Blogs from Santa Catarina, Brazil, South America - page 23

This week is all about deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeceleration. I packed a lot into the first 10 days of my trip in Chile and Argentina. For this week and the next three, I am in Florianopolis, taking Portuguese lessons. Florianopolis is an island in the south of Brazil, and capital of the Santa Catarina province. The island is big - about 42 km north to south, and maybe 20 km east to west at its widest. There are about 370,000 people who lived on the island, but the population doubles in the summer. The island has 43 beaches, and mountains. It is beautiful. My life here is very, very difficult. I am living with a host family in the Santa Monica neighborhood. The house is large and impeccable - everything is white and spotless, granite stairs, walk-in showers. I´ll ... read more

Hi friends and family, I finally managed to get some photos downloaded. Enjoy. Hope everyone is well. I´ve made my way up to Brazil and had no problems crossing the border thanks to my UK passport. I am leaving Florinopolis today and heading to the Foz de Igazu. Will give everyone a better update then. Take care, Richard... read more

Cleaning up our apartment we found an excellent trails guide for the Floripa island. Trails were ranking from easy, semi-difficult, difficult, hard, radical. As we are both well trained ;-) we choose a semi-difficult path in the south of the island (Pântano do sul). We thought it would be a good start. After 2 hours, 3 buses and a ride (we got off the bus to early because I blindly trusted the surfers as indication for a walking trail. Don't ask me why!) we finally arrived in a small fisher village and started our trip. In theory we should reach our target 45 minutes later: a desert beach on the opposite coast line. The trip turned out to be a little longer and harder than expected: the path was full of stones, mud and water. Trees ... read more

You think you’ve got a boring job? I’ll proof you’re wrong. Today we went to the town centre to buy a special bus ticket. Due to the ticket price rise this week the ticket office was overcrowded. People were queuing up in three different lines from 20 to 40 people each. Though the building itself was bursting at the seams people were talking quite happily to each other whilst waiting. Terrorized, we decided to return another day and went to the shopping zone to look for music instruments and an oculist (Pedro is getting blind). We entered into a shopping centre and my opinion of the most boring job in the world that I had had by then (garbage collector) collapsed. Would you like to sit on a chair in an elevator all day long, pressing ... read more

Hello Everyone, Greetings Once again from Beautiful, tropical Santa Catarina, Brazil. I am finally continuing my travel blogg. I was not able to write as I was busy interviewing for different jobs here. I am now currently Employed! I got a job at a company here called Yazigi, it´s a language school, here in Blumenau. I will be teaching English and Spanish. I always seem to get teaching jobs lately. I am not sure why, but I guess I really enjoy teaching. My Portuguese continues to improve! I met some new friends that only speak Portuguese so it makes me speak more. And they do correct my gringo pronunciation of the words. I think Portuguese is harder than Spanish. Do to all the different tenses of the verbs as well as the accents. I may actually ... read more