Sure, every journey is just a series of steps. But each one of them takes forever to complete, and yet somehow you arrive slightly disoriented and confused as if you weren’t expecting the process to eventually end, as if you hadn’t fully realized you had moved from point A to point B.
It starts with packing the night before. When your entire life fits into a 15-kilo backpack, you don’t just “dump everything in it.” So ideally, packing starts with doing the laundry because absolutely no one wants to carry a plastic bag full of dirty clothes.
Luckily, our Ipanema hotel had a hostel feel with a self-service washing machine and dryer.
Two loads later, we were folding clothes on the bed and organizing everything.
“We’re missing one of Mark’s red socks. Oh, never mind, found it.”
“Give me a plastic bag, I’m taking the pink umbrella I bought in São Paulo.”
“I’m taking the black one I bought yesterday.”
“I’m putting some of the dish soap into a refillable bottle, I have a spare one.”
“The reusable Hortifruti bag…”
“—taking it. Beach bag for Floripa.”
The Rio de Janeiro to Floripa GOL flight was at 4:45 p.m. so we had time to kill before heading to the airport—not Santos Dumont this time, but Galeão, the international one. Feng and Mark went to explore the Forte de Copacabana while I walked along the beach and back.
We met at the hostel at 1:40 p.m. There was no traffic so it only took about half an hour to get to the airport.
We queued at the GOL counter to check in the two backpacks and get our boarding passes. It took forever—“looks like it’s the first time ever they’re dealing with passengers!” I complained to Feng.
We went through security—no lineup but Feng was searched, add an extra step and delay—then we waited for the flight. Then we waited on the tarmac instead of taking off and it made me nervous. I did the math. We were already landing at 6:15 p.m., so time to get the car from the rental company and drive to the Airbnb, check in, drop off the bags… yeah, it wouldn’t give us much time to find something to eat for dinner, basically our only meal of the day. Besides, I wasn’t sure what COVID measures were in place in Santa Catarina—new state, new restrictions—so things could potentially get complicated if capacity was limited, if supermarkets closed early, etc.
We eventually landed more or less on time an hour and forty minutes later. No time was lost at first. Our bags show up among the first on the baggage carousel and the rental car shuttle was parked in front of the airport, ready to go.
But then it took forever to actually get the car we had booked online—names were misspelled, something about insurance coverage, then a typo in the email address… we were stuck there for over an hour drinking cup after cup of deliciously strong Brazilian coffee (eh, it was free!).
We eventually left with a white Renault.
There was no traffic jam and Feng knows his way around the island so it didn’t take us long to get to the Airbnb in Florianópolis. We know the place, anyway—it’s the former Mercure Hotel.
We checked in, a quick process again. But then we discovered the Airbnb didn’t leave bed sheets for the sofa bed, remote controls were missing and so was Wi-Fi login info. I sorted it out while Feng grabbed backpacks from the car.
“I’m going to speed walk to the mall. I think the supermarket is still open, I’ll meet you there. I need to breathe, we had masks on all day.”
The supermarket was open, we got all the basics we needed and the guys ate at the food court.
Back to the Airbnb. That’s when, at midnight, I felt slightly disoriented. Florianópolis sounded so quiet after Rio de Janeiro… And we were comfortable in Rio, we knew our way around. We have to relearn everything and start over because in Brazil, each state and each city are very different. New foods, new people, new ways of doing things…
We, humans, don’t like change. Yet, as travellers, we take a masochistic delight in discovering places, exploring them until they become familiar, and then leaving to repeat the process somewhere else.
It’s okay. It’s worth it.
