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Published: January 28th 2008
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Deciding that we were not up for a billion-hour bus ride from Ushuaia to Buenos Aires, we flew back to our first South American city in readiness for our entry into Brazil in time for Christmas. Instead of hostelling for the two nights in BA, we booked into the Fiers Park Hotel in Retiro as a Christmas treat. The hotel was conveniently located to the downtown area and shopping malls and, given our nicer accomodation and surrounds, our second trip to BA was definitely more pleasant than our first.
After making some last minute purchases to complete our camping equipment checklist, we boarded our bus to Florianapolis, a mere 26 hours away! Needless to say, it was a looooooooong day. On our arrival on the island of Florianapolis we caught two further buses to reach our destination, Bells Company Hostel on Praia da Armação. It was a hot, stuffy, smelly way to spend our Christmas Eve but on our arrival we were greeted by the very friendly owner, Omar (aka Gecko), and invited to the Christmas Eve feast he had organised for that evening.
After depositing our bags in the 25 person (!) dorm room, we got cleaned up,
picked up a drink, and sat ourselves down to relax in the late afternoon sunshine. The hostel has a great location right on the beach and we had a great view of the fireworks being let off (day and night) by other Christmas revellers. It turns out that Christmas Eve in Brazil is the time when families get together and have their Christmas feast and open presents, so it was nice to have arrived at Bells in time to be a part of the hostel family Christmas. We even received free t-shirts as gifts!
We awoke on Christmas Day to be greeted with another beautiful day and after a yummy breakfast we pottered on the beach and lounged around. For the three days we stayed at Bells these activities were repeated many times!
Due to a mix up with our booking, we had to move on from Bells after three days. We had bought camping equipment on impulse whilst in Patagonia so as to have more accommodation options available whilst travelling during the high season in Brazil, so we thought it a good opportunity to get the tent out and do some actual camping.
We decided to
Christmas Eve feast...
with Christina and Nobelia from Sweden camp at a small place which backed onto the beach. We were told by the owner that on the 28th of December the place would fill up quickly, however, we were still surprised to hear tents being erected at 7:30am that morning! We emerged from our tent to walk straight into a new tent which had been erected about a foot from our front door. Nothing like close camping! We couldn´t really complain though as in the hours that followed every square metre of the camp ground was taken over by colourful dome tents. We learned valuable lessons on camping in the six days we camped on Florianapolis: don´t set up too close to the common area as you´ll be awake all night, don´t set up too close to the amenities or you´ll have people hovering in lines near your tent every afternoon for showers, and don´t camp in Brazil in the wet season (summer) unless you are ready to get veeeery wet every.... single.... day!
Whilst on Florianapolis we visited the large lagoon in the centre of the island and enjoyed paddling in the bath-temperature water there. We also visited the city to post some excess baggage back
Christmas morning
Santa delivered Lynsey´s stocking but was a little too drunk on Christmas Eve to go shopping and fill it! home (very impressed with the postal system there too - we even got a receipt!) but most of the time we spent lounging at the beautiful beach.
We had initially anticipated that we would drop in on Bells Company Hostel to join in on their New Years Eve revellery, however, we were struggling with our portugese language skills so decided to have a tranquil New Years Eve on the beach in front of our camping ground. We loaded up a plastic bag full of ice and our drinks of choice and at about 7:30pm traipsed onto the beach with our chairs and insect repellant prepared to see some revellary.
Unlike New Years Eve in Australia where people would be falling over themselves drunk well before midnight, the Brazillian people didn´t even come onto the beach until almost 11 where huge bonfires were lit and people dressed in white paid a sort of homage to the new year by throwing white flowers into the ocean. It was a very different experience to our celebrations in Australia which made it very special. In true Australian spirit, we passed out around 2:00am whilst we understand most locals were still awake to
see the sun rise.
Happily, the camping ground cleared out substantially the following day and we enjoyed one more night of tranquility before heading off to the bus station for the trip to Curitiba.
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