Saturated...

Since the day we arrived on this beautiful island it has not stopped raining! We have had torrential rain, thunder storms and fog. The entire island is covered by cloud. Despite all this it is still beautiful and we're still doing stuff.

After the bbq and reggae night, which we enjoyed from the hammocks on our balcony, we met up some Romanian girls. We had bumped into them the day before and had suggested we go snorkling. We met in the rain and piled into a tiny boat. The boat took us around the island to different bays, the first bay we swam off the boat and snorkled....freezing. We saw long electric blue fish and tiny shrimp and fish. Then we all got back on the boat... Liz's lips turned blue then stayed that way! We carried on to blue lagoon where we saw beautiful stripey fish. We stopped on one beach for lunch....they serve food here in big portions in order to share, but they're huge. Carmen, Valeria and I shared one meal and we were stuffed. We had shrimp in garlic oil, with black bean stew and rice. I've never eaten proper shrimp, it's lovely but messy. I dont think i've eaten something which still has eyes and legs!

After swimming and being in the wind and rain all day we were tired and came back to the hostel for super noodles. Then we ended up chatting to the Israeli couple who are sharing our room. They tried to teach us how to pronunce strange things in hebrew..... Which seems to sound quite like choking without practice!

This morning we went into town after breakfast to get supplies, water and bread rolls. People had told us it was silly to walk to Lopes Mendes in this weather and we would need a guide because it's a hard climb but we went anyway :P .

It poured all day, as we trekked up the temperature changed. We walked, essentially up a river into the rainforest. As we got further from the coast and also higher, the humidity increased. We were climbing through waterfalls and past huge bamboo. Goretex can only be asked to put up with so much! But im very glad I had those shoes. The rainforest is amazing, it's so dense and humid. The sounds are incredible, theres such a loud silence, the sounds of rain, rivers and leaves creates a white noise which is almost silence as it covers up all other sounds. It's so nice to be somewhere without cars.

After trekking for nearly 3hours we arrived at Lopes Mendes, the beach is gorgeous....but google it if you want to see it without rain! We had been told in Abraão that it was possible to get a water taxi back for ten reals... But when we got there they wanted to charge ten times that! So instead we decide to walk back again. 2 and a half hours later we arrived back at the hostel tired, hungry and sodden!

Tomorrow morning we're taking the boat back to the mainland then finding a bus to Parati. Doesnt look like the weather is going to get much better in the next few days, but hopefully we will get some sun in Parati! Only 4weeks today till I'm back home!