Moving to Santa Catarina state

12/10/22  Welcome, hrlpopeye.  Brazil can be a great place to live.  But as the saying goes, "Brazil is not for beginners!"  It's very much a world of its own, and coming here sight unseen with the intention to be permanent strikes me as a dangerously high-risk move.  Santa Catarina can be a good choice, but you and your wife should seriously consider spending a month or two there to get the feel of it before you commit yourselves.  Here are some practical considerations to a move that should be included in your calculations:

1. Brazil is a rigorously monolingual country, and that language is Portuguese.  If you and your wife don't speak Portuguese, and aren't ready to learn, life will be difficult here;
2. Brazil is very far away from family and friends.  Don't be fooled by the fact that the direction of travel is south rather than east/west.  It's a long way for a visit, in either direction;
3. You can probably forget about moving vehicles; that's enormously expensive in Brazil, if it's permitted at all.  The dogs shouldn't be a problem if they're healthy and you follow the directions of the Consulate exactly.,
4. For household goods, you'll be entitled to one duty-free sea shipment and one duty-free air shipment once you have your CRNM, your ID as a permanent resident.  That's your one chance and you have to make the most of it.
5. You'll be able to drive for six months on your Florida Driver's License; it would be a good idea to get an InterAmerican Driving Permit to use with it, which is recognized in Brazil.  They're easy to obtain from AAA.  After that , you'll need Brazilian driver's licenses.

I'm not trying to discourage you, just prevent some initial rude shocks.  Lots of knowledgeable people are here to respond to your questions.  All the best in your planning!

@abthree Wow - that's allot of highly appreciated knowledge from you Sir, I do want to get all the facts as you stated here.  I will travel there and stay there for a month or two before that big decision will come into play, I do not speak and read nor write in Portuguese language.  Although I'm willing to learn if we decide to stay there!   I learned that there is a German, Italian population there in San Catarina Island, I suppose they mostly speak their native language as well!  Good advice concerning moving vehicles there - and obtaining International Driver's License as well through AAA here in the States.  Thank you again Kind Sir and please keep in touch with us!     Harry Lehr and Delia Lehr. And Happy Holidays to you and your Family.

I've been exploring nice safe place to retire. I came across Santa Catrina Brazil; I have enough resource's to be able to retire comfortably for my wife and myself only! I never been to Brazil in my life, but I spent many years of my life travelling to different lands and will be able to adjust as long as I enjoy the place and the people. I would want to move my vehicles and some household goods and my 2 pets one is a staffordure terrier and the other is American beautiful blue eye bulldog!  We both have Florida Driver License and really need good advice about the information above this writing. Please let me know updated pertinent information that would be important for us to know about Brazil.
-@hrlpopeye

Never been to Santa Catarina. Just feeding on information I gathered around, over the time.  For all I understand, Santa Catarina has a lot of close knit communities, and for most part folks there tend to be industrious, with an excellent work ethic. 

Actually, I heard the local chambers of commerce on record local business thrive to be export friendly and improve overall quality of their output, some rarely heard in Brazil.

I recall, going way back to the early 80's they had a flood around the Itajai Valley River, and it caused considerable damage to properties.  People there got to work quickly to get things back on track. 

Folks out there pride on provide for hearty fare,  when you travel around smaller towns,often you will see a Cafe Colonial or your Country Restaurant, just as you would see in Pennsylvania, where you can have actually a smorgasbord of offerings.

Southern winters can be cold, not as freezing cold as the US Midwest. Very humid. The taller is the elevation, the colder it gets. And surprisingly so, most houses do not feature American Style ( or Russian / European for that matter ) heating systems.

Overall, you won't see the level of consumption you would see Statesdide, folks do a lot with less.   

Oddly enbough, Camboriu, is the seaside shore town a lot of locals go on the Summer, and the ostentatious skyscrapers have been proping up along the coastline, meaning they are getting more affluent. 

Joinville and Crisciuma and Concordia are more industrious towns. 

@hrlpopeye If your into European culture and want to live in a city check out  blumenau and jaragua do sul. if you like small quite towns with some farms check out Pomerode which is located in between them. 

Very Congeninal couple, all spoken in Portuguese, it helps as  they

tour the cities.

Pomerode

https://youtu.be/SDXzk85Xx_g

Sao Joaquim

https://youtu.be/xuUB0ae7fJA

Florianopolis

https://youtu.be/qSAXmdU6ojo

Camboriu

https://youtu.be/_kv1G_q-A6M

Itapema, SC

https://youtu.be/N-3BUzT2ils

Florianopolis traditional off the beaten path neighborhood.

https://youtu.be/vUvMajNMRps

@sprealestatebroker thanks a lot for the links!

I’m supposed to be going in January as a preliminary visit before my move. I have had to cancel 3 times due to Covid and the airline mess. I think things have calmed down a bit ( for now)

@KenAquarius Good Luck on your move.  I'm sure you have good reasons why you decided to move there!  Please keep me posted on your experiences and pros and cons and how you have adapted and found peace and happiness in your Life Thank You.

12/12/22  @KenAquarius.  When we returned to Brazil on 11/29 we had to show our vaccination certs, so don't forget to keep checking the documentation requirements with your airline frequently.  They seem to change quickly, depending on the status of the most recent covid strain.

@abthree Yes Sir! Have that in the sleeve with my passport. We won’t be able to visit SC this time. Not enough days. We have to go to Bahia to visit my wife’s grandmother. She is 97 and in failing health so that’s more important right now. We are going to Buzios, and leave from there for Bahia.

I landed on the 3rd of October and again on the 17th I have the cert but not asked for it or health insurance.

I found a good YouTube channel on Santa Catarina.

It's in Portuguese but even if you don't speak the language you can know the names of the places.

This is not a "real estate" guide so to speak but he does cover a lot of towns and beaches.

Lots of places I never heard of.

https://www.youtube.com/@GuiandoemFloripa

@abthree

Your honesty is refreshing. And SO true. Brazil is NOT for beginners. If I knew now what I had known then, I would have waited a LONG time more before coming here.

Devorah.

12/19/22 @abthree
Your honesty is refreshing. And SO true. Brazil is NOT for beginners. If I knew now what I had known then, I would have waited a LONG time more before coming here.


Devorah.
-@devorahmichaela

Thanks, Devorah.  I love Brazil.  I've been living here on and off since I was in my 20s, and I became a citizen in 2019.  I don't expect to live anywhere else again, ever. 

But I know, as you plainly do, how enchanting first impressions are in Brazil, and how the Brazilian illusion can leave people unprepared for the many and varied Brazilian realities that they'll confront in everyday life.  My biggest concern here on  the site is to provide people with practical information that they can use, and as much as possible, to help them understand that the magic isn't all a lie, but it's only part of the story.  I can't turn Beginners into Old Brazil Hands -- only time, experience, and empathy can do that -- but if I can keep one from becoming totally disillusioned and resentful in the first months after arrival, I count that as a WIN! 😃

@devorahmichaela l would vote him as the official “Ambassador” of this forum.

Speaking the language gives you a greater chance of survival here and friendly exchanges keeps everyone smiling. But I'm only a part-timer, having spent just two years here over a few years. There are bumps in the road and it keeps me pondering on if I want to make the jump full time.

@KenAquarius Yeah, so would I.

I am more of the ´´jaded´´ been here way too long American gal.

Devorah

For what it's worth probably worth at least a mention of the political scenario in SC. It is the locus of extreme right politics and violence with rising neo-fascist movements. This year it was the center of insurrectionary protests trying to overturn the election and install a military dictatorship and leaps and bounds beyond other areas of the country. It is actually a pretty stark change as prior it used to attract more cosmopolitan and even progressive elements, but personally some of the stuff coming out of there seems pretty damn scary to me as someone who's watched Brazilian politics over the past 20 years. Most foreigners probably would not run into it, but there's stuff like pretty moderate authors getting death threats or getting beat up for wearing the wrong t-shirt. I would find it a bad environment to land in personally.

Santa Catarina is a very mellow place we were there just before the final election and saw nothing in regards to political problems. Off there again for the New Year. We are in Rio Grande Sul and nothing kicked off here either.

12/19/22 For what it's worth probably worth at least a mention of the political scenario in SC. It is the locus of extreme right politics and violence with rising neo-fascist movements. This year it was the center of insurrectionary protests trying to overturn the election and install a military dictatorship and leaps and bounds beyond other areas of the country.
-@rnbtg

Yes, it's pretty disturbing, but the Army is doing its best to pretend that the demonstrators are invisible, and when they started blocking roads a few weeks back, they mainly did it in states like SC where they mostly inconvenienced their own voters -- not big on strategic planning, apparently.

Unfortunately, there's an outside chance that we'll be moving to Florianópolis:  my Better Half is interested in a job there, and if they have any brains, they'll try to hire him.  Guess it's time to start paying a little more attention to the "Sul-Maravilha"! 😂

I imagine it’s not like you’ll run into this stuff in your day to day life most of the time but it’s definitely a data point to know if you’re considering moving somewhere. If you follow Portuguese speaking news and look for it SC is the epicenter of this stuff. One of the big stories beyond the nazi cells that keep popping up, the violence against perceived enemies, and insurrectionary protests was the mass Sieg Heil gesture at one of the protests (racist and nazi political organizations and activity are illegal in Brazil).

https://g1.globo.com/google/amp/sc/sant … vada.ghtml

@rnbtg,

First of all, the little that I do know of SC I pretty much love. I'd move to Floripa in a flash. I even have experience in Chapecó and found aspects of that place interesting as well (see footnote on meat factory workers).

In Blumenau, at two different times people tried to open conversation with me in German - I guess my German half genetics come through strongly - and it surprised me that the Germanic culture persists so strongly (as it was in my Wisconsin youth). Also see Blumenau footnote.

I visited the city in SC (Pomerode) where the [in]famous swimming pool with the swastika was reported and have to say it reminded me of Wisconsin's New Glarus community - charming, especially if one likes German beers, sausages, cheese and polka music.

But I love living in Paraíba too where there are also many unsettling (current and historic) behaviors.

THAT SAID - I agree that there are attitudes/customs in SC that are simply incongruous with modern world societies.... and yet I am from Wisconsin (as mentioned) during a time and in a place where even the John Birch Society flourished, Senator McCarthy was raging and we had Posse Comitatus building their hate groups in the woods and we thought society was advancing (to get beyond such tragic mentalities) and yet if you look at today's listing of Wisconsin on the Southern Poverty Law Center site you'll see 12 recognized hate/nationalist/supremacist/anti-semitic groups.

I guess that I would say that the world (in general) still stews in a miasma of herd-like attitudes that tend to pitch one group against the next and whether it is SC or PB or WI, the USA or Brazil - there's plenty of work to go around to any and all that might help contribute to deflating the wars of words, mistrust and anger I sense in most everyplace around the globe.

A few friends from previous efforts to make positive social progress in my community met last night to consider what we might do as the Brazilian world shifts attention to a new Brazilian administration. There's so much to be done no matter where one lives. We concluded that, as our previous efforts had been focused on simple changes (getting people that lived in horrible trash piles out and into more humane conditions as laid out by the federal gov't - Federal Law 12.305 of 2010) and that we need to focus again (locally) on the most basic of needs that are so lacking around Brazil. We hope to focus on access to food (our local gov't has closed most local kitchens since 2016) and violence against women.

Notes:

Chapecó meat factory workers - there's an interesting short film and book of photographs out on Haitians in Brazil and how their treatment is almost a complete repeat of how Laotian immigrants to Iowa (Storm Lake) live in meatpacking plant towns to survive, subjected to horrible living conditions. There's a documentary (picture bokk also film) by João Pedro Braun and is called "Travessia Brasil Haiti" and you can search up the site for more info if curious.

Blumenau - if you go there don't bother with the Oktoberfest beer garden - I thought it kind of tacky - but do see the Fritz Müller museum. It is small but Müller was a really important contributor to natural scientific knowledge and had quite a life story. I first read about Müller in the book by Moacir Werneck de Castro, "O Sábio e a Floresta," 2007, EDUEPB, a book that is shelved right next to my Aldo Leopold "A Sand County Almanac."

@mberigan Every place has its pros and cons. I have never been to SC, but everything l have read about the general quality of life has been good. I read one article stating it had the best quality of life in all of Latin America, not just Brazil. I can’t vouch for that of course.

@KenAquarius it has a great record for being a very safe place.

12/20/22  @rnbtg Thanks for the link.  We follow Portuguese-speaking news very closely, but since Santa Catarina has never been on our list of states where we'd like to live, we've never paid much attention to it, except between the first and second rounds of the last election.  As professional opportunities become our top priority, we'll need to change our focus and become better informed about it.

Just to mention there are German speaking populations in Rio Grande de Sul, Novo Hamburgo, Canela and Grimado are threee  I have been to recently.

@ltoby955 Brazil is such a fascinating place. There is so much to discover. I read another article that said the largest population of Japanese (outside of Japan) live in Brazil. I used to train in Brazilian jiu-jítsu and l know it made its way to Brazil through a Japanese trade colony. But still l would never have considered that such a large population flourished there. The things we never learned in school!

@KenAquarius Grimado and Canela even look like German/Austrian towns. Argentina is the same with us Paddies 600,000 live there. Culture is facinating and something I really enjoy

@ltoby955 Once I am living in Brazil I intend to do a lot of traveling and exploring. Whenever I had to go on vacation there was never enough time to do a lot.

@mberigan

Notes:

Chapecó meat factory workers - there's an interesting short film and book of photographs out on Haitians in Brazil and how their treatment is almost a complete repeat of how Laotian immigrants to Iowa (Storm Lake) live in meatpacking plant towns to survive, subjected to horrible living conditions. There's a documentary (picture book also film) by João Pedro Braun and is called "Travessia Brasil Haiti" and you can search up the site for more info if curious

Interesting...

Enough to make an Upton's Sinclair expose, like the old Chicago's Stockyards ?   That would be something. 

Not many processed meat brands in Brazil, outside the JBS Conglomerate.  I wonder if this is Dejavu all over again, only this time  as

"The Jungle" South America's version. . .

Well, Haitians will do anything to get out of the Island. That is the plight of emigres. There are a boatload of them in Sao Paulo, mostly by Bras, which is, alongside Bom Retiro, Sao Paulo, and by extension the Country's Garment District.

The Haitian Diaspora.  That has a ring to it. 

There's a documentary (picture book also film) by João Pedro Braun and is called "Travessia Brasil Haiti"

I will look it up.

Milwakee huh?

I did work for a little over a year running a Snap-on Tool Truck ( consigned trainee ) They are from Kenosha, as far as i can remember. That was something.  Plying a manly man's trade.

@ltoby955 Brazil is such a fascinating place. There is so much to discover. I read another article that said the largest population of Japanese (outside of Japan) live in Brazil. I used to train in Brazilian jiu-jítsu and l know it made its way to Brazil through a Japanese trade colony. But still l would never have considered that such a large population flourished there. The things we never learned in school!
-@KenAquarius

Japs are everywhere.

Maringa, PR, Cambara, PR ( they huge on Cotton Growing out there ), Olimpia,SP, Registro, SP ( Tea Plantations ). In Sao Paulo's Metro they used to be in Liberdade. Not anymore., They spread out.They moved to Saude, Ipiranga, Vila Mariana, Jabaquara, and just about anywhere else in the city.  East  of the City,  Mogi das Cruzes & Susano ( they run those cities ). The Jacu Pessego  pike, by Itaquera, is named after the many peach orchards that once dotted the entire length, miles after miles , they once grew.

They have their fingers all over farmers markets.  EVen if you see a "brazilian gang, family " running the stand, chances are, a Japanese Businessman owns the concession, sometimes a string of them.   The old stereotype was that if you see a loaded VW Van ( Kombi), chances were there was a Japanese family in it, coming from the Farmer's market.

Most of the ones who did no climb professional ranks, migrated to Japan, returned, and started some business, mostly in retail. 

@john8670

Hi John my husband and I are moving to Porto Bello near Itapema.  I am looking to connect with  Americans in hopes to make friends. We just got back from Brazil the area was beautiful, beaches mountains. Its a big move but our quality of life will be better. Lets hope for the best.

@GuestPoster204 Hello All & robal, Thank you for the valuable thread.  I am presently living in Ecuador where I was born and an avid truck-camper / overlander.  Prior to Ecuador, I was in Australia.  I left Australia in 2019 due to the fires and did not return.  Now looking for a suitable small rural higher altitude location in Santa Catarina that offers a temperature range of 10-35 degrees Celsius and within 6 hours of Florianopolis for visiting the beach when the tourists are not overwhelming.  I am fluent in Portuguese and experienced living in Latin America.  Any suggestions of small rural communities that offer this type of weather and where there is an "overlanding host" that attracts open-minded and collaborative overlanders? 

@JuanOverlander Robal left the forum some time back. l am sure some others can probably help you. As for me, l have not been able to make my move to Brazil just yet.  Various reasons. The next time l visit Brazil l do plan to spend some tome in SC

@JuanOverlander try somewhere around anitapolis or alfredo wagner. It does get quite hot in the summer though and cold in the winter.  Check olx or zappimoveis for people selling chacaras.

example I found in less than 5 minutes: https://www.zapimoveis.com.br/imovel/ve … 598242051/

Tks, for the input.  My intention is to move this March and slowly find my way via your recommendations and friends that live in Santa Catarina that are overlanders.  By the way - does anyone know of an "overlanding host" in Santa Catarina that caters to international overlanders - primarily europeans?

A friend has left Santa Catarina to move north as it was way to damp in the mountain areas for most of the year. I've spent time on the coast and found the weather to be unpredictable, having said that I think this is now the way of most places around the globe.

@KenAquarius I would like to know what areas are the best to find a 2br apartment near the beach in a safe area.

@GuestPoster204 Hi Robal,

Any information about areas to buy a 2 br apartment near the beach. Greatly appreciated. Mark - [link moderated]

   04/22/24 @GuestPoster204 Hi Robal,
Any information about areas to buy a 2 br apartment near the beach. Greatly appreciated. Mark - [link under review]
   

    -@markjimenez

Welcome!  "GuestPosterXXX" is a generic screen name for a former member who has closed his/her account, so you won't be hearing back from that person, unless s/he has rejoined under a real name.