Paradise, found.

I have found paradise. 

From deep blue tropical waters, great shards of dark limestone rise sheer to one or two thousand feet - jagged, cave-riddled and cloaked in vivid green jungle of trees, vines, orchids, mosses and other strange, endemic plants that I’ve seen nowhere else. Clouds clip the tallest peaks. 

The islands are home to soaring swiflets (their nests give the area its name, El Nido), monkeys, hermit crabs, lizards, birds and butterflies. In the warm, clear waters are hundreds of species of fish and corals, turtles, whale sharks, dolphins and dugongs. 

As seascapes around the world go, it doesn't get any better than the stunning Bacuit Archipelago. Three hours from Manila, it's remote, spectacular and unspoilt, and reached by a bumpy small plane and a boat ride. 

Only two of the forty-five islands are inhabited and the entire area is a protected marine reserve. The snorkeling - over coral gardens, tall sponges and the iridescent blue mouths of giant clams - is superb. On the first day a six-foot green sea turtle swam past our boat, or bangka. 

There are other places similar to this – like Vietnam’s Ha Long Bay and Thailand’s Krabi and Phi Phi islands – but dare I say it, this place is more beautiful, if only because it is pristine and little-visited. And what El Nido also has (and those places lack) are stunning beaches: empty arcs of palm-lined, coral sands backed by jungle, and secret, rock-cloaked coves and turquoise lagoons where the only sounds are the paddle of your kayak and bird calls.

 

If paradise has a downside it's that it poured with rain, torrentially and non-stop for the first 24 hours. Cats and dogs. However, after it cleared, the staggering beauty of the place revealed itself and took me aback.

Ilha Grande.

After events at the weekend, I couldn´t help feeling that Rio was telling me something: to get away from it for a few days. So that's what I´ve done, with Nicole and Julian, Australian friends I met earlier in the trip.

We travelled out of the city by bus for three hours, along the Costa Verde, a beautiful jungle-cloaked coastline of mountains, beaches, bays and islands. A further hour and a half by boat from the harbour of Angra dos Reis and we reached another world.

Ilha Grande is a mountainous, tropical island of unspoilt beauty. Its history as a pirates' hideaway, a leper colony and a prison for the country's most dangerous, means it was never developed or its resources exploited. 

Today, it remains almost entirely covered in protected virgin rainforest and, with 102 pristine beaches (one of which is regarded as the best in Brasil), is a little piece of heaven. Wisps of cloud cloak the tops of the peaks, eagles soar overhead and hummingbirds whirr outside the window of where we're staying, sipping nectar from the orchids growing wild opposite.

With no cars, the pace of life is barefoot, sand-between-the-toes sleepy, and it's bliss.