Florianopolis - Mar 09

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On our arrival into Florianopolis we were pleasantly suprised to find how quiet it was. The city centre itself (Florianopolis, the capital of Santa Catarina) is just like a normal CBD, it faces the inland side of the island which is connected to the mainland by a bridge. We jumped on a series of buses that would take us down to the south of the island to the small fishing village of Costa de Dentro in which we were staying. The south is very much less developed than the north. The north of Santa Catarina is supposed to be like the Gold Coast and is frequented mainly by families from other South American countries. The mid north, Barra Lagoa, is a town located on a huge natural lagoon. It reminded us of Byron Bay, very laid back, no tall buildings, lots of restaurants and hippie shops. It is a big surfing island with most of the night life located in Barra Lagoa. We were very happy with our little spot down in the quiet south, even if it did take a while to get anywhere else on buses (even took 1hr round trip to get to an ATM). The hostel we stayed in was Albergue de Pirata, the Pirate hostel! It was extremely laid back, to the point that you could not even work out who worked there. We had our own little bungalow sort of thing, with our own kitchen, lounge room, bathroom and hammocks out the front. Accross the road was the rest of the hostel with the dorms and bar and more kitchens. After venturing down to the beach, which was about 5 blocks from our place, we relaxed in the hammocks and had a snooze..... perfect!

After being in Rio and Salvador, two large cities with so much going on it was so good to take a second to relax. Our plan for our time in Santa Catarina was to go to the beach lots, relax lots, and have many adventures on the many walking tracks. This unfortunately didn´t turn out exactly as we planned as we had raining stormy weather for about 3 days. This wasn´t too bad in the end as it forced us to stop and relax, we played lots of cards, chess, drank beer and watched movies (in English.. yay!!). On the first day with good weather we got straight up and got dressed ready for a trek over a mountain to find a small secluded beach with no road access to it. To find the track we had to walk up the beach to the next fishing village and find the blue house and a bar and it would be there with a sign. So we walked up the beach, which was lovely, and very hot, got to the village (which smelt entirely of fish) and found a blue house and a bar, but no track! We walked around the village (which consisted of about 5 streets) for about half an hour finding many blue houses, and some bars, but no tracks. After walking down a little path at the back of some houses, and Hayley almost stepping on a coral snake (!!) we got some directions from a lady and finally found the sign and the track. Walking up the track (which was not really a proper track, more like a faint path through the bush and rocks) we were quite scared of snakes, the track was not very well worn at all! We weren´t even sure if it was a track, the rain and storms of the past few days had also created waterfall like crevices through the rocks, luckily we had our trekking shoes on, this was going to be hard. After a few thoughts of turning back as it was rather scary Hayley screamed! Something had rubbed up against her and run past.... it was a dog! He ended up being our guide through the bush to find the beach. He was fantastic, every time he got to far ahead of us, he would stop, look back and wait till we caught up. His presence made us feel a lot better as we figured he would spot the snake before we did. After the hour walk up and back down the mountain we made it to the beautiful beach. It was small and isolated. The only other people on the beach were a few surfers who were camping there. The water was a perfect temperature, and we swam for a while. After having a picnic lunch on the beach we had a sun bake and read our books. After a good few hours on the beach we headed back (a lot more at ease this time). It was a great day with a beautiful walk and a great beach.

We had a small supermarket just down our street so we were able to buy food and alcohol there cheaply and cook at home, which makes a big difference to the budget. We were shocked by the alcohol prices, they are soooo cheap. A bottle of Cachça (Brazillian white rum) was only R$2.25 (~AUD$1.20) for a 700ml bottle.

On another of the fine days we ventured up to Barra Lagoa to check it out. The place is lovely, the beach facing the ocean was full of people. The restuarants and bars all come right down to the sand and there are all sorts of street vendors selling stuff on the beach. A few days later we would be back to have dinner at a fantastic little Italian style restaurant. We ate and drank like kings and it only cost us about AUD$60.

We felt re-energised and ready to tackle the rest of our trip, next up is Iquazu Falls!!

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