Florianópolis
BRAZIL
Camping in Southern Brazil
By LYNDI
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Since our first venture into using all of our camping equipment didn’t turn out so well, we were ready for Florianópolis. Not only had we been carrying around a tent, sleeping bags and mats, a stove, gas and all cooking equipment for the past month and a half – but we’d only heard amazing stories of Florianópolis’ legendary beaches and nightlife. We couldn’t think of a better combination.
When we first arrived in the early afternoon, we walked to the conveniently located local bus terminal right next door. Although the intercity and local bus stops were very close, I still had time for a pigeon to take a poo on my shoulder. My immediate reaction was one of horror, but Aaron in all his wisdom reminded me that it was a sign of good luck, so I happily carried on knowing that fortune was on my side.
Because we were camping, we were a bit limited as to where we could stay. Florianópolis is a peninsula off the coast of southern Brazil and therefore nearly completely surrounded by stunning coastal waters and sandy beaches. But according to internet research, we could only find two camping sites open before the high season started on November 1st, one being at a lake and the other on a beach called Campeche – so we headed to the beach.
It was very apparent that we were not, in fact, in the high season yet, considering out of about 100 campsites only one other was taken. And for the cost of R$20 per night (approximately US$12), we had several bathrooms with hot showers, a kitchen and barbecue area all to ourselves.
The beach was pretty close by so we took walks along the beach – though found that the bar/nightlife scene that Florianópolis was so famous for clearly did not exist at Campeche. Or maybe only in high season. There was nothing on that beach – which was actually just fine. We’d heard that snorkeling was pretty good at Campeche beach, but there were no shops open to rent out snorkeling gear (only in high season), so once again, out of luck.
Our first mission once we’d set everything up was to find a supermercado to buy food. When we asked our camp ranger lady, she informed us it was out of the campsite, to the right, approximately 60 meters away! What luck! Thank you pigeon poo! But either she takes great delight in misleading campers or gets 60 meters confused with 6000 meters – cuz there was nothing as far as the eye could see. So we turned around and headed in the other direction to find food. We came across a lady walking with her young daughter and they just happened to be on their way to a supermercado as well (this time – it was truly the pigeon poo at work). Unfortunately, it was about 2 miles away. But we made it to the little market and found enough stuff to make sandwiches and soups for a couple nights.
Our first night camping was nearly everything we hoped it would be. We cooked our food in the little cooking area, played some card games and slept in the great outdoors with only the sounds of the ocean crashing and men doing construction into the wee hours of the night to sing us to sleep.
For our second day we took a local bus into the bustling city of Florianópolis. The city itself is named after the peninsula – and there is definitely a reason that tourists flock to the beaches instead of lingering in the city. It’s a sort of run-down town with traffic congestion, ripped up sidewalks and plenty of buildings in desperate need of a coat of paint. But we were in search of gas for our camping stove that the big mall promised to provide – and sunscreen. Sounds simple enough but really ended up taking up a good portion of the day.
We eventually found a big, modern mall that had a camping store and got our gas and also found the cheapest bottle of sunscreen SPF30 that we could (a small bottle for US$12!!! Bring your own from home if you come here!!) and then headed back to our campsite.
It was a pretty dreary day, so it didn’t really reflect well on the city and we were happy to get out of there. We got back to Campeche and enjoyed a cool walk on the beach before making dinner. We were joined by two other campers that night that set up on the opposite side of the campground, so it still felt like we were all alone.
We’d considered staying another night in Campeche, but with nothing happening in low season and dreary weather preventing you from spending time lying on the beach, we decided to move on. Only one bus company left from Florianópolis to our next stop, Garopaba, so we passed time at the bus station waiting for the next departure.
In retrospect, I can only recommend Florianópolis from November 1st to about March 1st – any time outside of the high season will be pretty dead with restaurants, shops and tourist attractions closed. The good news though was that we still hadn’t cashed in on my lucky pigeon poo, and we would need all the luck we could get for whale watching at our next stop.
