Ilha Grande.

(this guy started dancing like crazy to music from monobloco)

This past weekend I went with a Brazilian friend to Ilha Grande, the much-famed, much-talked-about island off the coast of the Costa Verde. You have to take a bus (or two) and a boat to get to the island, and if I wasn't already so used to this process from Buzios to Floripa, I would say it was the cutest thing ever. But for some reason, I've become quite accostomed to the idea of grabbing a fisherman boat or the like, heading out for an hour or so to god-knows-where, and ending up in some sort of paradise. You could say I'm becoming a Brazilian, because it's becoming a bit of a routine.

We stayed in Abrao, because it was easy and cheap and we didn't have the necessary equipment to go camping. But we went to Lopes Mendes, a magical sort of beach (but has nothing on Ilha da Campeche in Floripa) and kayaked for a few hours along the coast of the island.

It's a great trip-- if not tiring-- but you can spend the whole day laying in the sand. There's lots of cute little restaurants and pousadas (ours served a delicious banana cake with chocolate icing for breakfast-- plus loads of passionfruit, mango, and pineapple juice) waiting for you when you return from bliss. I recommend grabbing a pastry or two from the carts that are parked on the sides of the streets-- they sell everything from brigadeiros to cuscuz, torta de limao, to pave. I grabbed some sort of italian bar made with chocolate and nuts that wasn't too sweet, and a cuscuz made with corn.