Where to stay

Santa Catarina spreads along the coast and up into the serra, so where you stay shapes the whole trip. The main places covered here are Santa Catarina, Navegantes, Balneario Camboriu, Penha, Florianopolis, Itajai, Itapema and Porto Belo, each with its own character and its own cluster of hotels. There is no passenger rail in Santa Catarina, so it is car or bus, and a car is genuinely useful if you are mixing the coast with the serra or hopping between beaches. The BR-101 runs the whole coast; driving Florianopolis to Balneario Camboriu takes about 1h20, and Florianopolis to Urubici roughly 3h30 up the SC-370 via the Serra do Rio do Rastro. Decide first what you want from the water and the landscape, then book the area rather than the city. A municipality like Florianopolis covers the whole island plus a bit of mainland, so a hotel address saying Florianopolis tells you almost nothing until you check the bairro.

Across these places the split is clear. Santa Catarina, Itajai and Porto Belo have 4-star and 3-star hotels only, with no five-star properties among their hotels. Navegantes, Balneario Camboriu, Penha, Florianopolis and Itapema also list 4- and 5-star hotels: Penha has 4 five-star properties, Navegantes and Florianopolis have 2 each, and Balneario Camboriu and Itapema have 1 each. Navegantes and Penha also stand out for family facilities, with 17 and 24 respectively, and for parking, with 13 and 21. Choose 4- and 5-star where you want the full resort or city-hotel range, and 3-star for a simpler base in the same towns.