Floripa! Day 1

I am currently in the south of Brazil, in Santa Catarina!

I´m in an internet cafe with signs in Hebrew in the window and an Argentine employee.

It is raining and yucky, but I already took a walk on the beach, and it was lovely.

This morning I spent a lot of time waaaaiting. I got to the airport early, so I got the paper and waited. Then the flight was delayed because of air traffic, so on the plane, I waited. Let me just say that flights taking off on clear days over Rio are amazing--you can see the entire city. So beautiful. And then we flew over the Costa Azul which was in fact, an amazing blue. Then I flew over Santa Catarina, which is green and mountainous like Rio with turquoise shores, even with cloudy skies. We flew over the huge lake, and then I got a cab from the airport to the hostel.

The hostel´s not nearly as nice as I expected, and they were about to put me in a room with 6 even though I´d made a reservation for 4. Luckily, then, they found me a spot. I got some lunch at a yummy prato feito place, wandered around the beach, and then the town. I signed myself up for a boat tour on Sunday, and I´m trying to orient myself.

It´s weird traveling alone. I salute all of you who do because it´s not easy, and I even speak the language.

Santa Catarina is a state that has a much more even income distribution than Rio or Sao Paulo. Coming from the airport, I saw lots of gorgeous summer homes and what I think were favelas: gorgeous wood-made homes with Spanish tile roofs. It´s more of a temperate climate down here, though it is hot because it´s summer.

The airport in Floripa is small, and Caribbean-like. I had to get off the plane on one of those stairway things, entering through the "international arriva" gate. Two funny things I saw: a sign in the immigration area that said: SAIDA DE BRASILEIRO (Exit for Brazilians). Except they translated it in English exactly like this: Exit of brasilian. hahaha. The other thing I saw was a church called "Bola de Neve": In Jesus We Trust. Written exactly like that in English and Portuguese. PS: Bola de Neve means Snowball.

Anyway, it is yucky so I can´t exactly go sit on the beach, but I´m going to go plan out a little more and maybe go take a nap.