Florianópolis

We had to transfer buses in Porto Alegre since there had been no direct buses to Florianópolis from Montevideo. Luckily, we had looked us the bus schedule ahead of time and knew that one was leaving 30 minutes after we arrived at the terminal in Porto Alegre. Sadly, they didn't have any seats sitting together so we had to sit apart. We exchanged the rest of our Uruguay money for Brazilian Real and grabbed a quick coffee and yogurt for breakfast. This was our first attempt to order something in a country where we don't speak the language. Luckily, Spanish isn't far off and words like "cafe" are the same in both languages. The bus ride was about 6 hours long and I was able to sleep through most of it which I was thrilled about.

When our bus arrived in Florianópolis in the afternoon and we stopped in the tourism office at the bus station to figure out how to get to Barra de Lagoa. Luckily, we could take the local buses there and although it would require a transfer and would take some time, it was only $3BRL and the price of a cab would have been insane. We figured out the first bus and the transfer pretty easily but weren't sure where to get off the second bus to find our hostel. Luckily, two guys on the bus heard our discussion in English and offered to help. One of them had lived in Santa Monica a few years back- how ironic! They made sure we knew which station to get off at and pointed us to the hostel when we arrived; thank god there are nice locals to help! We made it to "Backpacker's Sharehouse" and though we didn't have a reservation, they had plenty of availability. We got a four person dorm which we had to ourselves. Since we were so tired, we decided to stay at the hostel that night instead of venturing out for dinner. The hostel makes dinner for its guests every night and that night they were serving Brazilian food which we hadn't tried yet. On top of that, they give you a free caipirinha every night between 7:30-8:30 so we hung out at the bar, drinking caipirinhas and eating delicious food. We met all the people who were staying and working at the hostel and they were all great. We were really happy to be staying in such a friendly place. The people that you are surrounded with in a hostel can really impact your stay; they become like your new best friends for the few days you are together. Everyone was going out that night to a local bar to see a reggae band but I was so exhausted that I snuck out back to my room to bed before anyone could peer pressure me to stay, lol.

(The pirate above is actually a statue on the roof of our hostel, hahaha)

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