian government is working on passing a law limiting the number of tourists on the island at one time and that law will also enforce a tourist tax that will be mandatory for all visitors to the island. It is actually a great idea in effort to preserve the ecological beauty of the place.
To get there, we headed to Mangaratiba (about an hour and a half outside of the city) on an interstate bus from Rio early Friday morning, hopped a Ferry in Mangaratiba to the island. We checked into the Pousada, changed into swimwear and hopped a Schooner in the main part of the island to the other side of the island to go to Lopes Mendes beach. The water was unbelievably clean and an amazing aqua marine color and very very salty. We spent the entire afternoon swimming, walking, laying in the sun, playing frescoball (like beach paddle ball) and relaxing before taking the short, 15 minute hike back to the dock to catch the Schooner back to the main part of the island where our pousada was located.

Here is a picture of Sierra and Joe jumping waves at Praia de Lopes Mendes. It was a great chance for Sierra to do some real swimming in the Atlantic. The shoreline in Rio is really rough and most days we spend at the beach the waves are far too strong for her to really swim...it's just too dangerous, I feel like they're too strong for me most days. We have spent most of the sunny January days at our pool because of this, so it was a great day at the beach for Sierra. She didn't want to leave this beach.

Here's a picture of all three of us at Praia de Lopes Mendes.

During the second day in Ilha Grande, we took a Schooner for 5 hours, stopping at a few different dive spots and beaches and then for lunch on the beach at another location. The entire day was beautiful. Although the water was extremely cold, the weather was beautiful, so a quick 40 min. swim was a great way to cool off while snorkeling a little and watching the fish. It is very common everywhere in Brazil to find a street vender selling just about anything. In the middle of a traffic jam, you'll find people with cold drinks and snacks ready to sell at your car window. What was surprising and hilarious was the coconut vender canoeing around one of the popular Schooner stops.

Here you can see him pulling in between two of the anchored boats looking for sales.

I sadly returned to work today. I have very little room to complain after the very relaxing holiday I just had. Today Joe helped me to organize and count numerous novels that belong to the English department while Sierra played on barbie.com on my classroom computer. Tomorrow I will head to school alone to create a spreadsheet to inventory what we counted today. Wednesday I have an inservice on bullying prevention and all staff officially return Thursday. We teach for approximately 3 weeks and then we have another week long holiday for Carnaval! Life is good!! I'll leave with this last picture that Joe and Rodrigo say needs to become an advertising billboard in Brazil for the domestic beer company--Skol...