Just off the coast of Brazil, you’ll find Snake Island. A region which is aptly named considering that it’s filled with – you guessed it – snakes. Hundreds of thousands of them. (By some estimates, 4 snakes per square meter).
As such, planning a vacation here may be a bit difficult (considering also that it’s illegal under Brazilian law to go there.) But in any circumstance, if only to quench a curiosity, let’s see if a handful of smartphone apps can take us from central Barcelona to Snake Island.
We’ll start at the planning phase. How do we get there? The tool Rome2Rio comes in pretty handy here, getting you from just about anywhere to anywhere else. The app grabs data from airlines, trains, busses, ferries, etc. to figure out the best route, which may, sometimes, be a bit creative. So what results come up for Snake Island? Well it’s actually not that tough to get to. Depart from Barcelona towards Madrid by train, arriving just in time for a flight to São Paulo, Brazil. From there, you grab the metro from the airport to Luz station in central São Paulo, which is where you’ll need to catch the intercity bus going to Jabaquara. Get off in the coastal city of Itanhaem. The final leg of your journey is a little bit more complicated. It’s an island full of snakes, so there isn’t enough tourism to set up a ferry system. In any circumstance, Rome2Rio got you this far, you can get creative for the last leg of the journey. (Row boat?)
Once that’s all sorted out, you need to book the flight. Unfortunately São Paulo is quite a distance away, and the ticket prices kind of hurt. But that’s what Hopper is for! This app tracks ticket prices for most flights and let’s you know when it would be an ideal time to book. Let’s assume you wanted to take off from Madrid to São Paulo in mid-December. A painfully high price tag of 1200 Euros would follow. But — and this is a good one — you could save up to 143 Euros by waiting to book, as prices will go down until December 11th (and then rise like crazy again).
Flights booked and you’re all set. Now there’s the pain of figuring out where to stay. Considering you’ve just forked 1200 Euros (or 1057 if you waited till December 11th!), something affordable would be better suited. Or outright free, because that’s actually an option, if you’re a user of Couchsurfing (and have the willingness to sleep in someone’s living room). There are, unfortunately, no current listing on Snake Island (because who would list them? Snakes?). But the nearby town of Itanhaem contains over 60 individuals who are willing and able to host you on your journey. Maybe having a local host will help in finding that aforementioned row boat store.
And there you have it, Barcelona to Snake Island using 3 awesome apps. And if getting to and from a snake-infested blob of land seems easy, then maybe it could help with a standard trip to Rome, Cairo or New York. (Or generally, other destinations with a reasonable number of snakes.)
