Equipo Williams

We ended up in Florianoplois (or Floripa as the locals call it) for a couple of reasons.  First, it was about halfway between where we were (Foz do Iguacu) and where we wanted to end up (Buenos Aires).  We also wanted to travel by long-distance bus and it was a convenient distance (15 hours by bus) from Foz.  Finally, we decided that having a quiet week on the beach would let us relax and catch up after our fairly busy first three weeks in Brazil.

We let Audrey go on to Airbnb to look for a place and she came up with a beautiful looking ecolodge and hostel just above the beach that was in our budget.  It was duly booked after parental review and Jessie booked us lie-flat seats on the overnight bus from Foz to Floripa.

The bus was great, although I think the reviews vary across the family.  The heavy sleepers (Syd and I) had a great trip.  The girls had a harder time sleeping and were not as positive.  The seats we booked turned into passable beds, and after reading and looking out the window for a bit I drifted off to sleep.  To cover the necessities of a 15-hour trip, the bus made a couple of stops (midnight and 5:30 am) at rest stops that were clean and had buffet-style restaurants.  There was a bathroom on board which Audrey used a couple of times.  The ride was a little bumpy, although I think the double front and double rear axles gave a pretty smooth ride all things considered.  The bus stations were also clean, felt safe, and offered luggage storage and fast-food options.  I thought it was a great experience and I’d choose it again over flying.

Arrival in Florianopolis was pretty straight forward.  We pulled into the bus station at about 9:30 and had to kill a few hours before we could check in at 15:00.  We stored most of our luggage at the bus station and then headed out via Uber.  We found a nice cafe for a sandwich and coffee and then went to a botanical garden.  

Florianopolis is the city on Santa Catarina island.  The island is about 50 km long with the city on the middle of the west side.  The attraction isn’t the city but the rest of the island: beaches, mountains, forests, and lagoons interspersed with smaller villages and towns.  We stayed on the opposite side of the island in the village of Barra da Lagoa. 

Barra da Lagoa is a small fishing village at the southern edge of a long arcing beach.  There is a good amount of commercial fishing in the little harbor and some nice beach-front restaurants.  Our Airbnb was on the other side of the canal which was pedestrian-only: across the bridge there were several little alleyways connecting the homes and businesses, and our place was about a four minute walk up and around a hill.  The Sunset Strip was a little compound perched above a small cove with a beach; our apartment was the middle floor of the main building and had a lovely porch with a hammock overlooking the cove.  After three weeks on the road, we were excited to have a kitchen so we wouldn’t have to eat out every meal, and there were three bedrooms so the kids could get out of each other’s hair.  Audrey pretty much walked in, chose a bedroom, and shut the door behind her.

Once we arrived, we basically stayed in the village for a week.  Every morning we’d cross the bridge to pick up fruit at the green-grocer and bread at the bakery, and most days we went to the beach in the morning and then back again in the afternoon.  The waves were good for the kids although the water was a bit cold (it’s still mid-spring).  We tried out four different ice-cream buffets in the town and filled the recycling bin with beer cans.  

There were also a few trails around the village: short ones to some rocky points and longer ones to neighboring beaches.  I always like places where I can’t see any other signs of human beings, and sitting on the rocks you could position yourself so that no other people were visible and you could pretend it was just you on the island.

Toward the end of the week we hiked over to the neighboring town.  The hike started off with a wrong path that led straight into a small rock face, so we turned around and found the right trail.  It was a fairly interesting trail: after leaving the village the path got pretty overgrown.  Floripa is subtropical and there are some excitingly venomous creatures in the area.  Most of them are active at night, so Jessie and I weren’t too worried, and we saw other locals on the trail in flip-flops.  When in Rome, I guess.  

It was about a mile of climbing up to a ridge and look-out point above the beaches.  The kids and I were standing on a rock taking in the scenery when Jessie let out a gasp and a “Spider!  Big Spider!”  By the time we had turned around, it had run under cover, but Jessie assured us it was big.  The problem was that it had run under a bush right next to the trail.  I went first, and we all hurried along the path, a little more wary.

It wasn’t too much later when we encountered one of the spiders sunning itself in the middle of the trail.  It was indeed big.  It turns out there are a lot of species of tarantula and I don’t particularly like looking at them, so I don’t know what species it was.  We walked past it.  

Stress levels were now rising: we were nearing the end, people were tired, and everyone was a little jumpy about the tarantulas.  We made another wrong turn, and in back-tracking we came across a coral snake.  This one is a little easier; I’m pretty sure it is a Micrurus corallinus.  Wikipedia says it’s highly venomous, and since red touches yellow, this one kills a fellow.  Luckily they’re not aggressive, because I’m pretty sure I was kneeling down a few feet from it just before we saw it to take a picture of a butterfly: something big was moving in the brush but I couldn’t see anything.

We finished the hike in a state of high anxiety, which wasn’t helped by a couple more tarantulas on the path.  There was a bar at the trailhead and we were able to refresh with beer and soda before walking back to Barra via the city streets, illogically feeling safer around Brazilian drivers than around wildlife.

It was a good week.  Everyone had fun, the ice-cream and beers were cold, and we weren’t rushing from thing to thing.  The last day Jessie and I left the kids in the room while we went and had caipirinhas in a shack above the beach, and then it was time to pack up and move on.  

We flew to Buenos Aires last Saturday, and we’ve been exploring the city since.  We’ll be here a week before heading to Uruguay to try and recover the car, and then we’ll be back in Argentina for a few months of exploring.