FLORIANOPOLIS, BRASIL

The Coveted Acia: Frozen, Blended
Acia Concentrate with Banana
Slices and Sprinkled with Granola. 

I booked my flight to Florianopolis right away when I realized that it would not only be a great place to relax and enjoy all kinds of outdoor activities, but that it would also be only about $100 more to fly to Brazil, pay for a week at a hostel, and buy groceries than it would be to spend the week in Buenos Aires. Cost of living is relatively high in Buenos Aires, so I figured I might as well put my Brazilian visa to work. 

Floripa is a beautiful, hilly island off the Brazilian coast, and it is well known for its beaches, surfing, trekking, and other outdoor activities. Unfortunately, it rained much of the time I was there, but I was still able to spend a few days biking, kayaking, sandboarding, and hiking through the hills. I took it as a personal challenge to have my favorite tigela de acia ("acia in a bowl") every day. 

It was nice to practice my Portuguese :) I definitely understand it better than I can speak it, but I had pretty minimal communication troubles. My fallback, which works the majority of the time, is to use a Spanish word and say it with a Portuguese accent. Most words between the two languages are very similar and many Brazilians understand Spanish or use some degree of Portunol (think Spanglish but with Portuguese/Espanol).

One of my funnier language interactions was tagging along for some shoe shopping. I met a Canadian who spoke French and limited English, so he asked me to go along to buy a pair of shoes one day. It ended up that he was talking to me in a mix of French and English and I was passing his message on in a mix of Portuguese and Spanish to the very patient Brazilian man helping us. 

A View from a Morning Hike

My lovely Home for the Week

The hostel was most definitely THE very best hostel I've ever seen. The house itself was very nice, well maintained, and the staff was constantly cleaning -- something that doesn't often happen in many hostels. The beds were extremely comfortable, didn't move/creek/groan when the person in the top bunk climbed up or rolled over during the night, and so many little details made the stay much more enjoyable -- like personal lights and hooks by each bed, soap and clean/dry towels by the sinks, tupperware available to store leftover food, etc. It very much felt like staying at a friend's house rather than renting a cheap bed at a hostel. A+ in my book for Submarino Hostel!

This was also my first experience traveling alone, and I was a little nervous about it, but almost everyone who passed through the hostel during my time there was also flying solo, so it was nice to have people to go exploring with during the day and to watch movies with on cold, rainy nights. I really can't say enough good things about the hostel.

The View from just Outside the Hostel

I also did a lot of Graffiti-Hunting in Floripa

When it came time to leave, I decided I had enough time to take the cheap route: the local busses. There was no direct bus to the airport from my neighborhood, so it took nearly two hours to get from my hostel to the airport, which would have otherwise been about a 40-minute cab ride. My journey to the airport entailed a 20-minute hike up a very steep hill (Colorado training) to the Lagoa bus terminal. From there, I had to catch a bus (company name: Transol) to the main bus terminal in the city center, about a 35 minute ride away. At the main bus terminal, I had to change from terminal A to terminal B to catch a bus run by a different company (Insular) to the airport, which was another 30-minute ride. Each bus ride was R$ 2.85, so it was less than $3.00 to get to the airport as opposed to the estimated $25 for a cab. The whole thing was pretty easy, I just kept asking and reconfirming with people, and everyone was quite helpful. 

Mais Arte

I had a near disaster when I got off the bus at the airport. During the bus ride, my wallet had fallen out of my pocket and was laying on the seat next to me. As I was getting off the bus, the fare collector (When you get on a bus in Florianopolis, you pass the bus driver and walk about three seats back to the fare collector who sits on an elevated seat collecting bus fares and letting passengers through the turnstile. You don't necessarily have to pay immediately when you enter the bus, but because you have to exit through the back doors behind the turnstile, you do have to pay before you can get off) called out "beautiful" to me. I realize that saying "hermosa" to someone in Brazil is about the equivalent of someone calling you "hun" in the Southern US, but I still don't like it. Anyway, he called out to me again, so I turned around, and he pointed to my wallet that I had dropped. Thank you, fare collector. Eek!

It was a long day of flying to get back to Buenos Aires with connections from Floripa to Porto Alegre to Sao Paulo and finally back to BA! But it was still better than taking an 18-hour bus ride, so I'll take it. The day actually went pretty fast, because my first flight got delayed almost an hour, which meant I had to run straight onto my second flight where we were stuck on the runway for 45 minutes before it was our turn to takeoff, which meant I had to run straight onto my third flight. I got onto my final flight at last call, but once I got on, a little boy in the row behind me got sick, so we had to open the doors back up and wait for nearly an hour for a cleaning crew to come clean the mess, replace the seat cover, and spray the entire plane with disinfectant. Anyway, I made it back to the city, hopped a city bus (once again, taking the $0.30 route as opposed to the $8.00 route) and got dropped off one block from my hostel, which thankfully still had a bed open for me at midnight :)

Spanish now seems like cake after a week of Portuguese! After two nights in a hostel, I will check into a hotel/temporary apartment on Saturday with the rest of the group from NYU coming down for the two-week course. 

View from Floripa's "Mirante" - a lookout point over the lagoon that I stumbled into while wandering the city!