Located on Brazil’s south coast far below Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo lies, the second largest city and capital of Santa Catarina state, Florianópolis (or Floripa as the locals call it). This coastal city is split between the mainland and 54 km long Santa Catarina island with a bridge connecting the two. The best part to visit is the island which is home to 42 beautiful beaches. When Florianópolis crops up in conversation or writing, it’s usually referring to and talking about the island part (I’m only talking about the island in this post).
How to get to Florianópolis
Getting to Florianópolis
Getting to Florianópolis is usually done by plane or bus. Knowing the sheer size of Brazil, flying is the quickest option with a bus journey putting you back the best part of a day. It’s about an hour and a half direct flight from Rio and flying from anywhere else will normally be a connecting flight stopping over at São Paulo or Rio.
The journey by bus is a long one and your best bet is to get a night bus. From Rio, buses approximately take 17 hours. We came from Foz do Iguaçu, after spending two days seeing the Iguazu Falls, and our journey took over 18 hours. Aside from the last leg of the journey which felt like an age, the ride was fine and I slept for a fair bit of it.
Long distance buses arrive to Rodoviária Rita Maria bus station which is just over the bridge on the island part of Florianópolis.
Getting around Florianópolis island
To get to your final destination in Florianópolis and around the island in general, you can use the public buses. The local bus terminal station (TICEN) is just a short one block walk away from Rodoviária Rita Maria.
Tickets cost R$4.20, which you buy at TICEN ticket booths before getting on the platforms, and cover your first ride and one transfer (so basically two buses as long as you transfer in a terminal station).
To get to the Campeche area, you need to first get a bus to TIRIO bus terminal. This can be a stopping bus or direct, the 410 TIRIO bus is direct and around 30 minutes. Once at TIRIO you can then get the 462 bus into Campeche.
For Barra da Lagoa, you need to first get to TILAG bus terminal. From there, you can get the 360 bus to Barra da Lagoa.
Once you’ve used the system a few times it starts making sense. You’ll often find that for most journeys you’ll pass through the TIRIO, TILAG or TICAN terminals.
The long weekend
As part of our three weeks travelling up Brazil’s coastline from the Iguazu Falls to Rio, we spent a long weekend in Floripa. After an 18 hour bus journey from the Iguazu Falls, we skipped the mainland and hopped straight onto another bus to take us towards the south of the island.
When booking our accommodation for Florianópolis we found it tricky deciding where to base ourselves. Barra da Lagoa seemed a popular location, however we’d also heard good things about Campeche and its mini island. We decided to stay at both places over the course of our long weekend. Campeche was first up and then onto Barra da Lagoa.
Campeche
Campeche is a beach town located towards the south of Santa Catarina island. It’s known for it’s long stretch of beach which is great for surfing. We had two full days in Campeche to explore the area and top of our list was Campeche island and Lagoinha do Leste.
ATM struggles
We paid for our hostel in Campeche on arrival. We didn’t realise at the time that this would leave us short on cash which we needed to pay the boat fare to Campeche island. What followed was a small goose chase around Campeche searching for an open ATM that would accept our cards and let us withdraw money.
We first asked our hostel for the ATM’s and tried getting to them. This involved an hour evening walk (cause we were being cheapskates and needed to save the cash we had) to the ATM’s only to find them closed. Frustrated and defeated we returned to the hostel promising to get up early the next day for withdrawing cash 2.0 so we could pay the boat taxi to Campeche island.
Well, our 6.30am start was not successful. Much to our dismay, amazement and irritation we didn’t even make it out the hostel. We were locked in! It was definitely a first experience wise. I can understand being locked out, but locked in?! Ridiculous! So defeated once again, we went back to bed and then tried the hostel card machine. Our cards were rejected.
We explained our situation to the lovely guy at the hostel and he agreed to lend us the money we needed for the boat ride to Campeche island and we’d repay the hostel later that day. Finally with money in hand and a spring in our step we headed to the beach for the boat only to discover all boats were cancelled due to the rough sea. Really not so wonderful. But it did end with us visiting Lagoinha do Leste on the only sunny blue sky day of our stay so silver linings…silver linings.
In a nutshell you don’t want to be strapped for cash and trailing ATM’s. It was funny once we got the cash but not at the time.
Tip: Make sure you have the cash you need as we found ATM’s to be pretty scarce around Campeche. If you come across an ATM that works then get cash out as we had many withdrawing money struggles.
Lagoinha do Leste
Lagoinha do Leste is a secluded wild beach only reachable by foot or boat. It’s absolutely stunning and definitely my highlight from our long weekend in Florianópolis. Our visit to Lagoinha do Leste turned out to be our only blue sky day and I’m so glad we got to see it at its best in the sunshine.
To get to Lagoinha do Leste, we caught the bus to TIRIO bus terminal and caught a second bus further south. It turned out it was a holiday day and buses were free for the day which was handy. We asked our hostel for directions; I can’t remember now exactly what bus it was, but it was in the direction of Pântano do Sul and pretty straightforward. We used the driver as well as the MapsMe app to let us know where to get off for the hike start point.
The walk takes around 1-1.5 hours and is a proper walk. By this I mean you don’t want to be walking in flip flops. It’s a walk through jungle forest, full of rocks, boulders, small streams and gets muddy and slippy if it’s recently rained or you’re crossing a small stream. I walked in walking sandals and found it fine.
At the beach, you can walk a bit more and climb to the viewpoint overlooking Lagoinha do Leste. It’s a steep climb clambering over rocks and I slipped a few times but the view is seriously stunningly gorgeous! As I said above, it was my top moment – so so so beautiful surrounded by endless blue. You can’t miss it!
We spent the afternoon on the beach relaxing in the sunshine. Rather than return the way we’d come, we chose to walk back via another path to Matadeiro beach. Once again it was a lovely and beautiful walk in the setting sun and took around two hours (perhaps a bit longer).
Given that we’d got the bus pretty easily earlier that day, we were expecting the journey home from Matadeiro to be easy too forgetting that it was a holiday day which meant a reduced evening service. We ended up chatting to a local guy who was also getting the bus and tagging along with a young group of locals to find the bus. At one point a bus went past and everyone seemed to chase it. When one finally turned up going in the right direction, it was a tight squeeze getting on.
Campeche Island
Opposite Campeche beach is the small beautiful Campeche island. It’s a protected area and of archeological interest and as such the number of daily visitors are controlled.
We hoped to visit Campeche island on our first day; however, despite blue skies the sea was too rough for the boat taxis to get to the island. If you see a queue of people waiting by the shoreline on Campeche beach, it’s likely the boat taxis are running. Likewise, if there’s no one waiting, the chances are that the sea’s not calm enough for the boats to run.
We returned the following day to more luck (although no blue sky). The ride is on an inflatable boat which carries six passengers, takes around ten minutes and costs R$50 return. Be prepared for a bumpy and wet ride. We got to put our belongings in giant bin bags which were then secured to the boat.
Because it’s a protected area once you’re on the island you’re pretty much restricted to its beach. If you want to explore the island a bit more, you can sign up to several walking tours at specific times to various popular spots around the island with a guide.
It wasn’t great sunbathing weather while we were there so we did a short walking tour. Given in Portuguese we didn’t understand huge amounts, but it was cool to see the island’s jungly side in addition to the paradisiacal beach.
On a sunny day, with its white sands and clear water, I can imagine how idyllic the beach must be. Sadly, grey overcast skies and wind shaped our time on the island and we didn’t stay for the whole day catching the boat back in the early afternoon.
*In the low season you can only get to Campeche island from Campeche beach, but in the high season you can get there from Barra da Lagoa too so you don’t have to stay in Campeche.
Barra da Lagoa
After two full days in Campeche, we headed to Barra da Lagoa for one night. We’d planned to spend our only full day exploring the local beaches. However, our first and only full day in Barra da Lagoa was a write off due to thunderstorms and heavy rain and we spent it holed up at our hostel.
Once we’d accepted the weather and got over the lack of sun, it was a nice day spent chilling, reading and catching up on tv shows. When the rain finally stopped late afternoon, we walked down to the small beach just outside the hostel and I even went for a quick dip in the sea.
It started clearing up more in the evening and we did get to see a pretty pink dusky sky sunset.
The next day was cloudy but thankfully no rain so we managed to squeeze in a short hour walk to Galheta beach.
Once again, it was another beautiful beach which when sunny and if we’d had more time would be an amazing place to relax at.
We returned to our hostel for lunch and to grab our bags before dashing for the bus back to Rodoviária Rita Maria bus station for our onward journey to Paraty.
Final thoughts on Florianópolis
A trip to Florianópolis wasn’t originally in our travel plans. The place had filtered through the backpacker grapevine as a great place to go so on finding out we had several days to play with we decided to head to Florianópolis.
Our time there was shaped by the weather which was largely disappointing. Aside from one blue sky day where we visited Lagoinha do Leste, the weather was overcast and grey with constant thunderstorms one day. Not ideal for us who were seeking beautiful walks to idyllic beaches and to sunbathe.
That said, I really enjoyed our time there and as a place it’s a hidden gem. The vibe was lovely, the beaches were gorgeous, the walks stunning, and I absolutely loved Lagoinha do Leste! With better weather, I would have liked to have spent more time in Barra da Lagoa, it has lots to offer.
If you’re exploring Brazil’s coastline, it’s 100% worth the stop!
Have you been to Florianópolis? Did you have better weather?
