Feeding Otters

Florianopolis has been a interesting affair! At first, though our surroundings are beautiful and the weather is great, Cressy and I almost felt like there wasn't a great deal to do and were a little restless. Au contraire Rodney!

Marcelo and Junior (the people who run the wildlife rescue centre) insisted we stayed for longer than 2 days, so we obliged and ended up being here for 5. Well, we didn't want to be rude!

Today is a perfect example of why we now think it is great here！I got up at about 7:45 a.m. to help Edu, a lovely guy who works here, prepare the food for the animals and then actually go into their enclosures and give it to them. This was interesting on two accounts - firstly, some of them are officially mental and secondly I don't actually know what type of animal they are! The ones we first visited seem to be a cross between a raccoon and an anteater, but either way, they were very grateful for the food and I was grateful to come away with my eyes in tact (but 3 limbs missing). In total, it took about 1 hour and a half to feed all the animals, including some otters, which, incidentally are hilarious! They huff like dogs and quarrel with each other, but most of all love eating fish.

Following this, the corned beef and I 'chilled out' on the beach (which is amazing and only 10 mins walk from here) for a couple of hours and then gorged ourselves at the vegetarian buffet restaurant which is next to the path that leads down to the beach. For a kilo of food I paid just over £3. I didn't have my own set of scales by the way, a common thing here is for a restaurant to advertise a price of food per 100g and then charge accordingly.

Later in the afternoon, Edu offered to take us on a 10k hike into the forest to a spot that had a gorgeous waterfall and a natural pool for us to swim in. So we did just that - we hiked into the forest and we swam in a secluded natural pool deep into the forest. I had to wrestle a few poisonous snakes and spiders but that's all in a day's work.

The word 'cerveja' ( Brazilian for beer) was used approximately 45,000 times on the walk back and we fully deserved the ice cold beauties that awaited us upon our return. Except for the joker 'only 1/3 full' can that managed to find its way into our 12 - the supermarket will be hearing from my lawyer.

So all in all it was a fantastic day - my favourite so far! But what was the best thing of all? Cressy actually wore a pair of shorts that showed more than her ankles!

Therefore, Florianopolis has been great for all of the reasons above. There are actually some poisonous snakes and spiders around the place, but as long as you make an effort to speak Portuguese they're usually quite friendly.

Tomorrow we head for Foz Iguassu (Iguassu Falls) by bus with slightly heavy hearts but looking forward to everything that awaits.