June 22: Paquetá Island

Saturday morning, we hopped a ferry to stay the night in Paquetá Island, which is a small, car-free island inside Rio's Guanabara Bay. It’s a popular day trip, especially for Cariocas (citizens of Rio). The ferry was a fun experience in itself, an hour long with live music and people singing along, excited to have a day away from the city.

Paquetá is very low-key, with wide sand roads and single-home dwellings. It’s not really geared toward foreign tourism, so the food situation is a little scarce. We knew this in advance and the reviews said to bring your own and cook in the kitchen, but looking at the map, we saw a few restaurants and decided to take a gamble.

We learned two things from this. One: Google Maps has a very broad definition of what a restaurant consists of. And two: any place that sells food on the island shuts down at 5pm. But hey, we don’t need to eat in fancy Michelin restaurants every day, so we were able to scrounge up enough to tide us over until morning. I luckily didn’t get sick from a sketchy shrimp empanada, and Evan enjoyed a lovely sandwich with a loaf of white bread our host left us and an emergency single-serving peanut butter we’d brought along from home.

Our apartment made all of that worth it, though. We stayed in a small building called the Gaudi Tower because the architecture is in the surreal style of Antoni Gaudi—with colorful tiles, long curved benches and and spiral staircases, and lots of other fun flourishes. The view was amazing, with huge open-air windows we kept open all night for the breeze and the moonlight.

The island is just the right size for a day of exploring, with an old stone fort and two of my favorite things: cool trees and more marmosets. In the afternoon, we got cheap beer from a kiosk and watched the bike taxis and golf carts toting tourists around while trying to avoid the bike pedal carts that anyone could use. (Lots of impromptu drag racing going on with those.)

In the morning, we were awoken by a very persistent rooster and took the ferry back to the mainland and to our final Airbnb our last few days in Rio and whatever adventure awaits. Despite the food issues, it was definitely worth it