Flooded Florianopolis

FLOODED FLORIANOPOLIS

Between a hot, sunny day early last week, and again a steamy day with mid-afternoon temperatures shown to be 40 degrees this week, Florianopolis had several days with regular downpours. The heavy rain would not stop, so that houses got flooded, inundated roads became inaccessible to cars, and parts of streets sank away disappearing into the wet ground. Soon I learned that, even in normal circumstances, Florianopolis gets called "Chuvapolis" or in other words "Rainpolis". It reminds me of how Vancouver is rebaptized "Raincouver" with "liquid sunshine".  A neighbour of the hostel where I am staying tells me that in 33 years of living here he never experienced storms like this. The prefect of this island declared a state of emergency after two days because of the chaos and destruction. For me, the constant rain meant that I was woken up at night by rain drops leaking through the roof onto my pillow. For a few days the best strategy was staying put on my hill, hardly venturing out, not even to the nearby beach with its soft, fine sand. Footpaths had ankle-deep water and roads remained flooded even when the sun and blue skies appeared again.