It’s our last day in Ilha Grande and we pack up and head to the next little town. It is surprisingly close, only about 5 minutes from where we camped. Its a sleepy town and consists of the homes of locals and then four tourist trap restaurants lining the beach. Large ships come daily bringing floods of tourists to these restaurants, and food is priced accordingly. The cheapest thing on the menu was french fries for 22 real ($11 U.S. dollars). Any kind of real meal was yours for around $30.

We asked people how we could get back to the mainland and they said we might be able to hitch a ride on one of the tourist ships. But we were starving and not wanting to wait around for the boats to leave hours later. We also didn’t want to get cornered into paying $30 for a meal at one of these monotonous seafood restaurants. To our luck, we saw a utility ship stop off at the dock to deliver a bright red vending machine. We paid him 10 real to hitch a ride off the island.

My heart swells a little as we pull away from the shore. The island of no roads and many wonders grows smaller and smaller in the distance and finally disappears. I miss it already.

Back to Rio we go~