Angra & Ilha Grande

South and east of Paraty, the Costa Verde loosens into one of the great scatterings of islands on the Brazilian coast. Angra dos Reis anchors the bay with its busy waterfront and its fleet of schooners, and offshore lies Ilha Grande, a car-free island of rainforest and beaches where the loudest sound is usually the surf. From Reserva Sete Quedas, up in the mountains above Paraty, this is the classic day away from the forest: a run down to the water, a boat across a sheltered channel, and a day spent between green hills and clear green sea.

What follows is a practical, honest guide to Angra dos Reis and Ilha Grande for anyone staying with us or nearby: what the 365 islands actually are, why Ilha Grande is special, where the famous beaches and lagoons sit, how to get there and island-hop, and how to visit in a way that leaves the place as good as you found it.

Region

Costa Verde, Rio de Janeiro state

Islands

365 in the Angra dos Reis bay

Star island

Ilha Grande (car-free)

Great beach

Lopes Mendes

From Paraty

day trip or overnight

The bay of 365 islands

Angra dos Reis sits on a deep, sheltered bay studded with islands — the local count is 365, one for every day of the year, and while nobody stands in the water counting, it is close enough to the truth. Portuguese navigators named the place on the Day of Kings, the sixth of January, in the very early sixteenth century: Angra dos Reis means the "cove of the kings." For centuries this was a working coast — sugar, then coffee coming down from the Paraiba valley, then fishing and shipbuilding — and the town still has that mix of history and industry. There is a naval base here, a big commercial port, and, further along the bay, a nuclear power complex at Itaorna. None of that spoils the islands; it just means Angra the town is more workaday than pretty Paraty up the coast.

The islands themselves range from bare rocks to substantial forested hills, many of them fringed with small beaches and quiet coves. Some are private, some are protected, and a great many are simply uninhabited green humps that boats slide past on the way to somewhere. The water in the inner bays is calm and clear, warm for most of the year, and shading from deep blue in the channels to a pale jade over sand. This is the reason the schooner day-trip exists: you can spend hours doing nothing but moving from one anchorage to the next, swimming off the boat, and looking at the same landscape you know from the mountains — the Atlantic Forest of the Serra do Mar — this time coming down to meet the sea.

Angra the town versus the islands

Most visitors do not come to Angra dos Reis to linger in the town. It is a real Brazilian port city, with traffic and shops and a working harbor, and it functions mainly as the gateway: the place where boats leave for Ilha Grande and where schooner tours load up. The old center has a handful of colonial churches and a pleasant enough waterfront, and if you have time to wait for a ferry it is worth a short wander. But the pull is offshore. Think of Angra as the door, not the room.

Ilha Grande: the car-free island

Ilha Grande is the largest island in the bay and the one everyone means when they talk about the islands here. It is big — roughly the size of a small national park — mountainous, densely forested, and almost entirely without roads. There are no cars. You arrive by boat, you get around on foot along forest trails or by small boat between beaches, and that single fact shapes everything about a visit. The pace drops the moment you step off the ferry. Bags get wheeled along sandy lanes, deliveries move by handcart and boat, and the interior of the island is a genuine wilderness of peaks, waterfalls, and rainforest that you have to walk into.

Much of the island is protected. It sits within a state park and biological reserve, and it carries the same Mata Atlantica biodiversity that makes our own reserve above Paraty worth protecting — the same forest, essentially, jumped across the water. That protection is not an accident of tourism. For a long stretch of the twentieth century a good part of the island was effectively off-limits to development because it held a prison, and the forest simply grew undisturbed. When the prison closed, the island opened to visitors with a lot of its wild character intact.

Vila do Abraao

Almost everyone arrives at Vila do Abraao, the island's main village and its only real town. It is a small, cheerful place: a sandy main street, a church, a scatter of pousadas and simple restaurants, dive shops, and boat operators along the front. From Abraao you can walk straight onto trails, hop a boat to the far beaches, or just settle onto the town beach and watch the schooners come and go. It is the logistical heart of the island — where you sort out where to sleep, where to eat, and how you will reach Lopes Mendes or the Blue Lagoon the next morning. It is busy in high season and quiet in the shoulder months, and it manages to stay unpretentious in a way that suits the island.

From Abraao there is an easy, short walk to a few nearby beaches and to the ruins of the old Lazareto, a nineteenth-century quarantine station and later a prison, half-swallowed by forest. There is also a gentle trail to a small aqueduct and a waterfall behind the town — a good leg-stretch if you arrive with an afternoon to spare and do not want to commit to a full-day hike.

Lopes Mendes: one of the world's great beaches

If Ilha Grande has a single headline, it is Lopes Mendes. It is regularly named among the best beaches in Brazil, and reasonably among the best anywhere: a long, straight stretch of fine white sand so pale and firm it is often described as feeling like flour underfoot, backed by forest and open to the Atlantic. Because it faces the open ocean rather than the sheltered bay, it has real surf — gentle rollers most days, bigger sets when the swell is up — which sets it apart from the glassy coves elsewhere on the island. There are no buildings on it, only a few simple kiosks selling drinks and snacks near the access point, and that emptiness is the whole point.

Getting to Lopes Mendes is part of the experience. The usual route is a boat from Abraao around to the beach at Pouso, followed by a walk of roughly half an hour over a forested ridge to reach the sand. You can also hike the whole way from Abraao if you want the longer trail day. Either way, bring water, sun protection, and shoes you can walk in — there is real shade only at the edges, and the sand runs on and on. Go early, and you may have long stretches of it more or less to yourself even in a busy season.

Lopes Mendes is the kind of beach that ruins you a little for ordinary beaches.

Lagoa Azul, the Blue Lagoon

On the calmer, bay-facing side of the island lies the Lagoa Azul, the Blue Lagoon — not a lagoon in the strict sense but a shallow, sheltered spot between small islands where the water turns an astonishing clear turquoise over pale sand. It is the standard swim-and-snorkel stop on almost every island boat tour, and for good reason: the water is calm, the visibility is excellent on a good day, and small fish gather in numbers, especially if boats have been feeding them. It gets crowded with boats at midday in high season, so an early start or a late-afternoon visit rewards you with the same clear water and far fewer people.

Aventureiro and the wild side

On the far, ocean-facing side of Ilha Grande, well away from Abraao, is Aventureiro — long one of the most remote and beautiful beaches on the island, and for years the domain of surfers, campers, and a small fishing community. Its emblem is a cashew tree bent almost flat to the ground by the wind, leaning out over the sand; you will have seen the photograph even if you did not know the name. Aventureiro sits within a stricter protected zone, and access and camping are regulated to keep numbers down. Reaching it takes commitment — a long boat ride or a serious hike — and that is exactly why it stays wild. If you want the version of Ilha Grande that feels genuinely off the map, this is it.

Dois Rios and the old prison

On the ocean side, reached by a good trail across the island from Abraao, is Dois Rios — "two rivers" — a beach and small settlement named for the two watercourses that meet the sea there. This is where the island's modern history is written. The Candido Mendes penal colony operated here for most of the twentieth century, and at various times it held ordinary convicts alongside political prisoners; it was demolished after it closed at the end of the 1990s. Today the site holds a small ecological museum run by a state university, and the walk out to Dois Rios — a few hours each way through forest, with fine views — is one of the classic hikes on the island. It is a strange, moving place: a beautiful beach with a heavy past, and the forest steadily reclaiming what was once a prison. The old cliché that Ilha Grande's forest survived because a prison kept people out is, in this case, largely true.

Diving, snorkeling, and life beneath the water

The sheltered, relatively clear waters around Ilha Grande and the Angra islands make this one of the more popular places to dive and snorkel on the southeast coast. Visibility varies a lot with weather, season, and how much rain has washed off the hills, but on a good day you get clear warm water, rocky reefs, and a decent variety of fish. Snorkelers do well at the Blue Lagoon and at any number of small rocky points where reef fish gather; you rarely need more than a mask and a calm cove.

For divers, the area offers rocky reef dives, walls, and a handful of wrecks in the bay. Dive shops operate out of both Abraao and Angra, and they run trips for certified divers as well as introductory dives for first-timers. As with anywhere, choose an operator who briefs you properly, keeps groups small, and takes reef protection seriously. The marine life here is the underwater half of the same rich coastal system you see above the surface — a reminder that the Atlantic Forest coast is a meeting of two hotspots, land and sea.

What you might see

Expect the usual cast of southwestern Atlantic reef fish — sergeant majors, parrotfish, wrasses, the occasional moray tucked in the rocks — along with sea turtles, which are not rare in these waters. Brazil's sea turtles are the focus of Projeto Tamar, the long-running national turtle-conservation program with stations up and down the coast; while the best-known visitor centers are elsewhere, the turtles themselves range through this whole stretch of the Costa Verde. Dolphins turn up in the bay, and in the cooler months you may hear talk of whales passing offshore on migration, though these are a matter of luck rather than schedule. None of it is guaranteed. That is what makes a good day underwater feel like a gift rather than a transaction.

Getting there and island-hopping

Ilha Grande has no airport and no bridge; you get there by boat, and the boat leaves from one of three mainland points. The most common is Angra dos Reis, which has the most frequent services. There is also Conceicao de Jacarei, a small departure point on the coastal highway closer to the Rio side, which is the quickest crossing for many. And there is Mangaratiba, further toward Rio, used mainly by the larger ferry. From any of them the sea crossing is short — a matter of a quarter of an hour to around an hour and a half depending on the boat and the departure point.

From Paraty

If you are staying with us above Paraty, the simplest approach is to drive or take a bus along the coastal road (the BR-101, the Rio-Santos highway) to Angra dos Reis or to Conceicao de Jacarei, then cross by boat. It is a scenic drive along the Costa Verde, roughly an hour or so from Paraty to Angra depending on traffic and where exactly you start. From Paraty itself, some operators also run direct boat transfers or combined tours out to Ilha Grande in the high season, saving you the road leg. If you would rather not sort out the logistics yourself, we are glad to help you line up a driver, a boat, or a full day's plan — just ask when you plan a stay or reach out through our contact page.

Types of boat

• Public ferry: the slow, cheap, big boat — the most economical way across, but with fixed and limited departure times, so check the schedule carefully in both directions.
• Fast catamarans and speedboats: quicker and more frequent, a little pricier, and the usual choice for a day when you want to control your timing.
• Water taxis and private transfers: the most flexible and the most expensive, worth it if you are a group or arriving at an awkward hour.
• Schooner day tours: full-day boat trips that circle a set of islands and swimming stops rather than dropping you on Ilha Grande to stay — a good option if you want the bay itself rather than the island.

Always confirm the last return boat of the day if you are day-tripping, and build in a buffer. Weather can cancel or delay crossings, especially the smaller fast boats, and a missed last ferry means an unplanned night on the island. That is not the worst thing that can happen to a person, but it is worth knowing.

Island-hopping the bay

Beyond the ferry-and-stay approach, the classic way to experience the 365 islands is the schooner tour out of Angra or Paraty. These wooden boats spend the day drifting between anchorages — a swim at the Blue Lagoon, a snorkel over a reef, lunch on board or at a beach kiosk, an hour at a quiet cove — and they are an easy, low-effort way to see a lot of water and a lot of islands in a single day. The Paraty version of this tour focuses on the closer islands and beaches of the Paraty bay rather than Ilha Grande itself; the Angra version reaches further into the island bay. Both are pleasant, both can get crowded in peak season, and both reward you for choosing a smaller boat over a party barge if what you want is the scenery and the swimming.

Walking into the interior

Most visitors stay on the coast and never see the middle of Ilha Grande, which is a shame, because the interior is where the island shows its wild heart. Trails climb from the beaches into cloud forest, past streams and small waterfalls, under a canopy loud with birds and, at dawn and dusk, with the roar of howler monkeys carrying across the valleys. The island is genuinely mountainous, and its peaks catch cloud and rain that keep the forest lush.

The classic climb is Pico do Papagaio, the "parrot's beak," a granite dome that rises above Abraao to a little under a thousand meters. It is a demanding hike — several hours up through steep forest, with some scrambling near the top — and many people do it as a pre-dawn walk to reach the summit for sunrise, when the whole bay lies spread below with the islands emerging from mist. It is not a casual stroll; go with a guide if you are unsure, carry a headlamp and water, and check the weather, because the view is the entire reward and cloud can erase it. The island's other high point, Pico da Pedra d'Agua, is even taller and less visited. For gentler forest walking, the shorter trails around Abraao and the crossing to Dois Rios give you the canopy and the streams without the summit push.

Whatever the trail, the forest here is the same Mata Atlantica we protect above Paraty — one of the world's richest and most threatened biomes, home to endemic birds, primates, orchids, and bromeliads found nowhere else. Walking it with that in mind changes the experience. You are not just crossing an island to reach a beach; you are moving through one of the last large blocks of a forest that once ran unbroken down most of Brazil's coast.

More of the 365 islands

Ilha Grande gets the attention, but the smaller islands of the Angra bay are the reason the schooner tours exist, and several are worth knowing by name. Ilha de Gipoia, the second-largest island in the bay, sits close to Angra and holds some of the most popular beaches for day boats, including calm, clear coves that fill with anchored schooners at lunchtime. Off Ilha Grande itself, the tiny Ilhas Botinas — two small green humps side by side — are a favorite snorkeling stop, and the nearby Lagoa Verde, the "green lagoon," is a shallow, sheltered pool of clear green water that rivals the better-known Blue Lagoon and is often quieter. Ilha de Cataguases and a scatter of other small islands round out the standard tour circuit.

Many of the bay's islands are privately owned, some by well-known families, and you will pass grand houses tucked into private coves as you cruise. Others are protected and uninhabited. The pleasure of a day in the bay is less about ticking off named spots than about the cumulative effect of moving slowly through so much green water and green land — anchoring, swimming, moving on, and losing track of which island is which.

Eating and the everyday

Food on the coast leans, sensibly, on the sea. Fresh fish, shrimp, and squid turn up grilled, fried, or in a moqueca — the slow seafood stew of coconut milk, palm oil, tomato, and coriander that is one of the great dishes of the Brazilian coast. On Ilha Grande, Vila do Abraao has the concentration of restaurants, from simple grills to a few more ambitious kitchens, plus beach kiosks and bakeries. Prices run higher than on the mainland, because everything arrives by boat. Carry cash in small notes: card machines exist but are not universal, especially at beach kiosks and for boat rides, and the island's power and signal can be patchy. A cold drink and a plate of grilled fish at a beach shack, feet in the sand, is the island at its simplest and best.

Where Ilha Grande fits in a Costa Verde trip

It helps to think of this coast as a series of distinct experiences rather than one interchangeable stretch of beach. Paraty is the UNESCO colonial town and its own gentle bay of islands and beaches. Ilha Grande is the car-free rainforest island. Angra is the working port and the gateway to the 365 islands. Each is worth a day or more, and they do not substitute for one another.

If your time is short, we usually suggest not trying to do all of it. A single, unhurried day on Ilha Grande — an early boat, a morning at Lopes Mendes, an afternoon swim at a quiet cove, a late ferry back — beats a rushed circuit that has you spending more time in transit than in the water. If you have longer, an overnight in Vila do Abraao lets you catch the island at its best: early morning before the day boats arrive, and the evening after they leave, when the village settles and the forest noise takes over. For a fuller picture of the archipelago and how the islands relate to Paraty's own waters, see our companion guide to the 365 islands, and for the mainland beaches closer to home, the Paraty beaches page.

A note on seasons

The Brazilian summer, from December through February, brings the warmest water, the best chance of hot, clear beach days, and the biggest crowds, the highest prices, and the fullest boats. It is also the rainiest season on this coast, which can mean sudden downpours and the occasional cancelled crossing. The cooler, drier months either side — roughly April to June and August to October — are gentler on both the weather and the wallet, with quieter beaches and clearer trails, at the cost of slightly cooler swimming. There is no bad time, only trade-offs; our best time to visit page walks through them in more detail. If seeing Ilha Grande on a quiet day matters to you, avoid the peak weeks of the summer holidays and the long weekends around Brazilian public holidays, when the whole coast fills up at once.

Responsible visiting

Ilha Grande is a protected island carrying a fragile and globally important forest, and the sea around it is part of the same living system. It absorbs a lot of visitors, and it shows the strain in the busy months. A few simple habits make a real difference, and they are the same ones we ask of guests on our own trails above Paraty.

• Carry out what you carry in. Many beaches on the island have no bins and no staff. Take a bag for your rubbish and bring it back with you. This includes fruit peels and food scraps, which draw animals and disrupt them.
• Do not feed the fish or the wildlife. Feeding at the Blue Lagoon and elsewhere concentrates fish unnaturally and changes their behavior. Bring a mask, not bread. The same goes for the island's monkeys and coatis — a fed animal becomes a problem animal.
• Use reef-safe sun protection. Ordinary sunscreen washes off into shallow water and harms marine life. Cover up with a rash guard and a hat, seek shade, and choose mineral, reef-safe sunblock where you can.
• Stay on marked trails. The island's paths run through protected forest and, in places, steep terrain. Cutting corners erodes slopes and disturbs habitat, and getting lost off-trail here is a genuine risk. On the longer hikes, tell someone your plan and your expected return.
• Respect the protected zones. Places like Aventureiro have camping limits and access rules for a reason. Follow them; they are what keep those beaches worth visiting.
• Go small and go early. Smaller boats, smaller groups, and earlier starts spread the load, reduce the crowding, and give you a far better day. The busiest hours at the famous spots are the worst hours to be there.

None of this is complicated, and none of it costs you anything but a little forethought. The islands have survived, in large part, by luck and by regulation — a prison here, a park boundary there. Keeping them worth the boat ride now depends on the ordinary decisions of the people who visit them. Travel gently and the place stays generous.

A little history, and a little caution

This coast has a long, layered past. Long before the Portuguese, the Tupi and other Indigenous peoples lived along these shores and islands, and their word-roots survive in place names up and down the Costa Verde. In colonial times the bay was a hiding place for pirates and smugglers working the sea route between Rio and the ports of the south, and Ilha Grande's coves made good shelter. Later, gold and coffee from the interior came down old mountain tracks — the same era of mule roads that laced our own banana farm above Paraty — and moved out through these waters. Then came the darker modern chapter of the quarantine station and the prison on Ilha Grande, and finally, from the 1990s on, the island's turn toward protection and tourism. It is worth carrying a little of that history with you; it explains why the forest survived, and why the towns feel the way they do.

A few plain safety notes, because a good day is a safe one. The sun here is strong and the sea, on the ocean-facing beaches like Lopes Mendes and Aventureiro, has real surf and currents — respect the conditions and do not swim out of your depth in rough water. The interior trails are steep, humid, and easy to underestimate; the longer hikes deserve an early start, plenty of water, and, if you are new to the island, a local guide. Boats can be cancelled by weather, so keep your plans flexible and your last-ferry timing generous. And keep valuables in a dry bag on the water. None of this should put you off. Ilha Grande is welcoming and well used to visitors of every kind — couples, families with children, solo travelers, and groups all find their version of it. A little forethought simply turns a good day into an easy one.

Making it part of a stay in the mountains

There is a particular pleasure in coming down to these islands from the forest and then going back up. At Reserva Sete Quedas you wake in the Mata Atlantica two miles above the Sete Quedas waterfalls, among the streams and springs and the old banana terraces, with the coast a distant line below. A day on Ilha Grande is the sea-level version of the same landscape — the same Atlantic Forest, this time meeting salt water — and returning to the quiet of the mountains at the end of it makes both halves better. You get the wide, bright, social energy of the islands and then the deep green calm of the reserve, and neither wears thin.

We are a small, conservation-first place: a working three-hundred-year-old organic banana farm and a bio-preservation reserve, with only a handful of low-impact chalets funding the protection of the forest around them. We are not a resort and we do not run a fleet of boats. What we can do is help you plan a day on the water that fits the rhythm of a mountain stay — when to leave, which departure point to aim for, whether to day-trip or stay over on the island, and how to time it around the weather and the crowds. When you are ready, plan a stay and tell us what you hope to see; the islands are one of the great days out from the reserve, and they are best done unhurried.

For the practical side of reaching us in the first place — roads, buses, airports, and the drive along the Costa Verde — see getting there. Between the forest above and the islands below, the region gives you far more than a single visit can hold, which is as good a reason as any to come slowly and stay a while.