Porto Belo and Florianopolis

We came back down to the coast after exploring the Valle Europa and decided that it was time to find a nice beach to rest up on for a couple of days.

We drove into a peninsula called Porto Belo in search of our perfect beach. The first town is Porto Belo itself where the beach front is built up and it’s pretty difficult to get near the beach itself. Despite help from the local tourist information office we couldn’t find anywhere near the town to park for the night.

We explored a narrow road up a peninsula with little Mediterranean-esque villages. It was very pretty but we were much too big for the road so we headed back to the main road.

We visited a town on the other side of the peninsula called Bombinhas  which was a bit bigger but there was no camping here and it was still difficult to access the beach. We kept going and eventually ended up in a really quiet area called Canto Grande.

To our surprise we found a full service RV park which was completely empty. There was even a big building at one end with grills, sinks, table football and a pool table. We enjoyed having the place to ourselves and making it even better was a lovely deserted beach only 100 metres away.

We spent a couple of days in Porto Belo and then drove a bit further South to the Island of Florianopolis. The bridge over to the island has the city of Florianopolis on either side and this is the capital city of Santa Catarina with over a million people. We took the opportunity to stock up at a big supermarket but didn’t hang around in the very busy city. Instead we drove to the Eastern side of the island and found a campground on a causeway cutting a big lagoon in half.

Oldest Church in Florianopolis

Unfortunately soon after arriving on the island it started to rain – hard.  This meant that when we went to explore the island the following morning there was some flooding. We didn’t have a problem with the water but all the cars had to turn round.

The island has some beautiful beaches but we couldn’t find any deserted beaches with no buildings to camp on or next to, so in the end we didn’t hang about in these areas for too long.

While walking on one of the beaches in Florianopolis we were joined by the scary looking dog pictured below. Fortunately he was perfectly friendly and befriended us for the whole walk.