Brazilian Island - Fernando de Noronha

For the first part of our trip to Brazil, we flew to the islands of Fernando de Noronha. The main island has somewhat been developed for tourism, but only to the point that there are some paved roads and a small airport that only handles small planes. It's so informal that there is no real rental car company, but you can find a guy on the internet who will send you WhatsApp messages with prices and have the car and a person waiting for you when you arrive so you can pay. When we left a few days later, he said just leave the car in one of the six or so parking spaces at the airport and leave the keys in the car!

Anyway, the idea was to go to this remote group of islands to see the sea life and bird life and enjoy the beautiful beaches. For the most part, the beaches have no development here, only a few cabanas or none at all in a lot of cases. The water is clear and looks green closer to shore and fades to shades of blue further out. We saw this rock on our first hike. I think the call it Bishop Rock or something because it looks like one of those big hats they wear. 

The coast was just stunningly beautiful. This hike was inside a national park, so all natural. They have strict limits on how many people can hike each day, and you have to pay a guide also. We found out late that almost all the hiking time slots fill up fast, so we had to take the 7:30 AM time slot! It turned out we were getting up at 6 or 7 AM almost every day of our entire vacation.  But at least it was usually for a fun reason. :)  There's a big cave at the back of this cliff.

The wind was pretty strong, so the waves were strong too. We went snorkeling in one area and we found out why it's not good to go when it's not high tide - the waves were pulling and pushing us and Jennifer's shin slammed into the sharp rocks, and she was bleeding. 

But at least we did see a lot of colorful tropical fish.

This is the view at the end of the hike. You're not allowed to go in this area without a guide. 

We saw a lot of boobies at another beach, where there are great cliffs of black volcanic rock that they nest on. The first is a Brown Booby. 

These two are Red-Footed Boobies. The first is a female showing off for male suitors. The second is landing in a tree at the top of the cliff we were standing on. 

We also saw White Terns.

Frigatebirds were everywhere.  It took a lot of attempts to get a good one in sharp focus, with the sun at a good angle, good sky color, with the tail feathers in a V-shape, and the eye visible. This one meets all the criteria. These birds have about 6-7 foot wingspan and can live on the water for months without returning to land. They mainly return to land to have babies. They can drink seawater and their bodies can remove the salt. That would be amazing if humans could do that. 

We were lucky to see a couple of sea turtles at different times when we went snorkeling.

Barracuda, with his deadeye cold stare. You never know what they're thinking until it's too late.  He's over three feet long. 

Flying fish, not flying. Their "wings" are long fins. 

Stingray with a pal. This fish was following the stingray everywhere.  The stingray was like "I'm trying to hunt here - quit blowing my cover, you idiot!"

This is part 2 of our Brazil trip. 

Click here for artistic bird and waterfall photos from Iguassu Falls.

Click here for part 1 - a set of close-up jaguar photos from the Pantanal.