page_title: Santa Catarina (state)
section_title: Tourism
hierarchical_section_title: Santa Catarina (state) / Tourism
caption_attribution_description: English: Snow in Brazil, São Joaquim's countryside, August 2010. Português: Neve na zona rural de São Joaquim, Santa Catarina, Brasil, em agosto de 2010.
context_page_description: Santa Catarina is a state in the South Region of Brazil. It is the 7th smallest state in total area and the 11th most populous. Additionally, it is the 9th largest settlement, with 295 municipalities. The state covers an area of 95,733 km², reaching a larger area than Portugal or the sum of the Brazilian states of Rio de Janeiro, Espirito Santo, and the Federal District. The state, which has 3.4% of the Brazilian population, is responsible for 3.8% of the Brazilian GDP.
  Santa Catarina is bordered by Paraná to the north, Rio Grande do Sul to the south, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and to the west by the Argentine province of Misiones. The coastal path is over 450 km, i.e., about half of Portugal's mainland coast. The host city of the state executive, legislative and judiciary powers is the capital Florianópolis. Joinville, however, is the most populous city in the state. Besides Espírito Santo, Santa Catarina is the only state whose capital is not the most populous city. South of the Tropic of Capricorn, situated in the planet's southern temperate zone, the state has a humid subtropical climate in the east and west and an oceanic climate in the center.
context_section_description: Santa Catarina offers a number of sights and events throughout the year: rural tourism, thermal mineral resorts, ecological tourism and adventure sports, historic monuments and sights, religious tourism, Beto Carrero World and Unipraias parks in Balneário Camboriú, and beach resorts of Florianópolis, Laguna, Porto Belo and Itajaí.
  Some of these sights can only be seen in the off-season, like the snow on the Catarinense Mountain Range - one of the places in Brazil where it snows every year.
  Between July and November, southern right whales visit the state's coast. And during the winter, flocks of penguins migrate from Antarctica.
  The municipality of Timbó is a center for adventure sports like rafting and canyoning.
  The great festivities take place in October. The main Oktoberfest of Blumenau is Brazil's largest and the world's second largest (after Germany's Munich).
  Joinville is the host city in July to the widely acclaimed "Joinville Dance Festival", the annual "Festival of Flowers" in November which showcases orchids produced in the region, and several business events in its Convention Center.
  Florianópolis, the city/island State Capital attracts a large numbers of tourists during the summer months who visit its 42 beaches.
  There are also many smaller resort towns, including the capital of the microlight aircraft tour flights Itapema, Piçarras, Barra Velha and Penha, home to the famous amusement park "Beto Carrero World".
  An interesting collaboration between men and Nature that can be watched has been developed in Laguna (birthplace of Anita Garibaldi, the wife and comrade-in-arms of Italian Unification revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi): a pod of bottlenose dolphins drive fish towards fishermen who stand at the beach in shallow waters. Then one dolphin rolls over, which the fishermen take as sign to throw out their nets. The dolphins feed on the escaping fish. The dolphins were not trained for this behavior; the collaboration has been going on at least since 1847. Southern right whales also can be seen in Laguna from shores during winter to spring seasons.
  The 17,491 hectares (43,220 acres) Turvo State Park, created in 1947, is in the northwest of the state.
  It contains the Yucumã Falls (Portuguese: Salto do Yucumã, Spanish: Saltos del Moconá), a dramatic waterfall on the Uruguay River on the border with Argentina.
  Many tourists come to the park to see the falls, which are 1,800 metres (5,900 ft) long and up to 20 metres (66 ft) high.
caption: Snow in the Alps of Santa Catarina.
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