Balneario Camboriu

12th to 19th of September

We said our goodbyes to cold morning Curitiba and hopped onto our luxurious Catarinense bus. It was a double deck bus. At the bottom they have bed seats (cama) and the top ones are called semi leito. These bus seats are really fancy. They have leg rests you can pull back. And the seats can go almost all the way back (which is still annoying if the person in front of you goes all the way back, but less terrible than in another bus). They also have a USB slot to charge your devices.

We finally arrived after 4 and a half hours of riding the bus. I don’t remember too much of the scenery. I probably got a nap in 😴.

Dad got an Uber to take us to the check in office and from there we had to walk to our apartment, where we unpacked and collapsed for a little bit and then went off to the supermarket.

Along the way we realized that we forgot our 2 Hershey’s chocolate bars in the fridge at Curitiba. Big disappointment 😔!

Coastal Town

Balneario Camboriu is a coastal city in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina. The city is built on steep hills which drop down to the sea. It is a popular tourist destination for South Americans, who like walking, cycling, jogging, strolling, hanging around or being seen in big cars and shiny outfits on the main ocean boulevard – Avenida Atlântica. It is a holiday town, on wiki I read that in summer the city’s population swells from 145,796 to over one million.

What we found very noticeable was all the skyscrapers. But just as in Sao Paulo and in Curitiba the skyline was not boring. Every building tried to be a bit different, but not in a way that it clashed with the surrounding buildings.

After dinner we went out for a night stroll on the beach because there was live music. We walked a while and then went back to the room. On our way back me and mom saw this funny looking statue that was lit up, it was up on a hill in the distance, later we discovered it was a “Jesus de Luz” or “Jesus of light”.

Saturday: at 4am dad watched the Rugby game where the All blacks lost sorely against the Springboks (South Africa). It was 10/34. While he watched the game in the lounge (where my sleeper couch was) I climbed in bed with my mom. Warm and snug.

Then around 8am we walked to the Carrefour about 2.5 km further to get more groceries (we were looking for breakfast grains and seeds and yoghurt that are not full of sugar!). We walked back along the beach road, which was nice.

Dad had been ogling these huge pieces of steak. As you can guess he bought one and added salt, then let it lay for a day. It came out beautiful 🤤🤤delicious!!! One half went in the pan. The other half was cooked up into feijoada (bean stew).

Soaking up the sun

When it got warmer (Yes, warm and sun, finally!) we walked down to the beach and walked all along the beach to one end.

Then back to the apartment where we had lunch. After lunch we climbed into our bathing suits and went down to the beach to sun ourselves.

We were like lizards on a rock, flat and all spread out, warming our cold bones, soaking up all the heat after a cold night.

There was no point in swimming because the water was freezing cold. We only dipped out toes in. Then back home for dinner and movies and sleep.

Brazil Rocks… And so does Jesus

You can see a lot of hard rockers in every town we’ve seen so far. They come in all ages and shapes. New to us, however, was to be walking on the beach and be showered by the equivalent of christian Brazilian rock (weird). Something we’ll call ‘Jesus Rock’. It sounds like proper rock music, played by a proper rock band, but the lyrics are about Dios and Hallelujah.

The rest we really did not understand because the Brazilian Portuguese is too hard to follow.

Sad fish, Dino’s and Rockets

Sunday, after breakfast we went for our routine walk on the beach, and then decided to go to the Aquarium! It wasn’t too impressive, not a very big building, but we saw our very first live Axolotl.

The aquariums were small and some fish could barely turn in their tanks 😭 not to mention none of the fish were special to Brazil. The fish came to check out dad! Some of the fish where so big they could barely turn in their tanks.

Most of the fish in the tanks we knew from happier environments as we are used to diving with them. The aquarium version looked pale and sad to us. So it didn’t feel great to visit them.

There were pinguïns and otters. And birds. It was so sad to watch the otter swim back and forth 😭. I was kind of relieved on the one hand and disappointed on the other hand (they lied) that they didn’t have capybaras.

Other than the Aquarium there were more touristy activities we decided to give a skip:

Juarrasic park (we’re not into theme parks)
amusement park (don’t care for those either)
2 space museum (wanted to go but too expensive)
water park (huge slides),
and cart or zip line rides to the top of the hill.

New routine

We tried to settle in a new routine and go for an early morning beach walk. After the walk mom and I would run up the stairs, trying to beat dad in the slow elevator. We were on the 8e Andar, the 8th floor. He always won!

Wacky Wednesday

Next day we went walking around the city going to malls and stuff. We passed the space exploration centre and so on, going for a long walk. But as we were stepping off the pavement to cross a busy road mom fell/tripped over a stone brick and sprained her ankle badly. It looked like an egg was growing under the skin. So dad got an Uber back to our room, where he played doctor doctor for mom. He put an ice pack on (frozen black beans), got her a bandage, Arnica cream and warm comfy socks.

For the next couple of days we didn’t do anything notable because mom’s foot looked like one from a fat person. And we didn’t want to leave mom out.

Florianopolis

Then on Friday (20th) we were out again to go to Florianopolis. The ride was less than 2h and dad got us an Uber to our new hotel where mom rested while we went out for a walk.

Florianopolis is the capital and second largest city of the state of Santa Catarina, in the South region of Brazil. The metropolitan area has an estimated population of 1,111,702, the 21st largest in the country. – wiki

When we researched this place we thought it would be more like Balneário. That it would be another a coastal holiday town where all the action centers around the beach and the promenade, with not much to do except spend time on the beach, stroll along the shops, eat and drink. But Florianopolis looked a lot more diverse than that. It had a lot of old buildings that were being revamped. It also had a lot of contemporary art works. I’m not always sure if I like them or what they are supposed to be. Some of them do look interesting.

We stayed in a backpackers type of place, where there were mainly local workers staying, contracters or others down for a couple of days of work in that town. It was different to just have a room and there was a shared kitchen. There was a guy who only had coffee and biscuits for dinner, and another one just ate sandwiches. We had brought the feijoada dad had made the previous day.