A Trip to Floripa Part 1: Fitness & Desserts

Thanks so much for all the well wishes regarding my trip. It was a wonderful holiday filled with lots of excitement and equal amounts of relaxation. I have so much to share that it was hard to decide where to start. I thought I would tell you a little bit about the event that took us to Florianopolis and then finish this post off with some food highlights by having a little dessert first.

Floripa (the local nickname) is an island off the state of Santa Catarina in southern Brazil. It is an area that combines a major city with secluded beaches, and is a very diverse place for travel. South American tourists flock there in summer months, usually from December until Carnival in February.

Not being one for huge crowds I really like the off-season there. Last time we traveled in November which was closer to tourist season than our trip this time. Unfortunately you do sacrifice a bit for the peace and quiet this time of year can bring. Many restaurants close up for the season or are only open on the weekends. However, as you will see, we didn’t have trouble finding some amazing food.

The reason for our travel was that my husband participated in the Volta á Ilha, a 150km relay around the island. It was an exciting event! The company he works for had one team of seven (which my husband was on) and one team of eight to run in the race.

The course goes from road, to sand dunes, to beaches, to mountains. It is certainly an adventure and last Saturday it became more of an adventure than most of the participants were expecting. The day started out in pouring rain, but my husband managed to finish his first leg in record time. The team was doing really great overall until early afternoon.

The rain and rising tide caused water to collect in the dunes along the course and wash out the check points. At certain places along the way the runners had to wade through waist deep water! This slowed them down, of course. Actually the second company team had to drop out. Things got pretty stressful for those of us waiting at the finish line at the end of the night.

The event was started at 6:45 am (earlier by others) and had to be finished by 8:00 pm. This meant the last three runners, including my husband, had to make some great times on their final legs. The excitement was amazing as we saw them coming down the finish lane. They completed the race with 7 seconds to spare!! How awesome is that? I was so proud of him and the rest of the team. They worked so hard!

Here are a few pictures of the event. First, my husband finishing his first leg in the pouring rain, next a check point on the beach and some runners completing the beach portion of the 12th leg, then another check point on the beach. I don’t have any great pictures of the finish line because it was dark, but I assure you there was plenty of celebration. Many teams crossed the finish line with Brazilian beer in hand!

I have so much great food to share with you along with details of our vacation portion of the trip. I thought I would kick it off with dessert. I think you can tell by my blog that I’ve come across some great desserts in Brazil. This trip I encountered some that have quickly become my favorites.

This tart is from a French bakery in Curitiba. We spent the night there to break up our 11 hour drive. At first, this may not seem too rare, but chocolate chips are really hard to come by. I have never seen them where we are living.

This tart had a chocolate cookie crust and was filled with a banana cake topped with walnuts and chocolate chips. The best part was that it wasn’t overly sweet. The banana wasn’t strong at all which made the nuts and chocolate really shine through.

Next, was the refreshing Crème de Morango. This is a spinoff of Crème de Papaya which is very common in Brazil. The papaya version includes the fruit mixed with ice cream and topped with Crème de Cassis liqueur.

We chose to branch out and try morango (strawberry) this time and were not disappointed. It tasted like a fresh, homemade strawberry ice cream straight from an old-fashioned bucket with a hand crank.

My husband and I agree that this final dessert may be the best and most creative we have had in the country thus far. The combination of passion fruit (maracujá) and chocolate is a delicious one and we ordered this dessert knowing it came with passion fruit sorbet and a brownie. This is what we got…

A passion fruit hallowed out and filled with a creamy and tart sorbet. Next to it and incredibly rich and fudge like brownie with nuts. Along the outside is the sweetened pulp of passion fruit with the crunchy seeds. Both the flavor and the presentation were impressive!

I still have a lot left to cover including the seafood feasts we enjoyed, pictures of the island and some German food and beer right out of southern Brazil. More to come tomorrow!