About an hour's ferry ride from the port town of Angra Dos Reis, just south of Rio de Janeiro, is Ilha Grande. The island has no paved roads and few if any operational vehicles. The only place to stay is the tiny hamlet of Vila do Abraão. On the opposite side of the island is the now abandoned and imploded Cândido Mendes penal colony. During the military dictatorship (1964-1985) the prison housed violent criminals in Alcatraz-like isolation. Situated not 200 meters from the beach and its shallow, gentle surf, the views are spectacular, penitentiary or not. Getting there is not the easiest, especially during the short daylight of the Winter. The trek from Vila do Abraão is three to three and a half hours long – each direction. So if you're off at seven in the morning, you can only stay until two, in order to make sure you're not stranded in the jungle after dark.

After the prison was abandoned, the government had it imploded in order to ensure that it wasn't claimed by squatters – this facilitated the jungle quickly overgrowing the prison's ruins. While a friend surfed in the bay, I tromped around inside the prison, climbing into old guard towers and scaling toppled walls to discover passion fruit growing among the old cells. The kitchen was guarded by a cleverly disguised Black Widow web, while scrawlings on the walls warned: cuidado! – careful! Inside the cells, carefully carved lines keep tally of prisoner's sentences, day by day. Organic textures abound as the forces of nature and the jungle seem to penetrate every surface. Rusts and lichens eat into metal and wood like an acid, slowly consuming from the outside in. I kept thinking as I looked around, “Man imposes order upon nature and eventually, nature claims man's order back through entropy.”