Floripa: Land of Secret Beaches, Hot Blondes, and Contortionists

When I told my mother I was going to Florianopolis, the New York Time’s 2009 Party Destination of the Year, her response was, “Sounds mighty lively and lovely…but those hairless men in undies?! Please do be sensible, dear.”

With that advice in mind, Kaly and I set off on a 12 hour bus ride to the island of Santa Catarina, home to beautiful beaches and gorgeous people of European descent.

Our trip get off to a good start with the bus ride. Kaly brought gummy teeth, and we amused ourselves by taking photos of ourselves looking like hillbillies who lack access to orthodontia.

Then we befriended the super hot guy sitting across from us. It turns out he was a physical education major (which was obvious because he was jacked) who is from Florianopolis but works in São Paulo. Once we arrived, he helped us take a taxi to the apartment where we were staying.

Despite our goal of spending all four days at the beach, we ended up spending a lot of time just hanging out in the apartment with Eduardo and Alex, our Brazilian hosts. We won their affections by cooking pineapple rice, apple fritters, and chocolate chip banana pancakes for them. Alex played guitar for us and we had a singalong to American rock songs. Eduardo taught us jokes in Portuguese. 

We embarrassed them a lot in public by making them try on sombreros in the grocery store, insisting on stopping to take photos of advertisements, and making Pringle duck faces. 

Red Bull gives you wings. I’m pretty sure we were the only ones who ever used this photoboard.

We did eventually make it to the beach. This is Praia Joaquina, famed for its surfing.

We did indeed see men in “undies” aka sungas, the Brazilian alternative to  swim trunks. Kaly was an expert photographer and captured this crazy contortionist doing backbends.

We climbed up a giant rock to get a better view of the beach. At this point, it was already late afternoon so Alex and Eduardo decided to go home. Kaly and I wanted to spend more time lounging on the rock and then go eat seafood by the shore, so we stayed behind. The guys explained that the last bus left at 7pm and told us how to get back to their apartment. Despite following their instructions about which bus stop to go to, we failed and missed the last bus. Or rather, the bus never came. 

We waited for two hours, watching guys in the parking lot have a dance off, buying shirts to keep ourselves warm, and playing with puppies in the souvenir store. Eventually we gave up and took a taxi home.

Click below to see photos of our hike to a secret beach and learn my favorite new Portuguese words.

On our last full day in Floripa, Eduardo and his cousin took us to a secret beach. We had to hike 2 hours up and down a mountain to get there. During the hike, Kaly taught us a memory game to help pass the time, which basically consisted of us trying to memorize a really long list of words in English and Portuguese. I tried to make the game harder by adding long words like “serendipity” and “antidisestablishmentarianism”. Eduardo responded with Portuguese words like “paralelepípedo” and “otorrinolaringologista”. Touché, my friend, touché.

Just as our brains started to overload, we reached the beach. There was almost no one there, except a few kids playing soccer. Typical.

We sat down, chilled, ate a mango, and then turned back. And with that, we left the beautiful beaches of Floripa and set back for São Paulo, the dirty city that we love so much.