Ilha grande just gets better and better. Granted, the weather turning to 'dead hot and nice all the time' probably helped but it is truly a beautiful island.

We've spent a satisfyingly large amout of time lying around reading books- with caipirinhas and beer where appropriate (quite a lot). There are hidden beaches to be found at either end of the main town- they take about a 20 min walk through the jungle (sorry John) but it's SO worth it for the peace and beauty of them.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, we continue eat well (Suzie suggests she is maybe eating a little TOO well). We've had barbecues on the beach at Cafe do Mar- a great chilled-out bar just next to our Pousada which does BBQ every few nights... and they do BBQ in style. The first time, we had a Cavala (fish) between us- MASSIVE and lovely. Second time we had a... well we had some other kind of fish we'd never heard of. And two big skewers of beef just to be safe.

Also highly recommend Lua & Mar, a restaurant just a couple of hundred yards further along, again with tables on the beach. Their speciality is fish stew. Actually, their speciality appears to be HUGE portions of fish stew (could easily have served four people. Or us). Absolutely yummy.

Only thing that theeatened to temporarily spoil our fun was discovering that our onward travel plans weren't as straightforward as we'd thought. We had thought we could get the ferry, a bus to Sao Paulo, then overnight sleeper bus to Iguassu Falls. The sleeper wasn't running when ee thought it would and the first alternative was an overnight-but-not-a-sleeper (17 hours!) bus and that only had seats right next to the toilet. This, in the words of our very helpful Pousada owner, Laurent, "is bad, really really bad- you will not sleep". So we turned to t'internet and are going with ferry, bus to SP, hostel in SP for one night, flight SP to Iguassu at 1.25pm. So we arrive about one hour later, hopefully get a night's sleep and the whole thing costs only about £40 more.

Meanwhile, we're getting a bit of a tan (and a particularly fetching 'red tan' in the case of Andrew's now glowing calves). And Andrew found the new Dan Brown book in the Pousada and read it predictibly quickly- entertaining, easy to read and ultimately utter, utter rubbish. No surprises there. Suzie's next to tackle it.

Another cool thing about ilha grande is the massive range of ages everywhere. In the UK, and in lots of European places, it seems the young folk hang out in one area, the folk with kids somewhere else, and the oldies another. But here, everyone's welcome everywhere and it makes for a really friendly atmosphere.

Oh, and we realised we missed out an important observation in the previous post- the beach in Lopez Mendez has a unique texture. It feels and sounds like snow as you walk on it. Somewhat disconcerting to begin with but actually really cool.

Re: Nicole´s comment, we´ve resisted the Dessert Men. These are blokes on most street corners with a huge refrigerated trolley of sweet things. It would be very possible to browse-eat all day and night.