Ilhabela - Brazil

At the end of August we went to a conference in São Paulo, and having traveled all that way we thought we may as well stay around for the weekend and take a little mini holiday. Last year, with a similar "excuse", we managed to spend some time in Paraty and we loved it. This time we picked Ilhabela, which was a new place to discover for us, and also a bit closer to São Paulo.

Ilhabela is town on the São Sebastião island, which is 130km or so from the big city. Much of it is covered by Atlantic Forest and protected by a State Park.  The town itself also has a few picturesque colonial buildings, although it's not quite as impressive as Paraty.

The Nossa Senhora D'Ajuda e Bom Sucesso Church

Ilhabela caters for a different crowd than Paraty (mostly holidaymakers from São Paulo as opposed to foreign tourists), and, for example, many people arrive by car since there is a ferry that take vehicles to the island. We were told that during the peak holiday season the town's road can get pretty badly traffic jammed because of this. August seems to be off-season, though, and everything was relaxed enough to get us into holiday mode pretty quickly.

As we had only 36 hours on the island, we opted for a trip to Jabaquara beach, which we managed to get to by a combination of local buses, walking and hitching a couple of lifts, which in the end turned out to be easier than we first thought.

Jabaquara beach

Jabaquara is a beautiful beach located along the north coast of the island, in a place where a river meets the sea. The beach is lined by lush, dense jungle.

There is exuberant vegetation all over the area and plants literally seem to grow on top of one another. However, all this exuberance and biodiversity means that there are some very hungry mosquitoes all over the place ;o) so be prepared for a few (or more) bites... nature also needs to collect its taxes!

The whole trip was a a great little escape from the Santiago winter, which reminded us how much we are looking forward to the spring!