Advertisement
Published: June 17th 2006
Edit Blog Post
View of Lagoa
View of the lagoon from atop a hill near where I am staying in Florianopolis. So today was the most beautiful day I have had since coming to South America. I am here in Florianopolis, Brazil, a small island off of the southern coast and the capital of the state of Santa Catarina, and it is here that I have had hands down the best and the worst days of my journey. I’ll start with the best: today.
I woke up at 5:50 a.m. and took a shower while watching the sun rise over the clay rooftops outside the open window in my bathroom. After a refreshing shower and making pita sandwiches with ricotta, red leaf lettuce, mustard, pepper, and fresh tomatoes (aka, lunch) I headed to the Laguna bus depot with Sohmer, Lynn, and Gigi. We managed to catch the 7:20 bus, the first out of the depot, that theoretically headed toward Ingleses, a small beach town on the north eastern edge of the island. What we did not understand was that this bus ride involved 3 separate busses and tripping all around the island. Luckily we left so early that despite the set backs we made it to the beach by 9:30, thanks to the help of a sweet brazilian girl whose father
The BEEEEEACH!!!
This is Sohmer, Lynn, Gigi and I, victorious after having made it to the beach at Ingleses. is from Texas and spoke good English.
The beach was beautiful. As soon as we stepped out on the sand from the sidewalk covered in chalk in preparation for Corpus Christi Day (today) we all breathed a sigh of relief and felt all our worries drift away. By 10 a.m. we had all stripped down to various combinations of underwear, clothing, and bathing suits and were sprawled out on the sheet we borrowed from Sohmer’s bed that morning. I soaked up two hours of sun, intermittently napping, enjoying the views, and reading my pleasure book. I walked down to one end of the beach where a huge sand dune took over and boys were playing soccer. It was a beautiful walk. Brazil is a beautiful place and the people are a beautiful people.
At 1:30, after a lovely packed lunch of mandarins, sandwiches, and chocolate coconut cookies, we headed to the other end of the island to try and find this hiking trail described in a hiking book that Dr. Bowman bought for me. Unfortunately the book is entirely in Portugese, so perhaps I missed something in my rough translation, but the trail was incredibly difficult to find.
Yours Truly
Aren´t I just beautiful??? Heh. We knew it would be a hard hike, but we did not know that it would be more-or-less rock climbing and bouldering along the edge of the island… it was beautiful and extremely difficult (stair master on steroids!!). We would not have known where to go had it not been for two very sweet middle aged Brazilians who are natives of the island who hopped in front of us across all of the boulders to mark the way (while wearing flip flops!). The hike was 100 percent worth it. I am indebted to Juan and his friend who showed us the way for nothing and then declined our offer of a drink in this town, the least (and simultaneously, literally the most) we could offer.
After chilling at this much more secluded tiny beach for an hour, we decided we needed to try and figure how to walk to a bigger town to try and get either a taxi or a bus back to Lagoa, located on the middle of the island. After realizing that leaving this little town meant crossing a huge hill with crossbacks, we decided to try our hand at hitch hiking (All of the students
The Rocks
These are the boulders we climbed over and around to make it to the other beach. we talked to last night at an English-Portugese Happy Hour told us that this is the only way to get around the island). And we were successful. Extremely successful.
Little did we know that the R.V. that picked us up was being rented by Sailor “Che,” a Buenos Aires native who left the city at the age of eighteen to travel the world. Thirty years later, he is a sail boat pilot who drives unused boats of the rich and famous all over the world (in three weeks he will be sailing across the Atlantic to Spain!). We rode with him until he took us to a little place where our paths departed and we began the search for the bus depot. We eventually found a bus and made it to where we had to transfer to another bus when who did we come across again but Sailor “Che”! We were on the public bus, driving down the interstate and we see his R.V. and his girlfriend waving at us. They followed our R.V. and had us get out at the next stop. It was so crazy! The bus was so incredibly crowded that we had to push our way from the top of the bus to the back to exit, but we made it off and to the R.V.
Our friend took us and his girlfriend on a scenic tour of the island at night and drove us to the doorstep of our Pousada in Lagoa. We talked the whole time we were driving (over an hour) about everywhere he has been and all the things he has done. He has been to every Latin American country (even trucked across Venezuela), China, Japan, all over Europe, nearly every Asian country, Australia, and even rented an R.V. in the United States and drove from the east coast to the west coast and up into Canada. We listened to a CD of his from a famous Spanish guitar player that his Spanish friend had just sent him. He gave us so much advice about where to go in Brazil and even let us borrow a self made dvd of his journeys with a friend in Brazil and the Caribbean. The film is incredible.
Between the beautiful places I saw and the people I met, today was hands down my favorite day in Latin America. Everything was beautiful.
Quote from Che: “In all my travels I have learned that the best language is the smile.”
I will have to dedicate another entry to my worst night here... I want to leave this one on a happy note.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.095s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 10; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0541s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 3;
; mem: 1.1mb