Florianopolis, Brazil
Well I'm not actually in Florianopolis I'm in a small village 'Barra de Lagua" on the other side of the Ihla Santa Catheriina, but it's close enough. Surprisingly it's still sunny even though it's a fair bit further south, very cold at night though. It's a beautiful place with the longest sandy beach and great fish restaurants but it's off season so it's sort of like Rosslaire strand in the winter time, all empty summer houses and bored teenagers. I went into the city today and wandered around a bit, I saw lots of Capoeira which is a traditional Brazillian fighting\dance thing. It originates from the African slaves who came over here, they would teach the young people to fight but as they were forbidden to teach fighting they made it look like a dance and played music and chanted with it. All the young people now practice Capoeira, it looks very acrobatic I watched it for nearly an hour, they all stand in a circle and two go head to head in the middle and challengers jump in like cutting in on a dance. They never actually hit each other although sometimes it does get a bit heated and lead to real fighting.

Paraty, Brazil
Paraty is a nice historical, colonial town with four beautiful churches, none of which I've bothered to visit. It's enough to sit in the square listening to the chants and sermons (in Portuguese) blasted out over the loud speaker in the fasion of George Orwell's "1984" Big brother. I've met a lot of Swiss people here, one of whom, sarah, is travelling from England to the Antartic traveling overland by cycle, climbing mountains and sailing across the oceans using only natural power, it's amazing that she hasn't used busses, trains or planes. It's all to raise money and awareness for a charity, SOS childrens villages which you can read more about or donate to on her site which is worth checking out.
Today I went on a schooner trip around some Islands and beaches with the two other Swiss, Suzanne and Lucas, It was really nice and most of the time I spent sunbathing on the deck. It looks like the town is preparing for some sort of festival, perhaps Assension, and if it starts tomorrow I might hang around to see how it goes.

Ihla Grande didn't turn out to be a quiet as I thought it would be, the two bars on the square were fairly lively and the night of the boat trip I went to a bar with an English couple Madeline and James. The organiser of the boat trip, Aber, was there playing the triangle in the local 'mad mans' group. They were great and I'm sure if I was able to understand the lyrics they would have been the funniest songs I ever heard judging from the tone they were sung in the the uncontrolable laughter of the audience. As we arrived we were all handed an instrument, I'm not sure exactly what my instrument was called but I got quite good at it and I became a regular guest of the 'mad mans' group. On my last night Bahiana (the lady from the house who brought me tea) made a nice fairwell dinner of a traditional brazillian fish stew sort of thing, it was really great.
I'm in Paraty now and it's considerably quieter than Ihla Grande, there seems to be loads of nice fish restaurants and cafès though.