Brett and Emily in South America: Being two lazy Beach Bums

So the last four days have basically been being spent being lazy beach bums on the beaches of the State of Rio de Janeiro. The first was a pretty large island named Ilha Grande. After taking a ferry over to the island and setting up Emily's tent at a camping hostel, which is basically a place that has all the amenities of a hostel (i.e. kitchen and bathrooms) but you sleep in your own tent. We spent the majority of the next two days on the island at the beaches. The second day we were on the island we took a 2.5 hour hike from the main port to one of the top 10 beaches in the world (according to some really lucky guy who gets to go visit all these beaches probably for free), Lopes Mendez. The hike was pretty hot and sweaty through the jungle but definatly worth it at the end. Besides the beaches the island itself was absolutly beautiful almost completely covered in jungle and even carless.

Hiking through the jungle to the "Top 10 Beach"

At the "Top 10 Beach" (I am only in regular clothes because we were getting ready to leave so I changed and Emily was being kind of slow)

Another View, by the way the water was perfectly clear

A view of the jungle from our Boat Ride back to the main port of the island (we were too lazy to do the return hike)

We then continued further south to another beach town of Paraty (which I am convinced changed its name to attract tourists). The town was a major port (along with Rio de Janeiro) during the gold rush in Minas Gerais (look at one of our past blogs). It had beautiful colonial architecture with cobbled streets much like Ouro Preto but flat and along the beach. Besides looking at the colonial architecture and an old seaside fortress we basically continued our laziness of sitting on beaches in both Paraty and a nearby town of Trinadade.