We were getting close to leaving for Florianopolis, and Erika was getting excited to be back at a beach for the first time in a while. Looking at pictures as we were planning our time there, I was excited too, because it looked gorgeous!

And the weather forecast showed nothing but rain for all 6 days we’d be there.

It’s fine, we said, it’s still days away, surely it’s bound it change.

When we woke up to leave Foz do Iguasu, it was raining. And the forecast still said 6 days of rain in Florianopolis.

We landed in Florianopolis, stepped off the plane, and got punched in the face with the humidity. It wasn’t raining, but the horizon didn’t look good. We took our taxi the almost hour drive to our hostel in Barra da Lagoa.

The taxi pulled up, let us out, and we were greeted warmly and immediately by Bruno at the hostel. We told him we don’t really speak Portuguese, we were only on day two in Brazil, after all. Fortunately he spoke English. He introduced us to a few Portuguese phrases, something he’d do for us all week while we were there.

We told him our fears with the weather wrecking our whole trip, and he scoffed and waived his hand at it. “You can’t believe it,” he said. “Well, sometimes it’s right, and sometimes it’s not.” His own wavering confidence didn’t sway us much.

Barra da Lagoa

Bruno helped us to our room, and helpfully gave us directions to the beach, which we took immediate advantage of, before that horizon we’d seen at the airport could make its way to us. He gave us one set of directions that would take us through the main street of town, and another way that didn’t; we opted for the latter first.

Floripa—as the locals call Florianopolis for short—is mostly on a large island called Santa Catarina. Barra da Lagoa is a neighborhood on the eastern coast of the island, sandwiched in between a large lake, Lagoa da Conceição, and the Atlantic ocean. It has the feel of a small, secluded beach town, very relaxed and full of laid back locals.

The beach is where everyone hangs out, and you can tell by being out there in the afternoon, noticing as more and more people show up as they get off work. People circle up and play futbol, and children run in the surf. The vendors pass through the crowds, full of friendliness and patience, and plenty of people buy food off them and eat in the sand. We loved it immediately when walking through there our first afternoon, and for me personally, it quickly became my favorite beach environment I’ve ever been to.

 

There were also very few tourists. We met a group of Israelis, and otherwise heard English a few times, but for the most part it was just us and the Floripa locals.

We made our way along the beach and over to the main street. Before we left the hostel, Bruno had given us a few recommendations for food. We saw one of the restaurants he mentioned, Dois Irmãos, and decided to make it our first dinner stop. The server was incredibly friendly, and we got a truly massive amount of food—fried fish, rice, fries, salad, and sauces—for a truly small amount of money. We took plenty of leftovers home with us too, making it even more of a value!

We also had our first of what would become a necessary mainstay in Brazil: caipirinhas! Caipirinhas are simple, refreshing, delicious, and dangerous. They’re made simply with sugar, lime, and the Brazilian liquor cachaça. Lots of cachaça.

The Promised Rains Come

We woke up the next morning with the forecast saying imminent rain, and rain all day. Beautiful. Well, we figured we’d have breakfast at the hostel, and just hang around and see if we lucked out any and could get out to the beach.

The breakfast was included with the room, and was fantastic. Every day there were eggs, plenty of different fruits, and another of the necessary mainstays in Brazil: pão de queijo! Simply, that translates to cheese bread. It’s a delicious bread with cheese baked into it. Yeah, I know! It’s everywhere too: at the grocery store, at shops along the streets, at our hostel breakfast, at Starbucks. We had plenty every morning.

Anyway, we had breakfast, went back to the room… and the rain started. Sigh. We decided to grab our phones and sit on the front porch and do some trip planning. While we were doing that, I looked over into the yard… and there was a turtle. A large turtle. A large live turtle!

As we later learned from Bruno, this was Mafalda, and she lived at the hostel. She pretty much had free reign of the place. One morning when it was raining (naturally) we even found her inside in the dining room! We loved Mafalda.

After not too much time, the rain cleared up enough that we decided to try going down to the beach. On the way there, though, we needed to pick up our next bit of Brazilian culture: cangas, or sarongs. We wanted to travel lightly when we went to the beaches—bring as little as possible, so our stuff couldn’t get stolen. Basically, just go with water, our swimsuits, a tiny bit of cash, and our cangas. Unfortunately, this also meant we didn’t get a lot of pictures of the beach.

The cangas are great because they can serve as our beach towels, and as stylish cover-up clothing!

We picked up our awesome cangas for about $6 USD each and headed to the beach. We laid our cangas out in the sand and relaxed for a while, but the clouds never cleared so it was fairly chilly. And, after maybe an hour, the drizzle started. Womp. So, we gathered our few things and started walking up to the main part of the beach.

To wait out the rain, we decided to get a couple caipirinhas on the beach. The stand we found (which we patronized frequently through the week) sold them 2 for about $5 USD total.

“Uh, these are gonna be stiff,” I said to Erika, as I watched the server pour a ton of cachaça into them. Oh they were, and they were the best caipirinhas we had in Brazil. While we enjoyed them under an umbrella on the beach, another vendor came up peddling churros. Uh, we’d absolutely like two of those! We had a perfect time waiting out the rain with our churros and caipirinhas.

That night we went out for dinner, intending to go to the same spot we’d loved the night before. However, about half-way there, nature had another idea. It started to rain, slowly at first, but we saw the locals taking it quite seriously. We decided to just duck into the restaurant we were currently standing next to for dinner instead, and good thing we did: as soon as we were inside, the deluge opened up. The weather reports we’d been getting all week were looking depressingly accurate.

The pizza we had at our random restaurant, though, was delicious.

Sun!

Thrillingly, the next morning we woke up and it was beautiful out! No rain, few clouds; Bruno was right! We hurried through breakfast and raced out to the beach to take advantage.

Despite the great weather, there were still very few people at the beach. The beach at Barra da Lagoa is huge, curling a few miles in length along the shore, with beautiful mountains on the ends rising out of the sea. The beach is wide and sparsely populated, and was especially that day. It slopes gently into the water, meaning you can wander a long ways out into the ocean and still stand on sand.

We walked a good ways down the shore until we literally had the beach to ourselves. There, we laid our cangas out and went to play in the ocean. The waves were perfect, and we had a blast being knocked around by them.

We Had The Beach to Ourselves…

After lying in the sun for a while, we decided to go for a long walk down the beach before making our way back for lunch. Feeling comfortable with our laid back beach town, we left our things (meaning: our cangas, a nalgene bottle, and our flip flops) and made our way down the deserted beach.

Being by ourselves on this beautiful beach in this gorgeous setting was stunning. This is not the experience I’ve had at a beach anywhere! I suggested Erika be more “Brazilian”, and she hiked her swimsuit bottoms up like a thong. We laughed, and I did the same and we laughed even more. It was a perfect day and I loved every minute of it.

I don’t remember who had the idea first, or who said anything first. Maybe we had it at the same time. Erika and I are weird like that. But one of us put the idea out there…

“Should we?”

“Oh my god, do you want to?”

“I can’t believe this!”

Yep… we went skinny dipping!

It was only maybe four or five minutes we were in the water, but it was exhilarating. We laughed like children, marveling at ourselves for being so crazy. It was amazing!

Starving now after our lengthy walk and escapades, we put our swimsuits back on and set off up the beach back to town, giggling the entire way. It was a perfect day and I loved every minute of it.

Stuck Indoors

The next day, things flipped and Bruno was wrong: it rained, rained a lot, rained all day. We spent a lot of time in our room, reading and bemoaning our bad luck. And giggling about our day yesterday.

In early afternoon, Erika was getting pretty stir crazy and insisted we go out, so we threw on our rain ponchos and out we went. A short walk from our hostel was a sea turtle conservation organization, called Projeto Tamar, which Bruno had told us about, and we figured would be a good rainy day activity.

Serendipity

When we got there, we saw a sign out front announcing there was a turtle release that day. Not only that day, it was in 30 minutes! Erika especially was very excited about this. We paid the low admission price, and went inside to look at the turtles while we waited for the turtle release.

They made an announcement over the PA when it was time for the release. Granted, we don’t speak Portuguese, but we assumed the announcement meant it was time. We filed out of the building along with everyone else, and made the short walk to the beach, where a crowd was gathering around the point of the release.

The turtle was brought out, and they took him around the circled crowd so everyone could get a good look. One of the workers used a microphone to tell us the turtle’s story: how they got him, how long he’d been with them, and so on. Actually, it was in Portuguese, we have no idea what all they said. But Erika and I named the turtle Gus and we loved him immediately.

After the speech about the turtle, they took him out of the crate, put him down in the sand, and… he just sat there. Then he kind of turned to his right and flopped a few feet. They workers grabbed him and faced him toward the sea again. He flopped maybe a few more feet forward, before eventually the workers got less patient, picked him up again, and put him closer to the sea, so that the tide washed over him. Once the water hit him, he seemed to know what was up, and made his way quickly into the water.

So long Gus! Prazer em te conhecer!

Moqueca

After seeing Gus off, we needed lunch, so we walked to another place Bruno had recommended, called Maria Maria. On the menu, we saw another of the Brazilian have-to’s that we’d been looking forward to, a seafood stew called moqueca. We had more moqueca before leaving Brazil, but this was the best. It was a huge amount that somehow Erika and I finished off. Maria Maria was an excellent restaurant, and we couldn’t recommend it more.

A Little Blind Spider Took the Wheel

After breakfast the next morning, we donned our swimsuits and cangas and headed out towards the beach, with a goal of making it to some natural swimming holes carved into the rocky shore. As we were leaving the hostel, the owner was on the front porch and called to us. Again, we don’t speak Portuguese, but we figured out: he wanted to know if we wanted a ride to the beach on the dune buggy.

Uhhh, hell yes sir!

First of all, for practical reasons: we had a lot of walking planned to get to the swimming holes, this would cut out a nice bit of it. Second of all: it looked awesome! And it was! It was a short ride, but Erika took shotgun and I rode in the storage space in the back. It was great, and the hostel owner was incredibly kind. With our limited Portuguese, and leaning on our Spanish knowledge, we were able to follow the simple things he was saying to us. Erika even attempted speaking some herself:

Não chuva! she exclaimed.

I don’t think it’s actually grammatically correct, but that’s right babe, no rain.

A Short Hike to Swimming Holes

We crossed the bridge over the river, and headed thru a pedestrian alleyway toward the trail to the swimming holes. The trail was a wet, muddy path that was much easier to take barefoot rather than in our flip flops.

It took a while to get there, and it was crowded, but it was a beautiful spot. Unfortunately, we don’t have pictures… you know, avoiding robbery and all that. It also wasn’t terribly relaxing. It was hard to get in and out with the algae covered rocks, the water was just slightly too deep to stand, and the waves sloshed us around a good bit. Both Erika and I got slightly bloody cuts on the rocks.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? Seriously though, it was fun to go out and see them, and a great experience. But we only stayed a few minutes before we were ready for a more relaxing beach visit.

A Beautiful Last Day on the Beach

We got back to the beach in the full sunlight, and were thrilled our last day here was going to be so gorgeous. We set up our cangas, jumped into the ocean (clothed, this time), and had a wonderful time swimming and playing in the waves. That is, until Erika felt something, and we noticed: we were surrounded by jelly fish! We hastily scampered back out of the sea and spent the rest of the time getting as much sun as we could.

As it got later, we wandered slowly back up the beach, and naturally got a last pair of caipirinhas from our usual stand. They remain the best caipirinhas we had in Brazil! Erika and I toasted this beautiful beach town we’d fallen hard in love with, and enjoyed our last caipirinhas in Floripa.

Because we’re creatures of habit (and because it was very, very good), we took our last dinner in town at Dois Irmãos, and got our same fish dinner. Our same server tended to us that night, and was just as warm and friendly as before.

What’s Next?

We were incredibly sad to say goodbye to Bruno, Mafalda, Dois Irmãos, and all of Floripa. But, of course, we still had exciting things on the horizon. Early the next morning, we had an Uber take us the long drive to the airport, where we took a short 1-hour flight to Rio de Janeiro!

I hope you enjoyed our recount of Florianopolis, one of our favorite places so far. Come back next time to hear all about Rio!