We came to Florianopolis because we`d heard it was a lot of fun, and a beautiful place to boot. We intended to stay only a couple of nights...well that didn`t quite happen!First off, the Ilha de Santa Catarina, which is an almost-island, attached to the mainland by a spit of land on which the city of Florianopolis is located, is absolutely GORGEOUS. On the east coast and long stretches of beaches battered by the Atlantic Ocean and providing some awesome surfing (...

Paradise...And Ilha Grande really is. We left yesterday, luckily it was raining otherwise it would have been VERY hard to say goodbye. 4 days of sun, sea, diving and having good, clean, fun nights have certainly helped the post-Rio exhaustion that everyone seems to get - it´s been awesome.The location of our hostel helped - it was a gorgeous place RIGHT on the water´s edge, with a view most people would have paid much, much more to wake up to each day...

At the Copa...Copacabana...How about that, we made it to Rio! Actually we haven´t stayed in Copacabana, but near Ipanema Beach (the posh end of town, to make us feel at home), where we´ve found a hostel with a good crowd of people and great atmosphere - 5 o´clock beer o´clock makes me happy!Kicked off with a beautiful jetlagged state - my own fault for not sleeping, and insisting that I spend the entire of my first day doing as m...