10-Day Rio, Ilha Grande & Paraty Itinerary: How to Plan Every Transfer

The shape of the ten days

Same four transport legs as the seven-day trip. Six full days in place instead of three. That is the whole difference, and it is a large one.

Days 1–3 — Rio

Day 1: arrive. Uber to your hotel unless you land late with luggage. Do not attempt to go further on arrival day.

Days 2 and 3: two full days, which is enough to do Rio without rushing. A viewpoint day (Sugarloaf, Corcovado) and a neighbourhood-and-beach day (Santa Teresa, Lapa, Ipanema, Copacabana) is the standard and it works.

Transport: Uber and the metro throughout. No car, no driver. The metro along the Copacabana–Ipanema–centre corridor beats any vehicle at rush hour.

Before you leave, store your large bag at the hotel if you are returning through Rio. On the island and in Paraty's cobbled centre, you will be glad of it.

Day 4 — Rio to Ilha Grande

Here is where ten days changes the advice.

Road to a mainland port — usually Conceição de Jacareí, roughly 2½–3 hours — then a 20–30 minute boat to Vila do Abraão.

On a seven-day trip we would tell you to book this through, because a missed boat costs a night you cannot afford. On ten days, two travellers with light bags can perfectly well take the Costa Verde coach from Novo Rio and buy a boat ticket at the pier. It costs a fraction as much. If something goes wrong you spend a night in Angra dos Reis and take a morning crossing, and you have lost an evening rather than a booking.

That said, still leave in the morning. Slack is a fallback, not a plan. The port comparison and the last-boat arithmetic are in the Rio to Ilha Grande guide.

Days 5–6 — Ilha Grande

Two full days on the island. No transport to arrange — there are no cars.

Two days is the right amount, and it is what seven-day trips cannot give you:

• One boat day — a trip around the bay to Lagoa Azul and the smaller beaches.
• One walking day — Lopes Mendes on foot, roughly two hours each way through forest, or a shorter trail with a boat one way.

With two days you can do both properly, and take a slow morning in between. With one you are choosing.

Luggage on the island is its own subject — the west side of Vila do Abraão is cobbled, the centre and east are sand. The luggage guide is worth reading before you pack.

Day 7 — Ilha Grande to Paraty

Still a morning departure. Boats off the island are concentrated in the morning and early afternoon regardless of how long your holiday is.

Three routings: the through-booked boat-and-van combination (2–3 hours, from around US$44 per person at our last check), the DIY boat-to-Angra plus Colitur L101 bus, or a direct speedboat where one is running (reported around 90 minutes, about R$250).

On ten days, the DIY routing is genuinely reasonable if you are travelling light and start early — boat to Angra, short taxi from the pier to the rodoviária, Colitur bus to Paraty. It is much cheaper and it is a perfectly pleasant day.

With suitcases, it is still the through-booked version, because this leg has three luggage handovers no matter how much time you have. Detail in the Ilha Grande to Paraty guide.

Days 8–9 — Paraty, and the car question

Two full days here, which is exactly enough to justify the thing a seven-day trip cannot: a car for one of them.

Day 8 — the town. The historic centre in the morning, when the light on the cobbles is best and the crowds are thin; a schooner trip around the bay in the afternoon. The centre is closed to traffic and paved in large irregular stones — you walk it, and that is the point.

Day 9 — beyond the town. Trindade to the south, or the waterfalls and cachaça distilleries on the road towards Cunha. This is the one day of the whole ten where a rental car is clearly worth it. Public transport to these places is slow and infrequent; tours run to someone else's schedule.

Hire it for the day in Paraty, park at the edge of the centre, return it before departure day. Do not rent for the whole trip — a car cannot reach Ilha Grande and is a liability in Rio. The full reasoning is in the rental car comparison.

Day 10 — Departure

Same leg, same warning, and ten days does not soften it.

Roughly 250 km up the BR-101, four and a half to six hours, plus a connection from Novo Rio to the airport if you travel by coach. Sunday afternoons and the ends of Brazilian long weekends run considerably longer.

This is the one leg we recommend booking privately, and slack in the rest of your itinerary does not help you here — you cannot spend a spare day after your flight has left. Work backwards using the table in the departure-day guide, and for any international departure before about midday, use one of your extra nights near the airport rather than on the coast.

Where to put the extra nights, in order of value

If you have ten days and are wondering how to distribute them against the seven-day version:

1. The second full day on Ilha Grande. The single best-value extra night on this coast. It converts "we saw the island" into "we spent time on the island".
2. The second full day in Paraty. Unlocks Trindade and the waterfalls, which are the reason to have more than one Paraty day.
3. A buffer night before your flight — either in Rio or held loose in the middle of the trip. Boring, and the one you will be most grateful for if a crossing is cancelled.

Could you add a fourth place?

You could. We would not.

Adding Búzios, or a stop in Minas Gerais, means two more long legs and two more accommodation changes. What ten days buys on this coast is the ability to stop packing every second morning. Spending it on another transfer undoes that.

If you genuinely want more than these three places, the better move is a longer trip — or dropping Ilha Grande, which is the hardest one to reach, in favour of somewhere that connects more easily to whatever you are adding.

Send us your actual dates and flight times and we will tell you which of these legs to book and which to leave loose — including the ones where the honest answer is that you do not need us at all.