Floria what?!
Moving on from the danger in Rio to shootings in Florianopolis. Every freaking time anyone asked where I stayed at in Brazil and I say Florianopolis the first question they ask is; where is that? This amazes me so much because I think this is one of the most well known places of Brazil for locals and famous people.
Florianopolis is also well known by the Argentinians as many go to Florianopolis to spend their holiday. When I was in a bar in Beira mar, I was quite drunk and went outside I met this American who said to me ‘’ I came to Brazil to improve my Portuguese but all the people I come across are all Argentinian so I have to fucking speak Spanish all the time’’. And its true, when driving and looking at the license plates from the cars you see a lot of Argentinian license plates. So my new American friend and me drank and spoke a bit and somehow we ended at the question; would you be able to live here? As drunk as we were both of us had the same answer that all this country has to offer in our eyes is good food, great sites and beautiful women.
Talking about women well let’s talk about the people in general, the citizens of Florianopolis a lot of them look even more European than European people themselves! People with blond hair and blue eyes it truly is a different world if you would compare it with Rio except for the violence.
Let me tell you about the shitty things in Florianopolis, one day when I was sitting in the living room with my family we heard gunshots quite close they weren’t that loud that I shitted myself but loud enough to be shocked just as the rest of my family who even live there. I cant quite remember if it was the same day or the day after but one of my family members showed me what happened; ‘’A robbery on a money transportation van which was picking up money from the supermarket around the corner’’. All of this was filmed by the security cameras and shown on the national television without any blurring of the real shooting nor the dead body that lie there. I was like shit, Florianopolis is known as one of the most wealthy places in Brazil and this like this still happen and there are even favelas in Florianopolis.
I have been in two favelas in Florianopolis one which was the least dangerous of all the favelas they have and in the most dangerous favela of Florianopolis, Honestly I was a tad scared. My nephew and I picked up a friend in the night who lives on the top of this favela but there are two ways up and so there are two ways down, we went up from the save route and picked up our friend and I asked why don’t we just go through the favela down, my nephew who was driving told me: we will get killed are you stupid? He talked with our friend and he said its ok just go through the favela down nothing is going to happen, and so we went down. Have you ever seen any movies with favelas? Well it was almost if I was in a movie, the road was so steep and so narrow it was insane. The thing that scared me the most I think was that there were always guys standing on the road and that everyone was staring at us, at one moment a guy runs the steep hill up with a gun in his hand and ran passed us. The favela was full of trans genders as well, which would even scare you.
As I have already mentioned, Florianopolis is one of the wealthiest places in Brazil. There are nice big houses and you see a lot of expensive, flashy cars driving around. When I tell you this I can imagine that you are thinking of a luxurious city with beautiful modern buildings and that everything is perfect, but no I can tell you that nothing is perfect at all not there. I have never seen so many holes in the roads than in Florianopolis, I have been to other countries such as Jordan where roads were better than here. And the biggest problem of it all is that the government does not take action immediately. No I will tell you this, I have seen one hole in the middle of the road in front of one of the most luxurious hotel there, which was approximately one meter wide and 50 centimetres deep and they had a traffic cone inside of the hole! For over three weeks no other actions were taken than sticking a traffic cone inside of it. And its not like there is only one hole on the whole road, no the road is full of holes and for me it takes down so much of the reputation of this place.
Anyway my next blog will be about the amazing nightlife of Florianopolis be sure to check that out, see you next time.
