17 Costa Verde

July 10, 2017 in Brazil ⋅ ⛅ 24 °C

07/07/17-11/07/17 Costa Verde

We are writing this at the airport in São Paulo having had an incredible few weeks.

We spent our final few days travelling along Costa Verde, the coast line between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, to enjoy some sun!

We hired a car from Rio and set off to our first stop, Ilha Grande. The majority of the journey was fine, but was a little bit hairy driving through some of the cities. We got there in one piece, managing to get to the last boat of the day with minutes to spare. It's safe to say our time keeping has not improved throughout our trip!

Ilha Grande is home to Lopes Mendes beach, which was voted one of the top 10 beaches in the world. It was very secluded, with white sand and very blue sea. It was so secluded that you have to hike for 2.5 hours to get there. We had a lovely chilled afternoon playing in the sea.

The hike there wasn't easy, but was very pleasant and we stopped off at various beaches en route. On one of the beaches there was a floating bar in the sea, where we enjoyed some cocktails and BBQ in a picturesque setting.

After two nights on the island, we returned to dry land and travelled further up the coastline to a town called Paraty. Paraty is very beautiful and has amazing cobbled streets with the biggest cobble stones we have ever seen. We spent our first afternoon doing a bar crawl of the beach bars, enjoying some final caipirinhas, which made manoeuvring the cobbles on the way home a bit tricky!

On our final day, we went horse riding in the hills surrounding Paraty. The views were spectacular, and our guide clearly adored his horses.

That afternoon we took the long drive (4.5 hours) to São Paulo where we spent our final night in an airport hotel, so that we would be there in plenty of time to catch our flight the following day.

We have both had an incredible time and are both disappointed to be leaving. If we could stay longer, I don't think either of us would think twice about it! We will definitely be back. This trip has definitely stirred up the travelling bug... we can't wait for our next adventure.Read more