[Note: this is also kind of my journal of the experience, so the stories might be long. I probably should have split it into posts by day...but there's no going back now! And I promise the pictures are worth at least scrolling through! :) ]
Arrive in Fernando!:
- The view flying into the island was spectacular, and stepping onto the runway was breathtaking (you know you're somewhere beautiful when you have to stop and take pictures from an airport runway).
- Get our transportation to our hotel....or so we thought. They dropped us at a different hotel than the one we had reservations for (which was mostly humorous because reserving a hotel was a week-long nightmare of confusion and fees, that ended up with us having had--at one point or another--reservations at 3 different hotels). So we ended up at a different one, but they had talked to our official reservation and decided to switch us for some reason. They gave us a good deal though and it was a nicer location than the one we were supposed to be at, so it ended up being great!
- We got there in the evening so there wasn't much open (and it was too late/dark to do much exploring), but we wandered to the nearest beach "Praia do Cachorro" and enjoyed the cool ocean air and the incredible night sky. It was like being back in Ha'apai, boating between islands at night and feeling like there wasn't a spare bit of sky to squeeze in a single extra star. It was amazing.
- We wandered back through the little town and stopped by an old church for a bit, then went to get dinner. There was a place that served menu items as well as a buffet (the buffets here are charged per kilo, which I think is brilliant). I ordered a sandwich and Lisa got a plate of veggies and stuff then we split them both. It was delicious.
- After dinner we headed back to the hotel and took advantage of the hammocks hanging out front, and enjoyed a short and beautiful nap before going in to actually get ready for bed.
DAY 1:
- Day two actually started out pretty rough. We were both kind of sick and exhausted and emotional, so we didn't do much in the morning. It felt like a lame way to start off the vacation, but decided it was better to have a slow morning than be grumpy the rest of the day haha. So we took a nap and did a bit of reading/relaxing, then headed out later in the day. We went on a short hike to another beach (difficult in the dark, but possible because I had made Lisa bring her flashlight!) and enjoyed a picnic dinner. We also booked our boat tour for the next day!
DAY 2:
- BOAT TOUR! Funny story. So they send a shuttle around the island to pick you up from your hostel, and tell you they'll pick you up between 8 and 9. Well Lisa and I got ourselves up and were just about ready to go at 8, sitting and enjoying breakfast, when we realized...our clocks were on the wrong time zone! We were a full hour late! We ran and asked the hotel lady if the shuttle had passed yet and she said no, but was super surprised; she said they usually they pass pretty close to 8. Anyway, by some miracle the shuttle was an hour late so we managed to catch the tour!
- We boarded the double decker boat and I headed straight for the top. :) I enjoyed the breeze and view up there for a while, but went back to the bottom because we were boating through a group of DOLPHINS! I saw dolphins from a distance in Tonga, but never like this. They just followed our boat and jumped out of the water around us. We even saw a mommy and baby dolphin jump out of the water in unison; it was like watching the National Geographic in real time. It was freaking awesome! From the boat we also saw a sea turtle, some sting rays, and tons of cool fish and birds.
- The boat basically took us around half the island, giving a fantastic view of all the beaches. The water is apparently pretty rough/dangerous on the other side of the island, so no one really goes over there in boats.
- We stopped to snorkel off of the world's most beautiful beach (no seriously---it's actually won that award a few years in a row!). it was a pretty sandy area so the wildlife was actually pretty minimal, but there were some fun schools of fish, and the water was beautiful. Plus they gave us noodles. Snorkeling is WAY more fun when you're not worried about how good of a swimmer you are haha.
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| My hair was about this crazy the whole trip...and the snorkel mask didn't help :P |
- When we got back to the port, Lisa and I opted to stay on the beach instead of going out again to snorkel. (It's like "extreme" snorkeling; you basically use snorkel gear and then hold onto a rope and get pulled through the water. So it's like the water skiing equivalent of snorkeling?) Anyway, I was feeling pretty snorkeled out and it was kind of expensive, so we stayed on the beach. We wandered over to a really cool rocky cave thing and had fun picking up cool rocks and shells. And then we took a nice sunny nap. Ahhh, I love the beach! :D
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| The black and white rocks seemed totally natural. No idea why it looks like this, but it was so cool! |
- It was getting late-ish and we didn't really have other plans, but we saw a little church up on a hill so we decided to go up and check it out. The church was locked, but it took us to a crazy cool view.
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| Dear Mom and Dad: I found you a house!! :D |
- The path we took also led further out to the tip of the island. We climbed down onto the rocks, and watched a crazy crab show. We couldn't figure out why the crabs were being so weird until we realized there was an eel in the water!! Yikes! We watched it catch and eat a crab...CRAZY.
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| No, I have no clue who these people are. But I loved this picture! |
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| How would you like to live here?? |
- Walking home, we saw the biggest frog I have ever seen. I didn't even realize it was a frog at first; it was bigger than both my fists combined! SO FAT. haha. I also rescued a tiny one that got stuck in the gutter...(and the stupid frog repaid my kindness by peeing on my hand. Ew. Dumb frog.)
- Stopped at an Italian place for dinner and split a yummy garlic pizza.
- Went home and took cold showers to relieve the heat from a day in the sun, and went to bed to the sound of a tropical rainstorm....there are few sounds like it. :)
DAY 3:
- Another slow and peaceful morning. We went to the store to buy more water, then came back for a late breakfast/lunch of leftover pizza and some veggies. Then we set out to adventure!!
- We caught the bus out to the Tamar Turtle Project (reserve? I'm not sure what the actual name is). The reserve itself was actually kind of disappointing. Tamar has locations all over Brazil, and the one in Fernando is cool because they do so much work tracking and tagging the wild turtles, etc. But since we were there in the off season they didn't even really have people there to tell us about the turtles; it was just a few posters and models of turtles. Cool info, but we didn't stay too long.
- After Tamar, we walked to Boldró beach, which is probably one of my favorite beaches I've ever been to. It was beautiful and huge (with almost no one there, suprisingly), with a few giant rocks for climbing! :D
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| Really, the view was pristine. |
- The beaches are all beautiful, but separated into individual beaches by giant rocks and cliff things. But we had intentionally planned to get there at low tide so we could walk across all the beaches (when the waves drop low enough you can just walk across, or climb safely over the rocks).
- We walked across Boldró, Americana, Boi, Cacima, and ended with a spectacular view of the "Dois Irmãos" or "two brothers", the most distinct rock formation on the island. All the beaches were spectacular. Fernando really is an island paradise. I'm sure it gets more crowded during the heavy tourist season, but even still, there is so much to do and so many different beaches I think they still stay pretty open and clean year-round.
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| Look how perfect this sand is. I mean, seriously. |
We had some spectacular views, especially from the top of one cliff we had to climb over. We enjoyed a picnic of "Clif" bars at the top (haha, I know I'm hilarious) but didn't stay too long because there were about a million fearless lizards trying to get our stuff.
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cool cacti growing up the cliff. we climbed up a different part. :)  |
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| Don't be fooled by how close we look to the water... we're way high up! |
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| Aw look at the tiny people. We climbed down there next :) |
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| It was a pretty trail, but the parts that were muddy were nuts! |
- We walked out to the dolphin overlook, and had a spectacular view of the sunset.
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| Apparently you can actually only see dolphins here at like 6am. But the view was still pretty good ;) |
- We kept walking along the trail, because I was pretty sure it was a loop, and would be faster back to the entrance. Well, it was getting close to closing time for the park and I didn't want to get locked in, so finally Lisa convinced me we should go back the way we came (now a much longer trail haha). We made our way back as quickly as possible walking/running on the trail, but were still too late and had to improvise an exit through the fence....oops :) It was super dark by then and I was *not* looking forward to reliving that muddy trail in the dark, so I asked a group of Brazilians if we could hitch a ride with them back out to the main road. They didn't seem thrilled but said yes. haha. Hooray for human sympathy :) We weren't exactly sure where they dropped us off and ended up getting lost again, but eventually found the right way and caught a bus home.
- Went to a fancy dinner at "Flamboyant". I ordered fish and Lisa ordered a sharkburger. Tragically, they were out of shark so we ended up getting two plates of fish. And it was surprisingly delicious! Turns out I maybe don't hate all fish haha. It came with "vinagrete" (aka chopped pepper, tomato, onion, etc) and purê de batata. That's basically mashed potatoes, but it really is a puree; they are so smooth and soft and creamy and de-freaking-licious. :D
- It was such a fun adventure day!!
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