It took 11 hours to travel the 690km we had to take by bus to reach our next destination in Florianopolis. We had herd many of good things about Florianopolis so thought we would head there, the problem was that it was south Brazil and that was winter so the weather would be grim for a seaside town, but we didn't plan on staying long so we thought we would grin and bear it and you never know if we were lucky we might catch an alright day.

The bus journey was fine, getting the ticket beforehand though proved to be quite difficult. We had no access to a printer, and all the confirmation we had was an email on my phone which wouldn't load up proper because of a lack of Wi-Fi. This meant we had no idea which company we were travelling with or anything really. There was an internet café but they wanted 5BR for a minimum of thirty minutes use, we only needed the computer for two minutes, so not wanting to waste money we traipsed around the bus station looking for Wi-Fi ports and asking bus companies if they could help but we were just wondering down a dead end so begrudgingly paid the internet café 8BR for 0 minutes of internet and to print off a document but at least now we knew where we were going. Once we were on the bus we met a Canadian couple Mike and Kim, these may have been the first English speaking people we had encountered on a night bus and we chatted about our travels until we fell asleep.

We may have been tired, but the sight of the sun and feel of warm weather was a brilliant surprised when we reached Florianopolis. As I said it was their winter and they were in the middle of a purple patch during the winter where they were having days as hot as their winter. We checked in our hostel the Sagui. It was a very pleasant hostel, had warm showers, hammocks, a pool table, tv room, a nice 16-bed loft room. However there was one problem. They had literally no other guests. The only people staying at the abode would be Earl and I. With nothing happening at the hostel we made our way to town where I went to a bank as I had only the equivalent of four pence on me, booked our bus ticket to our next destination and then went to the beach where I got to tick off one of my goals in Brazil and play football in the beach. The beach was nice, it was pretty deserted, it reminded me a lot of Palm each in Australia or more familiarly Summer Bay in Home and Away. I kind of wish I didn't played football as I was truly awful sending shot after shot miles wide I blame the sand, a deflated football and the wind. We chilled out on the beach until the sun went down Earl trudging through the vast amount of pages in the Games of Thrown book and I started a new book I acquired called Questions of Travel which hadn't started that great to be honest. We also had a couple of games of volleyball on a pitch we drew in the sand. We then headed back to the hostel where still no one else had checked in so we ate some pasta and chilled out for the evening. I caught up on some blog writing, whereas Earl read more Game of Thrones. We were eventually had other guests arrive at the hostel when a German couple checked in, but they headed straight for bed presumably after a long journey or the guy had purchased some three for twelve real Viagra's I kept spotting advertisements for in pharmacy windows. With the hostel less pumping than a graveyard I took myself to bed where I fell asleep watching the first episode of Game of Thrones.

Breakfast consisted of the usual Ham and Cheese sarnies the hostels provide as well as a banana, and a welcomed glass of Fresh Orange Juice. We had breakfast with the German couple, the woman was there to study and the bloke over there for just a couple of weeks to help her settle. He had a really annoying laugh, one which would keep coming out after everything he said even if it wasn't the least bit funny. It wasn't what I needed after a restless night sleep. We had a night bus that night to our last destination in Brazil Iguazu Falls, so we got our stuff together and checked out leaving our bags at the hostel so we could explore some more of Florianopolis during the day. Our adventure took us to the north part of Florianopolis where we herd there was a nice lake and plenty of stuff to do around. We were advised to do the 4km walk as oppose to get the two buses which take forever. Or walk there was pretty uneventful, but what I can tell you about Florianopolis is that there are quite a number of cows. Our friend Rory told us that you see a cow, or an image of a cow on a daily basis and I can definitely say that the people in Florianopolis must do. Other than a quarry and a lake which looked pretty similar to king's mill reservoir there was nothing worth noting. We made the big lake and I felt a trifle disappointed, you could do boat tours, but it looked like there would be nothing to see. The bars around the lake were all closed, and the place was pretty much a ghost town due to it being off season. So Earl and myself had an ice cream and watched the world go by by the lake and had a few photos with a Florianopolis sign and headed back. We tried experimenting with a new walk back, which may have been a mistake, as we pretty much doubled our back by doing an S shape. Our walk encountered the beach, massive sand dunes which looked awesome to slide down, jungle trails and roads it literally had it all. Upon finding the road we walked up we worked out we must have been in some deep chatter as neither of us remembered more than 20% of the walk. This led us to make another mistake as we missed a turn off and had us going the long way round to the hostel. By this time the sun was setting and our bus was in a couple of hours, we had to get back to the hostel and then get two buses to the main terminal, it would be quite tight if we made it or not……

So until next time stay safe and take care

Adi

xx