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Published: December 31st 2006
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Barra De Lagoa, Florianopolous
The Christmas gang - some really good friends. We had ummed and ahhed for some time about where to stay for Christmas. Josh and I both wanted somewhere where we could hang out with a good bunch of people in an atmosphere that felt like home. On our travels, we had heard so much stuff about this great hostel on Isla De Santa Catarina, which is just over the bridge from Florianopolous, one of the major cities in Southern Brazil. The island is around 60kms long apparently (don´t hold me to that) and the hostel was on the western side, in a beachside resort town called Barra De Lagoa. The name of the hostel…….THE BACKPACKERS SHAREHOUSE, and it was the best goddam way to spend Christmas I could possibly imagine.
We arrived there on the 21st January after a 16 hour bus ride from the Falls. If anyone is making this trip, try to avoid doing it with Pluma bus company….it was the pits. Worst bus journey of the trip so far. We arrived relatively miserable and grumpy after smelling toilet fumes for the majority of the trip, but were soon invigorated by the scene that presented itself from the bus stop. A rickety bridge leading over a
Barra De Lagoa, Florianopolous
The hostel is on the left, the bridge on the right fast flowing river, to a haphazardly built white hostel looking over the entire beach. Heaven!!
We were greeted by Junior and Tish, the two owners of the hostel, who showed us around and really made us feel like part of the family. Saying that, their parents were also staying at the hostel over Christmas which made for a real quality Brazilian family feel to the stay. We were introduced to the famous Blackboard of Honesty. Basically, the hostel bar is run on a complete honesty system, whereby if you take a beer, water, cocktail, chips etc, you write it up next to your name on the board, and they tally it all up at the end of the night and add it to your bill. Great system, although slightly dangerous when you got to the end of your stay and had to pay the whole bill, and one that really let you know exactly how much you had had to drink during your night! Sometimes something you don’t really want to see.
Over the majority of the next seven days, we did pretty much nothing apart from sleep, lie on the beach, swim, get ridiculously sun burnt, and
Barra De Lagoa, Florianopolous
Josh, Brett and yours truly at Chrissy dinner drink a lot of booze. It was exactly what we needed after a really hectic few weeks of travelling, hiking and sightseeing, and it has really invigorated us now for the next part of our trip.
Some of the highlights of our time there were:
• A karaoke night at the hostel on our second night there. Sounds cringe, and it probably was, but it was deadset one of the funniest nights i´ve had in a long time. All the old classics, and many more were belted out for around 5 hours, before everyone retired for the night.
• Organising 28 people to go to Warung, which is apparantly the ´3rd best nightclub in the world´, which was 2 ½ hours from where we were staying. We organised 2 minibuses to take us there, and then pick us up at 6am the next morning. It was a wild night in a massive nightclub overlooking the beach and one that I wont forget for a long time to come.
• Christmas dinner with the whole crew, including Tish and Junior´s family was a real highlight. Everyone in Christmas hats celebrating Chrissy away from home, was real spectacular, and all this
Barra De Lagoa, Florianopolous
Proudly displaying the WB´s stubbie holder. Respect. while looking out over a Brazilian beach wasn´t half bad either.
• The restaurants on the beach, serving some of the most delicious fish, rice, salad, chips meals i´ve ever had. A meal for one fed around 3 people, and cost next to nothing! They were so good that Josh decided to have one on the last day of our stay, leading to us nearly missing our bus to get out of town to Rio. As you all know, my level of organisation couldn´t really handle this, so Josh was not the most popular man for around 2 hours! Him paying for the frantic cab to the bus station soon fixed this though!
• The people we met. I had said to Josh a while back that all I wanted for Chrissy was to hang out with a really great crew of people, chilling out, drinking and just having a real blast. And this is what we got. Thanks to everyone out there for making it such a good time, and especially to Tish and Junior for being so much fun over our stay there.
Now we are in Rio, gearing up for what should be one hell of
Barra De Lagoa, Florianopolous
Hanging out in the bar at the Backpackers - the honesty system blackboard is in the background a New Years Eve. We have our white gear ready to wear, as all Carioca´s do on this night, and are ready to boogy our ass off to the Black Eyed Peas on Ipanema Beach, whilst watching the fireworks from Copacabana. This is something I have always wanted to do, so here´s hoping it is a great night. Rio seems quite dangerous, and so I have been keeping a real close eye out for myself, so hopefully nothing happens tonight.
Hope everyone had a great New Years, whereever you were for it, and I will let you know about mine sometime soon.
Until later….
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Nina from DK
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The caipirinha headache
... you guys must have had yourself one of those by now - they are a wonderful reminder of the amount of lovely Brazilian drinks you had the night before and for some reason, I find them to be way worse than any other hangover headache! And sorry, by the way, for not warning you about Pluma - Julie and I kept saying that you would have despised that bus (and imagine, we did Pluma from the falls to Rio!!) Happy New Year from Nina (who's back in cold, rainy Denmark... Oh nooo!)