Praia Mole: Where the gays are

Florianopolis is a small city by Brazilian standards, but most who travel here never set foot in the downtown preferring the natural beauty the island has to offer, which includes scores of beaches, plenty of forest, dunes and a couple of gorgeous lakes.  For years many gay Paulistas and Cariocas have been coming to Florianopolis, but recently this has become a destination for many gay travelers from Europe, Australia and North America. Just an hour flight south of Sao Paulo makes it relatively easy to get here.

Praia Mole is known as the gay beach on the island.  This is a beautiful beach on the east side of the island that extends nearly 1 kilometer.  The far end of the beach, near an outcropping of over-sized boulders is the gay bar, Bar do Deca. Although the nightclubs are all located in the city, if the weather is good – the guys will mostly be at Praia Mole.

Should you want to explore the city, another advantage to this part of the island is that it is fairly convenient to Florianopolis (a taxi is approximately $30 each way).  We used our central location to visit other parts of the island; perhaps the most notable location was Sambaqui, a quaint neighborhood on the west side of the island.  From our restaurant in Sambaqui we had a beautiful view of Florianopolis.

Here are more photos of this beautiful Brazilian beach. After we left this part of the island we ventured north to Jurere and the slightly newer and wealthier Jurere International.  While Praia Mole rightly deserves the reputation as the “gay beach” there is no doubt that if you go to the beach club / bar Taiko in Jurere International you will be far from alone, but more on that in a future post.