July 13th – 14th 2017
Recovered from my health scare that kept me from visiting Guyana, Suriname and French Guyana, and now in the middle of my one month holiday l I feel determined to do something, but all international flights are now very high. This is one downside of teaching in Brazil, flight prices inflate during the holidays more than anywhere I’ve ever been. So I decide with Renata that this is a the perfect opportunity for a week long road trip through the south of Brazil. It’s mostly places I’ve been before, but with different company, because Felipe and Vinny are coming with me this time around. Renata has to work, but will fly down to meet us in Floripa for a few days which is better than nothing.
The first step of this road trip is a very long drive, from our house in Suzano to Florianapolis. We get going early but it still takes longer than expected. We only Arrive in Jurere (a crazy rich town on the island of Santa Catarina where Renata has organized a friend of a friend to host us.) around 10 o’clock at night, and not without some issues along the way. The trip is highlighted by a random highway side barbecue place somewhere between Sao Paulo and Curitiba that we stop at that has probably the third best sausage I’ve ever tasted (Behind Nuremberg in Germany, and the central market in Montevideo Uruguay).
By the time we finally arrive on the island around 9 pm, google maps takes us to a giant office building that looks completely abandoned right in the centre of the city, and I have to drive around searching for wifi to get in touch with Renata and get the right address. A little over an hour later I’m speeding across the island with the two boys nodding off in the back.
As we drive in to Jurere we’re pretty shocked, it’s all made of beautiful houses that would fit better in some fancy California gated community than in Brazil. We’re greeted at the door by our sleepy but very friendly host Vania who shows us to two beautiful rooms in her incredible house. We’re all wiped out from the drive and so we head straight to sleep. We wake up the next morning and have a quick but very nice breakfast with Vania, getting to know a bit more about her before we head out to explore the island in Branada (the dual nationality based name of our Nissan Livina.) . Our first stop is Campeche, a small beach town on the south east of the island, quite a drive from Vania’s house but I’m leaving some of the closer beaches to explore with Renata. Campeche though ends up being very beautiful and is somewhere I didn’t make it to my first time in Floripa with Lydia. The boys and I have a ton of fun running along the beach and swimming in the clear cool and refreshing water.
Looks beautiful doesn’t it? I swear the pictures don’t capture it’s true beauty. We keep walking along the beach for a lot longer than we meant to. The boys delighting in finding little patches of sand in shallows that seem to minimally mimic the feeling of quicksand, holding you tight before eventually letting you go. I snap lots more pictures before we eventually decide to head back to the car and move on to our next destination. We only have a few days to explore the island so their is some urgency to keep moving. Either way, I’m quickly discovering that having a car on the island is invaluable and makes it so much easier to move around then the complex and somewhat limited bus system.
Back in the car we drive south, heading to still more amazing beaches, but on the way we get thirsty and seeing a caldo de cana (sugarcane juice) stand at a nice viewpoint I pull the car over and we enjoy several cups of the sweet nectar doing our best not to get stung by the swarm of wasps as we gaze out at that impossible line where the sky meats the sea.
Our next stop is Lagoa de Peri, a gorgeous lake just a few hundred meters inland from the sea that gives us the opportunity to explore some more and also wash the salt off of our bodies which I feel like is getting baked into us by the sun. It’s wintertime here, which can mean cold weather, but today is fairly warm, maybe around 25 and I, as always, suffer in the sun. I wonder if I’ll live in Brazil long enough to overcome this nemesis of mine. Oh well at least the sun lights the day and the stunning lake for some beautiful photos.
Vinny wants to do the stand up paddle at the lake but I tell him that sadly there is not enough time, so we settle on a nice swim and a short hike around to a less populated part of the lake.
Our next stop is just a short drive further south. The village of Armaçao which serves as a trail head for the beach Lydia and I attempted to hike to on my first visit. The hike we decide is probably more than we have energy and time for and so we settle with the much shorter walk to the near by beach, but first we climb up on the rocky outcropping right at the edge of town which provides some truly amazing views of the beaches as well as the forest covered hills that for me define the island of Santa Catarina. I feel like I could spend a lot longer on this island and wish it was 2 or 3 hours away from home, instead of 9 or 10. The boardwalk leads out to a big rocky outcrop which we climb around and fully explore taking advantage of the stellar views it provides looking back towards the shore to snap some great shots of me and the boys.
We grab some delicious ice cream in town improving Felipe’s mood and then take a short 15 or 20 minute trail to yet another beautiful beach with bigger waves this time, and even though the sun is sinking low in the sky Vinny and I both head in for another dip, playing in the waves. It reminds me of playing in the waves of Lawrencetown and Martinique beaches back home in Nova Scotia with my dad.
Felipe stays on the beach and takes some great pictures of us while also wandering and exploring the area. I swear the boy could have been born with a camera in his hands. He takes some very strange photos, and sometimes there will be 10 in a row where I have no idea what he is trying to do, but then there’s one that’s better than anything I could ever take. Impressive. Vinny himself is also good with a camera in his hands, but likes to explore with me so much that he gets less chances to be the photographer.
The sun sets and we eventually head back to the little town, me shouldering my bag, borrowed from Renata, and quickly climbing up the rocks heading back to the little plaza in town where we left the car.
We get there and everything starts to fall apart. I can’t find the car keys. They were in the bag. I swear they were. But they’re not there anymore. I search my pockets. The kids pockets. The bag again. The ground around the car. The bag again. There. I find a small whole in the bottom of the bag. Could they have fallen out?
I tell the kids to wait by the car and sprint back along the 20 minute trail in about 5 minutes, with my cellphone flashlight and little else, searching the ground for any sign of the keys and asking the few people I come across if they have seen any keys. I’ve got very limited light left, and eventually I have no choice but to head back to the car and the boys empty handed.
With no way to get out of there what do we do? Go to the ice cream shop of course. There, with Vinny and Felipe’s help, and my limited portuguese, we manage to communicate the situation and luckily the owner of the ice cream shop is a straight up hero. She gets in touch with her son who is a mechanic but is in Sao Paulo now, he gets us a list of numbers to call and eventually we get in touch with someone who does theoretically generate Nissan keys (Turns out this is a very complex procedure). I keep the boys fed and warm, keep Renata informed (she panics but what can you do) and we spend about 6 hours waiting for a man to reach us on the far south end of the island. These six hours are filled by a local Brazilian rap battle on the beach, which I want to join, but responsibility keeps me in the car.
The man comes, has to leave again, and promises he will come back. It’s past 1 am when he gets back and around 2 before we have a working car again. The next morning I’ll have to go into Florianopolis main city to get the automatic unlocker doohickey but at least I survive the drive home and manage to stay awake. Vania kindly lets us in and forgives us her lost house keys and we get some sleep, knowing Renata will arrive the next morning.
It’s been a terrible stressful night and one hell of a travel experience, but we got it sorted out and in the end did have a great day before the unfortunate key mishap.
