Our Aluminium Frigate Bird

With Morro do Pico behind, I waited at the end of the runway, flightradar open on my phone. Our plane arriving to pick us up.

Flight is the only practical way for visitors to come to the archipelago, about an hour from Recife.

Not only visitors, almost everything on the island arrives by air. This is just the start of what makes visiting expensive. There is a fairly steep daily charge, an environmental protection tax. There is a separate hefty national park fee payable to visit most of the beaches or any of the marine areas.

Yes, it was certainly worth it, but we were quite conscious of how much this little side trip was costing.