LOST!!!!

(For those of you who haven't been dutifully {obsessively} watching the show, I'll try to keep the ridiculous similarities to a minimum)

Ok, I think I FOUND the island.....seriously....ok, first, it's called Ilha Grande, and no, it's not located in the Pacific, but off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (sneaky, I know)....

Well, I thought you wouldn't believe me so I've included some photos to prove it (in addition to the top one, I saw all of the survivors of that Oceanic flight too!)

So here's a photo from the dock upon arriving on Ilha Grande (luckily, my plane didn't crash, and I didn't have to go through some strange time-travel portal in the Moroccan desert....I know now you really want to watch the show right?)




Ok, enough Lost nonsense, I was on Ilha Grande for a little over two days. Ilha Grande is exactly what the name denotes- Big Island. It really is huge, i don't know how huge but really big. It has a 106 beaches, and is basically all mountains and native Atlantic rainforest. It has a strange history, which is why there is only one fairly small town and lots of remaining native rainforest. First it was the site of a prison, then a leper's colony, then another prison, then a dharma initiative (just through that it for the Lost fans). It's a great place to take a vacation because there are something like 16 trails crisscrossing the island, some of them essentially unpaved roads, others near vertical root-grabbing treks, that take one all over the island to the various beaches and mts. And that's just what one can do on their own, most of the people it seems avail themselves of the tour boats going out to visit the beaches and go snorkeling.

I'm more of the explore-it-on-your-own-type, so on the first day I went on a great, albeit long hike to a series of beaches, traversing some amazing rainforest....just like in LOST!



the trail was built of stones by prisoners from one of the former prisons...beautiful, but not fun i imagine....





I had planned ahead, and stuffed my hammock in the bag, so when I got there...you got it, hammock time!




It was amazin how different the beaches I came to were. There was the sliver of beach that one can see in the above hammock photo, and then this great long beach at Dos Rios...



Dos Rios (two rivers) is aptly named for the two rivers that cut through the beach. One of the rivers is particularly amazing, the river itself is clear,and then when the tide comes in you can see the mixing of the salt and fresh water.



On the next day I decided to go on a different type of excursion, and so set out to climb Pico do Papagaio, pictured here from town above the church.




Unfortunately, this photo was taken the day before when it was relatively sunny, on this day it was one of those days where I could just here my parents saying...I think I see blue sky over there...but the fog just added to the ambience, as I walked among the giant tree covered boulders...



I came across some really interesting little things...such as these crawling plants (this photo doesn't capture the scale, but they're going about 30 feet up the cliff)



and a close up...



some strange cacti beneath the parrot's beak...




and what I think is a Jack fruit tree....



and then...I ran into a an Australian tourist coming up the mountain who I had helped buy a bus ticket in Sao Paolo a week before, he greeted me with a "Brother, I knew we'd meet again" (which is basically what Desmond said to Jack in the football stadium)...and that's when I knew I was FOUND (horrible pun, I know).