Beaches and Baywatch

Florianopolis

Floripa city is half on the mainland and half on the island of Isla Santa Catarina. The island is obviously the place to be considering its numerous beaches. Why do people come here? Well…the surf is considered excellent, so when international competitions aren’t confiscating the beaches, locals and gringos alike take to the surf with their long and short boards. There are even surf schools that you can join from a day to a week length. The beaches themselves are beautiful and are filled with beautiful people. Here you can find everyone from your Jersey Shore American to your upper class Argentinean.

Somewhere amidst all the frolicking, we noticed...others on the beach were beginning to point and even take pictures of us.

Arriving late from Curitiba, I checked into the HI in the city. The next morning I was surprised to have a familiar face sit down next to me at breakfast. It was Alice, an English Gospel singer, who had stayed at my hostel in Rio. She had been traveling with a group of people since Paraty and introduced me as we headed to the beach. It turned out to be a fantastic group with central figures being Han from Sydney, Christos from Cyprus, and Lex from Wales.

Together we headed down to the bus station and caught the various buses to Praia Mole. Praia Mole is perhaps one of the most famous beaches on the island. Basically it has gotten a reputation because beautiful people from all over the world flock there. Unfortunately, even though it was a Saturday, the crowd was thin. We imagined that this might have been due to the high tides, but perhaps they were told that the Gringos were coming.

As we settled down onto our kangas, freshly covered in sunscreen, I began to observe this southern take on the Brazilian beach. Whereas in Rio the beaches would be completely crowded, here there was plenty of personal space. There was also a greater international mix to the crowd. That is, at least there appeared to be. This part of Brazil was immigrated heavily by Europeans. Italian heritage is evident not only in the dark hair and olive skin, but also in the number of pizzerias. Besides the Italians, a fair number of Germans disembarked here, giving the south an influx of real blond hair and blue eyes. Besides the beach being less crowded, there were less beach vendors as well.

Those that were present, either selling a sandwich or sunglasses were much more relaxed. We had one guy selling sunglasses who seemed more interested in chatting than selling. Whether this was because it was not a busy day or because that is the way it is down here was unclear. Still, I missed some of the crowd from Ipanema, particularly the one vendor who walked around in big dark sunglasses and at times wielded a megaphone and on other occasions, numchucks.

The next day we went to Praia Joaquina. This is more or less the next beach over and is lauded for it’s surfing. We easily negotiated surfboard and umbrella rental. Actually the man gave us an extra half hour on the board and threw in the umbrella for free. Our friend Alice chose to watch our stuff and take pictures of us getting clobbered by waves while we tried our hands at surfing. I will admit that this is my second time surfing. The first was in Rio with a teacher, but it didn’t really prepare me for this day. Basically we never caught a wave. The water was choppy and the waves were frequent yet died quickly. Some Canadians diagnosed the problem as one of a short wave period. Han, the only real surfer amongst us was able to catch a few, but unfortunately they were short-lived rides.

Soon we all became frustrated and headed back to shore. That is all of us save one. Han and I went in search of Acai, the frozen Brazilian snack made from the concentrate of an Amazonian berry. Plentiful, cheap, and delicious is it in Rio. Unfortunately it is none of these in the South. The vendor took the bizarre approach of sprinkling stale frosted flakes on top, which left us confused and unsatisfied.

Back at Alice’s stakeout, Christos was telling us of his rescue. Rescue did you say? I never knew someone who got rescued before. He told us how he was paddling on his board and at some point noticed that he was drifting further from shore. When he tried to come back his efforts proved to be in vain. With panic setting in and waving his hands for help, a team of lifeguards rushed out to sea. When they got to him two of them grabbed his board and began towing him back. At some point Christos realized that he was safe and subconsciously started singing the theme to Baywatch. One of his rescuers heard him and turned around to give the thumbs up sign. Ashore and calm, Christos thanked his rescuers and asked them for a picture.

With this talk of Baywatch, real life rescues, and a half our left on our surfboard rental, an incredible idea came to mind. Why not take some goofy Baywatch themed pictures? So we did the obligatory jogging on the beach, holding our boards Beach Boys style with jazz hands, and of course the human pyramid.

Somewhere amidst all the frolicking, we noticed that we were drawing attention to ourselves. Indeed, others on the beach began to point and even take pictures of us. It came to the point where a man approached us and said his lady friend wanted to be in our pictures. Having one girl and five guys, we came upon the clever idea of taking the leashes off our boards and putting them around our necks, with her holding the other end. The result was riotous and left everyone in stitches, especially the girl and our photographer, Alice. Having bowed to our audience and returned our surfboards, Lex led the charge off the beach to the tune of Hey Big Spender.

The good times had to end somehow and the crew save Han and myself moved on to Foz do Iguacu. Han wanted to spend a couple days on the relatively quiet beach of Barra da Lagoa to relax and work on his surfing. Since both of us had plans to go south we decided to hit the road together. But first I had to visit another town in Santa Catarina, Blumenau.