Lopes Mendes

Hey everyone!

Last night we went out for dinner and I shared an incredible seafood platter with Danton, Maria, Emma, Feli and Elisabeth. Prawns, mussels, calamari, fish, yum yum yum!!!! Then we had an ice cream and joined another G group on the pier. They were behaving like 16 year olds and made me feel about 100 years old! We all left pretty quickly haha. 

Today Maria and I woke up and realised we are now human pin cushions. I have fifteen mozzie bites on my feet alone!! We went and had Açai bowls with Emma, Hayley and Molly for breakfast. Today's ones were huge, full of banana and incredible! Was amazing. 

We left at 10am and Daryl took us on a 2-3 hour hike through the jungle to Lopes Mendes, one of the most famous beaches in Brazil. Today was the most I have ever sweated in my life. I have never felt so disgusting! It was steamy hot. We walked across a few beaches but it was mainly through jungle with steep hills both up and down. 

I started to get eye ally dehydrated and felt weird even though I had had 2+ litres of water to drink, so had some hydration salts (thanks mum!) and Danton gave me some biscuits, I felt a little better after that. But it was so hot! I can't stress enough how sweaty and hot we were!!!! Haha. 

Along the way we saw more freaky spiders, stingrays swimming in the beach we walked along and then some cute little monkeys. We saw monkeys in the wild! Such cute ones too, have a look at the photos. 

About 1pm we arrived at Lopes Mendes beach and it was well worth the sweaty, hot mess of a hike. It was stunning, I would rate it just about equal (maybe slightly less) level of beauty as Whitehaven in Queensland. The water was so cool and refreshing, a beautiful colour and we were also surrounded by jungle. 

I put two layers of sunscreen on and ate a sandwich while I let it sink in. Then I swam for two hours, it was so beautiful! And you'll be pleased to know I have no sunburn again, just a tan line from my bathers. Don't quite know how that happened, it never does at home! Unintended. The waves were great too, some of them were huge!

We then walked back 20 minutes (saw more monkeys!) to a bay and caught a jetboat back to the main beach. We all got saturated which was a bit crap because our bags and everything that we had kept dry all day got soaked. 

Tonight I had a giant burger and an ice cream for dinner. Now I'm off to bed because we are getting up at 1.30am with English Anne to do a hike to Parrot's Beak, the highest point on the island. Are we crazy? Perhaps. But you only live once!

Love to all

Claire

Xoxox