Monday 7 December 2009
Highlights: Ilha Grande Prison ruins, National park hike, ocean swimming

Kelly, Karen, Emma, Gareth and I got up early and went out to the old prison ruins undertaking a short 50-55 minute hike which was worth it to experience the rain forest on the island.

After a quick breakfast at the hotel the entire group then headed off on a 2.5-3 hour hike to a beach located within a national park. Luck was with us as the rain stayed away during the hike.   The beach was fantastic, so clean and clear.   The waves were great as well and we all enjoyed diving into them.   Gareth, Martin, Andrew and myself played games were the winner was the person who moved the least when the waves crashed into us.     I managed to win twice as did Gareth no luck for Martin or Andrew.

We than did a small hike back to an earlier beach we passed in the morning and caught a boat back to our hotel which took about an hour.   Now this is when it really started to rain hard, we were very lucky to not have the rain cause us any problems. For dinner we headed to another hotel to catch up with other GAP groups.

I spent a lot of time speaking to Sarah from New Zealand who had already done the Inca Trial and I realized just how difficult and fantastic it will be, I’ll need to do more walking and exercise to prepare over the next 30 days.   I got caught   out with the word game the group is playing, basically if you say ‘mine’ you have to do 10 pushups, well I have20 to do tomorrow morning (normally you have to do them straight away but it was suspended for the night. With enough alcohol in our systems and after the BBQ we all hit the dance floor, yes this included me who started out with a dare and danced with Sarah and after that everyone got into the spirit of things.   Andrews’s lawn mower and ATM dances being big hits.   I know there are lots of photos of me making a fool of myself, I believe maybe even a video 🙂 we all stayed very late I left around 1 am, Andrew got in about one hour later.   At this pace we won’t all make it!