To make up for the absence on this blog of a specific destination card devoted to Porto Belo, I am publishing a blog entry with links to sites of interest.

PORTALS

There is one portal with complete information on Porto Belo: Porto Belo online. You can also check out the section with tourist information on the local authority’s website: Prefeitura de Porto Belo. Further information on the section of the Guia Santa Catarina devoted to Porto Belo.

WEATHER

Average rainfall and temperatures for Porto Belo (data from Camboriú) at weather.msn.com

subscribe to the Brazil Travel Blog by Email
follow the Brazil Travel Blog on Twitter

Publishing house Empresa das Artes, with an extense travel-related catalogue, is enabling free online access to the full contents of several of its guides. To read the guides you need to access the tool provided by Book Stand Panrotas.

The available guides are:

Amazonas
Bahia
Goiás
Mato Grosso
Pará
Paraná
Santa Catarina

To open each guide, click on CLIQUE para ler esta publicação. A new window will open where you will be able to read the guide. Unfortunately, the guides are available in Portuguese only, but if you have a basic grasp of the language you will find tons of background information as well as beautiful pictures and maps.

As well as the guides listed here there are a few commercial publications from Panrotas, a trade magazine. Congratulations to the private companies responsible for the initiative.

——————————
RELATED POSTS:
National parks: online brochures

subscribe to the Brazil Travel Blog by Email
follow the Brazil Travel Blog on Twitter

The state of Santa Catarina’s Fundação do Meio Ambiente mantains a useful webpage where net users can check out the quality indexes for the beaches of the state. At Relatório de Balneabilidade you are presented with two choices:

a) you can check out the beaches of Florianópolis (playas de Florianópolis)

b) or you can check out the beaches of the entire state, including Florianópolis (playas del estado de Santa Catarina).

There are two different tags applied to each beach. Impróprio (unsuitable, in red) and Próprio (suitable, in black). Unsuitable beaches are those where a high concentration of toxic bacteria has been found. Do not forget that in a big part of Brazil sewage is not treated at all.

See also on this blog: Beaches of Rio de Janeiro: quality index

The island of Florianópolis, object of desire of Argentinians, Uruguayans, Paraguayans as well as thousands of Brazilians (mainly from Rio Grande do Sul and São Paulo), is a well-rounded holiday destination that touches on the heavenly in some places. The combination of an excellent quality of life with beautiful beaches and hills make of Floripa, as it is known familiarly, the guarantee of a succesful holiday.

The island is roughly divided in three main regions: the north, where the beaches popular among Argentinians are; the centre, where the capital of the state is found as well as the Lagoa da Conceição; and the south, with beautiful beaches that attract less visitors than their northern counterparts.

WE LIKE THE MOST: the beaches, the gentle nature of the natives, food, landscapes, affordable prices, safety.

WE LIKE THE LEAST: poor infrastructures; it seems hard to believe that a tourist destination that generates so much revenue should have a road network in such a precarious state. Going places during the high season is torture. Getting to some of the beaches, hell. We also profoundly disliked all the building work completed and in progress in environmentally protected areas.

HOW TO GET THERE: by car, bus or plane. The first option is chosen by many Argentinians, Uruguayans and Paraguayans. There are regular bus services from Porto Alegre, Curitiba and São Paulo. GOL, TAM and Varig airlines all fly to Florianópolis airport. As well as numerous charter flights from Argentina and Chile.

CAREFUL WITH: the high season: a sizeable part of the island becomes a gigantic traffic jam; water supply to the northern part of the island becomes a problem too.

FAVORITE PLACES: Campeche island, Campeche beach, the Joaquina dunes, the Lagoa da Conceição

PIECE OF ADVICE:

• around the Lagoa da Conceição, and especially in the part known as Canto da Lagoa, there are numerous restaurants popular among Brazilians where few foreign tourists venture.
• one of the traditional dishes of the island is the seqüência de camarâo, several servings of prawns [shrimps] cooked in different ways, accompanied by fish and crab. It is found all throughout the island, but the most traditional place to eat the seqüência is the Lagoa da Conceição.
• although it is not impossible to travel by public bus throughout the island, it is an exercise that demands quite a lot of patience. If you are in Florianópolis for a short stay, our advice is for you to rent a car. For longer stays, when you will only be visiting one beach per day, you can use the public transportation system.
• crime rates in Florianópolis are lower than in other big Brazilian cities; it doesn’t mean crime doesn’t exist but, in this regard, Florianópolis is much safer than São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro or Recife.
• during the coming weeks we will publish detailed information on the blog on the beaches and places of interest of Florianópolis. Links to the new material will appear here as the entries are published.

ACCOMMODATION: We have full listings of accommodation for Campeche, Canasvieiras and Praia dos Ingleses.

LINKS: Guia Floripa, Visite Floripa.

WEATHER FORECAST: The weather in Florianópolis for the next 10 days

WEATHER: Average temperatures and rainfall in Florianópolis across the year

GOOGLE MAPS: Florianópolis

PHOTO ALBUMS: North (Santo Antônio de Lisboa, Jurerê, Canasvieiras, Brava, Ingleses, Santinho, Barra da Lagoa), Center (Mercado Municipal, Lagoa da Conceição, Praia Mole), South (Armação, Ribeirão da Ilha, Pântano do Sul), Campeche and Campeche island and sandboard in the Joaquina dunes.

OTHER BLOG ENTRIES ON FLORIANÓPOLIS:
- Map of Florianópolis
- Brazil in pictures: Florianópolis
- Florianópolis North: what to do and where to go
- Florianópolis Centre-Lagoa: what to do and where to go
- Florianópolis South: what to do and where to go
- Ilha do Campeche
- bar do Arante, Florianópolis

[Don’t forget to check out the list of other destinations already covered in this blog, here]

subscribe to the Brazil Travel Blog by Email
follow the Brazil Travel Blog on Twitter
follow the Brazil Travel Blog on Facebook

The whale-watching season is on its way on the southern coast of Brazil. The Right Whale Environmental Protection Area goes from Pinheira, south of Florianópolis, to Rincão, and it’s there where most whales gather together.

When summer arrives in the southern hemisphere, right whales abandon their traditional feeding grounds, in colder latitudes, and seek the shelter of coastal lands where their reproductive cycle takes place. From July to November a sizeable number of right whales gather in the coast of Santa Catarina. The best period to go whale-watching in the region is from the middle of August till the middle of October. The whales have already arrived this year, with dozens of sightings along the coast.

The NGO Projeto Baleia Franca mantains an excellent site on the internet, with plenty of information on the right whale and the Brazilian coast. As well as that, the organization keeps and up-to-date chart with all the daily sightings of whales, showing how many individuals were seen, and where.