Visiting and Transport Tips for Ilha Grande and Paraty

Hi everyone,

I’m planning my trip to Brazil in March 2025 (finally!) and I’d love to hear your thoughts on Ilha Grande and Paraty. We’ll be arriving from Rio and departing from Paraty (heading to São Paulo). How can we best organize these transfers—can we book the different transports on the spot? How much time is ideal to stay in these two places to enjoy them without doing long hikes? Do you have an estimated budget? Thanks for your feedback! Dominique

Hi there! We were there last week!! For Ilha Grande, we went for the day just to relax a bit! Round-trip boat ticket bought on the spot for 120 reals. We didn’t go hiking but saw some monkeys there🙂 For Paraty, same idea—rented a car and booked a hotel on Booking.com the same day. Really pretty town but packed (Brazilian school holidays!!). I think we paid around 100 euros per night, but there were three of us. We took an excursion on a schooner (goeletta), expecting something super touristy, but it wasn’t *that* bad—it was actually a nice experience. (110 reals per person for transport; food and drinks were bought on the boat afterward.) There are smaller boats that are way more friendly! The road along the coast is gorgeous! Have a great trip ahead!

Hello and thanks for the reply. We’re two of us and won’t have a car, which is also why it’s pretty tricky to organize transportation—especially given the distances! Dominique

Hi Dominique. A great site for organizing travel anywhere in the world: Rome2rio. Also available as an app.

Hi and thanks to both of you for your replies. Yes, I know Rome2rio, but they don’t list all the options. For example, when you look up Paraty to Iguaçu, it sends you back to Rio... even though you can do the whole trip by bus, even if it’s long. In the end, we’ll take a morning bus from Paraty to São Paulo and then an overnight bus to Iguaçu. However, we’ll fly from Iguaçu to Belo Horizonte afterward. The prices were fluctuating wildly from one day to the next (!). See you soon. Dominique

However, I don’t understand your itinerary; You’re coming from Rio to go to Iguazu via São Paulo and then heading back to Belo Horizonte? Wouldn’t it be simpler (and cheaper, in my opinion) to go to BH first and then return to Rio before heading to Ilha Grande?

On my profile, the first travel journal about Brazil describes exactly the same route (excluding Paraty).

PS: I loved Minas Gerais!! PPS: Paraty/Iguazu – R2Rio had it: 22 hours by bus!!!

No no, we arrive in Rio from France, then we head to Ilha Grande for a few days, then to Paraty, and after that we "go up" to Iguaçu. Then we'll be in Minas Gerais, gradually making our way back down to Rio, where we'll spend several days before returning to France. It’ll make a nice loop.

You’ll see a lot of similarities between Paraty and Minas Gerais, since the town was the port where the ore mined in Ouro Preto used to leave.