Ilha Grande & the Islands

An hour and a half up the coast from Paraty, the mountains draw back and the sea fills with islands. Angra dos Reis is the name of the mainland town and of the great scalloped bay in front of it, and local people have long said there are 365 islands out there, one for every day of the year. The largest by far is Ilha Grande, a car-free island of forested peaks, quiet coves, and one of the most photographed beaches in Brazil, with a strange and telling history: for most of the last century it was a prison, and the prison is the reason so much of its forest still stands. This is a full guide to the island and the archipelago around it — how to get there, what to walk to, where to swim, what lives in the water and the woods, and how to visit in a way that leaves it intact.

Where

Ilha Grande, in the bay of Angra dos Reis, Rio de Janeiro state

Size

roughly 190 square kilometres, the largest island in the bay

Main village

Vila do Abraão, car-free

Mainland departure points

Angra dos Reis, Conceição de Jacareí, Mangaratiba

Crossing

about 30–40 minutes by fast boat; longer by ferry

Best-known beach

Lopes Mendes, on the open-ocean side

From Paraty

around 1.5–2 hours by road to the Angra departure points

What the "365 islands" really are

The bay of Angra dos Reis is one of the most broken, island-strewn coastlines in Brazil. The Serra do Mar, the coastal mountain range, comes down to the water here and then keeps going, its drowned ridges and summits breaking the surface as headlands, rocky outcrops, and islands of every size. The figure of 365 is a local saying more than a survey — count the smallest rocks and the number climbs much higher — but it captures the feeling exactly: you round a point and there is another island, and behind it another, until the horizon is a soft grey stack of them. The Portuguese named the place Angra dos Reis, the "Cove of the Kings," after arriving on the day of Epiphany in 1502, and the name has held for five centuries.

Most of the islands are small, uninhabited, and green to the waterline. Some have a single house or a fishing family; a few carry the weekend homes of people from Rio and São Paulo; and out past them all sits Ilha Grande, big enough to have its own mountains, its own weather, and villages on more than one shore. If you are coming from the reserve you will already know the shape of this coast — the same Serra do Mar that rises behind Paraty runs north to Angra — but the archipelago shows you the other half of the geology, the part that sank rather than rose. Our wider Angra and Ilha Grande overview sets the whole region in context; this page goes deep on the island itself.

Ilha Grande covers roughly 190 square kilometres, which makes it far larger than a day trip can really take in. Its spine is a run of forested peaks, the highest of them just under a thousand metres, and its coast is a chain of more than a hundred beaches, most of them reachable only on foot or by boat. There are no through roads and, in the villages, essentially no cars. What there is instead is water on every side, trails over the middle, and a forest that has crept back over old clearings until you can walk for hours under a closed green canopy and forget that people ever built anything here at all.

Getting there: the boats from the mainland

You cannot drive onto Ilha Grande, and that is the first thing to make peace with; every visit begins with a boat. There are three main jumping-off points on the mainland, and which one you use depends on where you are coming from, how much you want to spend, and how much you mind a longer or shorter crossing. From the reserve above Paraty, all three are reached by driving north up the coast road toward Angra dos Reis; the drive is covered in more detail on our getting there page, and the coast road is the same winding, scenic Rio-Santos highway you would already know.

From Conceição de Jacareí: the quick crossing

Conceição de Jacareí is the closest mainland point to the island and, for most independent visitors, the simplest way across. It is a small port on the coast road between Mangaratiba and Angra, and the crossing from here is short — a fast boat covers it in around half an hour, sometimes a little less. Small operators run lanchas and speedboats through the day, and because the distance is so short the boats leave frequently, filling up and going rather than sticking rigidly to a timetable. This is the option many people choose when they want to get onto the island quickly and are travelling light. The trade-off is that the small ports here can feel a touch chaotic, with people offering boats as you arrive; it pays to know roughly what a crossing should cost before you commit, and to keep your bags with you.

From Angra dos Reis: ferries, catamarans, and schooners

Angra dos Reis is the largest town on this part of the coast and its main terminal is the most established way to the island. From here you have real choice. The traditional ferry — the slow, flat-bottomed boat locals call the balsa or barca — is the cheapest crossing and the most weatherproof, taking something over an hour to cross to Vila do Abraão, but running only a couple of times a day, so it needs planning around its schedule. Faster catamarans and scheduled speedboats cover the same route in roughly half the time. Angra also has the biggest choice of day schooners, the wooden tour boats that spend the day working from cove to cove, and it is the natural port if you are combining the island with other stops in the bay. Being a proper town, Angra has more services around the terminal — parking, shops, places to leave a car — which matters if you are driving in and leaving the vehicle behind for a few days.

From Mangaratiba: the ferry from the Rio side

Mangaratiba is farther north, closer to Rio de Janeiro, and its ferry is the classic approach for people coming down from the city rather than up from Paraty. The ferry here is again the slow, inexpensive balsa, taking well over an hour to reach Abraão and sailing only a limited number of times each day. For a guest based at the reserve, Mangaratiba is the least convenient of the three — it is the farthest to drive and the slowest to cross — but it is worth knowing about if your plans have you coming or going via Rio, since it lets you skip the drive back down the coast.

Getting around once you are on the island

The boats do not stop when you land. Because there are no roads to most of the beaches, the water taxi — the taxi-boat, or lancha — is the island's everyday transport, ferrying people from Abraão out to Lopes Mendes, Aventureiro, Saco do Céu, and the more distant coves, and picking them up again on arranged schedules. Alongside these are the day schooners, which take a fixed loop around several snorkeling and swimming spots with time in the water at each, and the smaller private lanchas you can hire to go where you like. Learning to read this water-based rhythm — when the last taxi-boat comes back, which beaches the schooners visit, what a private hire costs — is most of what makes an Ilha Grande trip run smoothly. Boatmen in Abraão organise the day-boats each morning near the pier, and it is easy to join one on the spot.

Vila do Abraão: the car-free village

Almost everyone arrives at Vila do Abraão, the main village on the sheltered north shore and the island's only real town. The first thing you notice stepping off the boat is what is missing: there are no cars. Deliveries move by handcart and wheelbarrow, people walk everywhere, and the loudest sounds are boats, birds, and conversation. It is not a museum-piece of quaintness — Abraão is a working village with shops, pharmacies, guesthouses, dive operators, and a busy waterfront — but the absence of traffic changes the pace of everything. Children play in the streets, dogs sleep in the sun, and you find yourself walking down the middle of the sand road without thinking about it.

The village sits in a bay backed by forested peaks, with the pointed summit of the Pico do Papagaio, the "Parrot's Peak," rising behind it. A little church, Igreja de São Sebastião, stands near the front, and the main street runs a few blocks back from the water before the buildings give way to trees and trailheads. Abraão is where you will sleep, eat, buy supplies, and catch every boat, so it is worth understanding as the hub it is: from here trails and taxi-boats fan out to the rest of the island, and to here they all return.

Around the village on foot

Even without leaving Abraão there is plenty within an easy walk. West along the shore, a short trail leads to the ruins of the Lazareto, the old quarantine station, and the graceful stone aqueduct built to serve it — both quiet, overgrown, and shaded, and a first taste of the island's layered history, which we come to below. Nearby, a short forest path reaches a small waterfall, the Cachoeira da Feiticeira, a good introduction to the interior for anyone not ready for a full-day walk. East of the village, an easy coastal trail strings together a series of close beaches — Praia Preta, with its dark, iron-rich sand, among them — each an easy stroll from the last. These short walks are the gentle end of the island, well suited to families, to a first afternoon, or to a day when you would rather potter than march.

Climbing the Pico do Papagaio

At the other end of the scale is the Pico do Papagaio, the peak that watches over Abraão. The climb to its summit, at just under a thousand metres, is one of the island's set-piece walks, a steep, sustained ascent through the forest to a granite top with a view over the whole archipelago. Many people do it as a pre-dawn hike with a guide, leaving in the dark to reach the summit for sunrise, when the islands below emerge one by one from the mist. It is a demanding walk on a rough trail and not one to attempt casually or alone in the dark; going with someone who knows the path is the sensible choice, and the payoff — the bay spread out and glowing at first light — is among the finest things the island offers.

The walk to Lopes Mendes

If Ilha Grande has a single famous image, it is Lopes Mendes: a long, straight run of fine white sand on the island's open, ocean-facing side, backed by low green hills and washed by an Atlantic swell that draws surfers. It is regularly named among the most beautiful beaches in Brazil, and for once the reputation is earned. The sand is so fine and pale it squeaks underfoot, the water is clear and cool with real waves, and because it faces the open sea rather than the sheltered bay, it has none of the boat traffic of the calmer coves. There is nothing built on it — no hotels, no bar strip — just a couple of simple kiosks set back under the trees.

Getting there is part of the appeal. The classic approach is on foot, following the marked trail that runs east from Abraão over the wooded ridge of the island. It is a walk of a few hours each way, up and over through shady forest, with glimpses of coves along the way and a final descent to Praia do Pouso, from where a last short climb over a low headland brings you out above the great sweep of Lopes Mendes. The alternative is to take a taxi-boat from Abraão to Pouso and walk only the final twenty minutes or so over the hill — the popular choice for families, for anyone short on time, or for those who would rather save their legs for the water. Many people combine the two, boating one way and walking the other.

Whichever way you come, treat Lopes Mendes as a place to spend hours, not minutes. The beach is long enough to walk away from other people, the swimming and bodysurfing are excellent, and the light on the sand in the late afternoon is worth staying for — though if you are not overnighting you must keep one eye on the last boat back. Bring what you need with you, because the beach has almost no services and the ones it has are basic. It is a wild, open, unspoiled place, and part of keeping it that way is carrying out everything you carry in.

The Blue Lagoon and snorkeling in the bay

The sheltered, bay-facing side of Ilha Grande is where the water goes glass-clear and the snorkeling happens. The best-known spot is the Lagoa Azul, the "Blue Lagoon," a shallow, protected pool of turquoise water among small islands off the north coast, where the bottom is close enough to see clearly and the fish are used to being fed and photographed. It is the standard first stop on almost every day schooner, and on a busy day it can be crowded with boats, but the water genuinely is that colour, and for anyone who has never snorkeled it is an easy, gentle introduction — warm, calm, and shallow, with fish in numbers.

The Blue Lagoon is not the only clear-water stop. The Lagoa Verde, the "Green Lagoon," is a similar sheltered cove with the same calm, transparent water and good snorkeling. The bay in front of Freguesia de Santana — where one of the island's oldest churches, a small colonial chapel, stands near the water — is another regular schooner stop with easy swimming. Saco do Céu, the "Bay of Heaven," is a deep, still inlet ringed by forest, famous for its mirror-flat water and, on dark nights, for the faint blue glow of bioluminescent plankton stirred up by a hand or a paddle. A typical schooner day strings several of these together, giving you an hour or so in the water at each and lunch somewhere along the way.

Snorkeling well, and gently

The reefs and rocky shallows here are alive with fish — parrotfish, sergeant majors, wrasses, the flashing silver of schooling baitfish, and, in the rockier spots, moray eels and rays — and the way you behave in the water decides how long that stays true. Do not stand on, touch, or kick the coral and rocks; a single careless fin-stroke can break a growth that took years to form. Resist the urge to feed the fish, however tame they seem, because feeding changes their behaviour and skews the whole small ecosystem toward whatever gets handed out. Keep a respectful distance from turtles and rays rather than chasing them for a photograph. And choose sunscreen that will not poison what you have come to admire. None of this dims the experience; a reef you move through quietly shows you more, not less.

Aventureiro and the wild south

For a sense of how remote the island can feel, the southwestern corner is the place to go. Aventureiro is a small, wild beach on the open ocean, long a home to caiçara families — the traditional coastal people of this coast, descended from Indigenous, Portuguese, and African roots — and long famous among surfers for its waves. Its signature image is a leaning coconut palm that grows almost horizontally out over the sand, bent by decades of wind, a shape reproduced on a thousand postcards. Reaching Aventureiro takes commitment: it is a long boat ride from Abraão around the exposed side of the island, or a serious trek, and the sea here can be rough, so trips are weather-dependent.

Aventureiro sits within a strictly protected biological reserve, the Reserva Biológica Estadual da Praia do Sul, which covers much of the wild southern end of Ilha Grande. That status shapes how you can visit: numbers are limited, camping and lodging are run by the resident caiçara families under tight rules, and large areas of the reserve are off-limits altogether to let the forest and its wildlife alone. This is not the place for a big schooner crowd or a party; it is the place for people who want a simple, rustic stay on a beautiful and genuinely remote beach, and who are content to live within the reserve's limits. Going with an operator who understands and respects the rules is essential, both to get in at all and to avoid harming the very thing that makes the place special.

The wider south and east of the island — beyond the main trails, out past Lopes Mendes toward beaches like Praia dos Meros and Parnaioca, and along the exposed ocean coast — is the least-visited part of Ilha Grande, some of it inside the biological reserve and closed, some of it reachable only by long walks or by boat on a calm day. This is where the island keeps its deepest quiet. It is not the right ground for a first-timer or a casual afternoon, but for a strong walker with time, a guide, and settled weather, it is where the island feels most like the wild place it is.

Dois Rios, the prison, and an accidental conservation

On the far side of the island from Abraão, facing the open ocean, sits Dois Rios — the "Two Rivers," named for the two streams that meet the sea there across a wide, wave-pounded beach. Today it is a small, quiet village with a research station and a museum. For most of the twentieth century it was something very different: the site of the Cândido Mendes penal colony, the prison whose long shadow explains why Ilha Grande looks the way it does.

The road across the island

Dois Rios is reached from Abraão by walking across the middle of the island, a route of several kilometres over the forested spine, or by an old road built to serve the prison, which a few operators now use for shuttle vehicles — one of the very few places on the island where a motor vehicle runs at all. The walk is a good half-day each way through deep forest, climbing over the ridge and dropping to the ocean coast, and it is one of the classic interior hikes. What waits at the bottom is a broad, empty, powerful beach, a scatter of buildings, and the strange, moving atmosphere of a place where a prison once stood and the forest has taken almost everything back.

A prison island

Ilha Grande's history is not a gentle one, and it is worth knowing, because it is the reason the island is so green. From the late nineteenth century the island was used as a place to keep people apart from the mainland. First came the Lazareto near Abraão, a quarantine station built in the 1880s to hold arriving immigrants and sailors suspected of carrying epidemic disease — cholera, yellow fever — before they were allowed onto the continent. Its ruins and the elegant stone aqueduct that fed it still stand in the forest just west of the village, softened now by vines and shade.

In the twentieth century the island's role hardened into imprisonment. The Cândido Mendes penal colony at Dois Rios grew into one of Brazil's most notorious prisons, holding common criminals and, during the military dictatorship of 1964 to 1985, political prisoners as well. The mixing of those two populations behind the same walls had a consequence that outlived the prison: it is widely held that one of Brazil's most powerful criminal organisations took shape inside Cândido Mendes in the 1970s, its structure learned in part from the political prisoners' discipline. The prison was finally deactivated and demolished in 1994. Where the cell blocks stood, the state university now runs a research station and the Ecomuseu Ilha Grande, which tells the island's human story — the quarantine, the prison, the caiçara communities — in the very place it happened.

For a century the island was a place people were sent away from; the forest is what grew back in their absence.

How the prison saved the forest

Here is the turn that makes the history matter to a naturalist. Because Ilha Grande was a prison island, it was closed. For decades ordinary development simply could not happen: no resorts, no roads, no clearing for farms or holiday houses, because the island belonged to the penal system and outsiders were kept off. While the mainland coast around it was being cleared and built on, Ilha Grande sat locked away, and the Atlantic Forest quietly reclaimed the old clearings. By the time the prison closed, the island was covered again in dense, recovering forest — not because anyone planned it, but because people had been kept out. When the prison went, that forest became the foundation of the protected areas that cover most of the island today, chief among them the Parque Estadual da Ilha Grande, the state park.

It is an uncomfortable kind of conservation, preservation as a by-product of confinement, but it is real, and it left the island a rare thing on this coast: a large, continuous, well-recovered stand of Mata Atlântica, the Atlantic Forest, on ground that would almost certainly have been cleared had it been open. The lesson is not lost on anyone who works to protect this forest deliberately. At the reserve above Paraty, the same biome is kept intact by choice rather than by accident — a small number of chalets funding the protection of 500 acres of continuous forest — but the outcome the two places are reaching for is the same: keep the trees standing, and everything else follows. You can read how that deliberate version works on our page about the reserve's place in this island coast.

The wildlife of Ilha Grande

The forest that grew back over the old clearings is now full of life, and it is the same Mata Atlântica biome that clothes the mountains behind Paraty — one of the world's richest and most threatened forests, where a high share of the species are found nowhere else on Earth. On an island, that forest takes on a particular character: fewer large predators, some animals grown bold, and a concentration of life along the trails and forest edges where it is easy to see.

In the forest

Walk the interior trails quietly, especially early or late, and the forest reveals itself. Brown howler monkeys announce themselves long before you see them, their deep, wind-like roar carrying across whole valleys at dawn and before rain; capuchin monkeys, quicker and more curious, move through the canopy in troops and are sometimes seen near the village edges. On the ground, the agouti — a large, long-legged rodent the size of a small dog — trots through the leaf litter, and the teiú, a big, handsome tegu lizard, basks on warm trails. Birdlife is abundant: toucans clatter through the treetops, tanagers flash red and blue and green, and the forest is loud with the calls of species you will hear far more often than you see. There are snakes too, including venomous ones like the jararaca, which is a good reason to watch where you put your feet and hands, wear proper shoes on the trails, and never reach blindly into undergrowth — not a reason for fear, only for the ordinary care the forest asks of everyone. If the birds are what pull you, the same families fill the mountains at the reserve, and our coast and forest pages go further into what to look and listen for.

In and on the water

The sea around the island is as alive as the forest. Snorkelers see reef fish in variety — parrotfish grazing the rock, sergeant majors in clouds, wrasses, damselfish, the occasional moray eel or ray — and green sea turtles feed in the shallows and seagrass of the calmer bays, a genuine thrill to meet in the water if you keep your distance and let them be. Offshore, dolphins move through the archipelago and are sometimes seen from the schooners. This whole stretch of the Costa Verde is important habitat for sea turtles, and the long-running Brazilian sea-turtle programme, Projeto Tamar, works up and down this coast with a well-known base at Ubatuba on the mainland to the south; seeing a turtle on Ilha Grande is a reminder that the water here is not just scenery but working habitat. As with everything else, the rule is the same: look, do not touch, do not feed, and take nothing living.

Responsible visiting

Ilha Grande is loved, and being loved is hard on a place. On a peak summer day thousands of visitors land at Abraão, the Blue Lagoon fills with boats, and the popular beaches carry more people than they were ever built for. The island's protected status — a state park over most of it, a strict biological reserve in the south — exists precisely to hold the line against that pressure, and how each visitor behaves is part of whether the line holds. The good news is that visiting well is not complicated; it is mostly a matter of restraint and attention.

• Carry out everything you carry in. Many beaches have no bins and no staff. Whatever you bring — food wrappers, bottles, cigarette ends — comes back with you. A small dry bag for rubbish is one of the most useful things in your pack.
• Protect the reef and the fish. Use reef-safe sunscreen, do not stand on or touch coral and rocks, and never feed the fish or turtles. Feeding changes wild behaviour and unbalances the small ecosystems you came to enjoy.
• Keep your distance from wildlife. Do not chase, corner, or feed monkeys, turtles, or birds. Monkeys that learn to raid bags become a problem for everyone and often end up harmed for it.
• Stay on the marked trails. The interior is real forest with steep ground, venomous snakes, and areas closed to protect regenerating habitat. Shortcuts cause erosion and get people lost; the marked routes exist for good reasons.
• Respect the reserve's limits. In protected zones like Aventureiro and the southern biological reserve, numbers are capped and rules are strict. Go with operators who honour them, and accept that some places are meant to be hard to reach.
• Support the local community. Abraão and the caiçara communities live from careful tourism. Eat locally, hire local guides and boatmen, and treat the village as the working home it is rather than a backdrop.

There is a straightforward selfishness to all of this too: a quiet reef shows you more fish, an unlittered beach is a nicer place to spend a day, and a forest walked gently gives up more of its animals. The island rewards the visitor who slows down and treads lightly, which is exactly the kind of trip it is best suited to in the first place.

Planning the island into a stay in the mountains

How much time to give it, and when to come

Ilha Grande can be done as a long day trip from the mainland, and many people do exactly that — an early boat over, a schooner around the snorkeling stops or a walk to Lopes Mendes, and back before the last boat. It works, but it is a lot of movement for one day and it puts you on the water at the busiest hours. The island opens up properly with at least one night in Abraão: you catch the popular beaches early before the day boats arrive, you can do a longer walk without watching the clock, and you see the village settle in the evening once the day crowds have gone. Two or three nights lets you spread the set-pieces — a Lopes Mendes day, a snorkeling day, a Dois Rios or Pico do Papagaio walk — without rushing any of them.

Season matters here as much as anywhere on this coast. The warm, wet summer from roughly December to March brings the clearest, warmest water and the greenest forest, but also the biggest crowds, the highest prices, and the afternoon storms that can cancel boat trips to the exposed beaches. The cooler, drier months from about April to September see calmer seas, thinner crowds, and easier walking, at the cost of slightly cooler water and shorter days. The shoulder months on either side often give the best balance of settled weather and elbow room. For a full breakdown of the coast's seasons and how they shape a trip, see our best time to visit guide, which applies to the islands as much as to the mountains.

The rhythm from the reserve

For guests based at the reserve, Ilha Grande is the natural big day out — or overnight — on the water, the counterpoint to the forest and waterfalls up the mountain. The two experiences sit well together: the reserve is high, cool, green, and quiet; the island is bright, salt, and busy with boats. Spend your mornings among the streams and banana terraces and your day on the archipelago, and you get the whole vertical range of this coast, from mountain cloud forest to clear sea, within a single trip.

The practical shape is simple. Angra and the boat departures are around an hour and a half to two hours by road from Paraty, up the same coast road you would have arrived on. From the reserve you drive down and north to your chosen departure point — Conceição de Jacareí for the quickest crossing, Angra for the widest choice of boats — cross to Abraão, and either make a full day of it or stay a night on the island before returning to the mountains. Because the last leg up to the reserve is a slow mountain climb, it is worth timing an island day so you are not driving that final unpaved stretch after dark; our getting there page explains why, and we are glad to help arrange the driving on both ends.

None of this needs to be complicated, and you do not have to work it out alone. When you plan your dates with us we can help you fit the island in around the tides, the weather, and the rest of your days — which crossing suits you, whether to go for the day or stay over, and how to pair it with the beaches nearer Paraty or a run over the Serra to Cunha. Start with our stays and booking page, or get in touch through the contact page, and we will help you build a trip that takes in both the forest above the town and the island of 365 that lies off the coast. The mountains and the sea are two halves of the same place here, and Ilha Grande is the best way to see the second half.