Joinville

Joinville is the largest city in Santa Catarina, Brazil. It is principally an industrial city and many of its 500,000 inhabitants are of German descent.

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Brazil's Santa Catarina is South America's next hot tourist spot

When most people think of Brazil, they remember Rio’s Carnival, tropical jungles, the Amazon or such thriving metropolises as Sao Paulo. Well, leave your preconceptions about Brazil at home, because one of the country’s top tourist destinations, frequented by savvy insiders, is the southern state of Santa Catarina. Just 438 miles south of Sao Paulo and 709 miles south of Rio is a state so varied in landscapes, ethnic populations and cultural backgrounds that even the locals refer to it as a “different” Brazil.

Santa Catarina Intrudution

Santa Catarina, southern coastal estado (state) of Brazil, bounded to the north by the state of Paraná, to the south by the state of Rio Grande do Sul, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, and to the west by Misiones province of Argentina. It is
one of the smaller Brazilian states. The capital is Florianópolis, located on coastal Santa Catarina Island. The region was given various names by early Spanish and Portuguese cartographers; the name Santa Catarina is said to have been given in honour of St. Catherine of Alexandria by the Italian navigator Sebastian Cabot, when he was in the service of Spain.