View to the parrot mountain
The most popular hike is to the top of the parrot mountain. It got its name by the way it looks – like a parrot (the little tip right of the big mountain peak). The hike is 10 h long one way and not something for us. 😀
Dois Rios hike
The one thing I wanted to visit on this island was the prison. The hike there was set to 2,5-3 h so that was suitable for us.
The path started from our village and headed up to the mountains. The road was way wider than yesterday so it felt much better. The first half of the trail there was up hill and the other part quite steeply down.
This was the first lookout point
On our way we past people that were wearing flip-flops and we felt sorry for them. 😀
I was really happy about my sneakers and so was Stig. It was really nice to have something closed and firm around the feet. The terrain was really rocky and there were also small loose rocks everywhere.
It took us about 1,5 hours to get to the Dois Rios village.
Dois Rios village
When entering the village we had to sign in. There was a man sitting in a guard booth and he had a book and a clock. We had to sign our name and the time we entered the village.
On the first sight the village looked quite empty and abandoned. We headed towards the former prison.
Getting closer we figured out that the prison is closed for visitors. Also as much as we could understand the sign, it is due to the financial crisis.
That was a disappointment. I bet also to a lot of other people. But we did walk around the area and managed to get a picture from the back yard.
The path we were on took us to the beach and it looked amazing. High forrests surrounding a sandy beach with clear blue water. Today was pretty windy so there were a lot of waves. These were really cool to look at and they were big.
We had our lunch on the beach and moved on.
We found some creepy abandon houses and cool busses. There was also a museum about the history of the village. But once again it was closed due to financial crisis. They did still have some boards with history on the wall that we could read.
Turns out that Dois Rios village was the main place for sugarcane and coffee plants. In 1800s there were huge farms there with 524 slaves. And the riches were measured on living conditions. The better conditions for the family and slaves, the richer they were.
Unfortunately there isn’t much left of the former glory.
The hike back
We spent about 1,5 hours in the village and then headed back. We needed to sign out again at the booth and then we were ready for our hike back. Uphill again.
Once again I am glad for my training. These past few hikes have been fairly challenging.
We past people that had chosen to take mountain bikes for this hike. They weren’t using them very much as the hike up and down was too steep. But there were still some that managed to bike. Hopefully they also survived. Not many of them were wearing helmets.
The road back was very exciting. We saw monkeys, banana trees, a woodpecker and a weird looking tree animal 😀
All in all we read that the hike was 20 km – not bad training for today. Now, a few hours later and sitting down I can really feel that my feet and legs are tired. 😀