Florianopolis

It was indeed somewhat of a relief to leave Sao Paulo in one piece with all our possessions and vital organs intact and we were looking forward to getting to and relaxing on at least one of Florianolpolis’ 42 beaches. Florianopolis is a small island off the coast of Brasil and was certainly worth stopping at. Arriving there at 7.30am having barely slept on a crowded and uncomfortable coach I was not in the mood for lugging around a heavy rucksack and searching for our hostel which we weren’t supposed to be checking into until 12 and it didn’t help that it was grey clouds, pouring rain and cold weather but this all quickly changed once we reached our hostel.

After a 45 minute taxi ride to the north of the island, we reached our hostel Posada Ilha de Moreno near to Praia Santinho one of the smaller more secluded beaches on the island. This was a pleasant and busy little hostel with friendly staff and good facilities including a swimming pool and gym area as well as a bar and lounge with widescreen TV although the wi-fi connection was the only thing that let the place down being extremely temperamental. They even let us check in early (this was a good 2 hours) and have breakfast for a small extra charge which was good of them. It seemed since we had arrived at our hostel that the sun had decided to show its face and my did it have something to prove that day! After breakfast we decided to head to our local beach and after a short walk we came across one of the most beautiful beaches I had ever seen and it wasn’t very busy at all. With us we had brought the football we had bought in Paraty and a body board from the hostel and we now had the sun on our side so it was looking like it was going to be a great day and indeed it was (well for the mostpart)!

The sun and the sea here were especially ferocious, more so than i’ve ever known at a beach so even with thick layers of sunscreen, you can still see and feel yourself burning and you needed to always be careful in the ocean as the waves were so frequent and powerful that the strength could probably break your bones without due care as well as the fact that you could all easily find yourself way out of your depth and indeed your comforet zone in moments . Indeed all 3 of us fell victim to both the sun and the sea and the consequences were nearly serious when Steve nearly drowned! Having mentioned in a previous blog about how I like to see how far out I can get when swimming in the sea within my comfort zone, I again tried the same as firstly I naively thought that if I swam out beyond the waves that it’d be calmer conditions to swim in and secondly I saw a couple of surfers quite a way further out which gave me a flase sense of security being the fact that I wasn’t the furthest out and if they could be out there then so could I but then in hindsight I realised they were most probably better swimmers than me and they had surfboards not just to surf their way back to shore with but as buoyancy aids if anything did happen to them. With al these thoughts running through my mind and the constant battle in attempting to fight against the waves, I decided to turn back as the water was very deep and the waves very large still and to my surprise, as I turned around I found Steve just behind me on the body board. He had followed me out perhaps to ensure my wellbeing or perhaps in an attempt to see if he could catch a wave from that far out. Oh how wrong he had been! As I began to swim front crawl to get some distance on him as with his board I assumed he’d catch me but this quickly tired me out and I felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere so I apodted the breast stroke approach calmly and slowly making progress with the waves behind me whilst trying not to gulp down too much salt water with the swell. Behind me Steve wasn’t making much progress but I assumed this was because he was still waiting on a big’un even though there had been plenty but at this place we seemed not to be going forward or backwards for some reason, it was lamost like we were breing tossed around in a teacup going one step forward to go one step back again. It was at this point I realised how far out we were and how we could be in some trouble as there were no helicopters going overhead as there had been in Rio and in these waves it would be hard for anyone to spot us from the shore. Stay calm I said to myself but it was hard when you just weren’t making any progress no matter how hard you tried and then the battering of the waves and constant fight against the swell which was pulling you back with almost as much force as the wave that had struck you in the first place. At one point I swallowed a huge mouthful of salt water when trying to grab a breath between waves and my stomach really didn’t agree with this and i began wretching and choking whilst still trying to catch breath and being battered by more huge waves and I almost thought I would die there and then but luckily I got a small break from the waves and regained my breath but was even more physically worn out from this experience so I swam closer to Steve and asked if we could swap so he sawm for a little while i tried the board since he wasn’t getting far and I fancied my chances more on the board so we swapped.After around 5 minutes of aggressive swimming, Steve had made good progress and I had barely moved so I started to worry that he was going to leave me out here alone but then Steve seemed to tire and his progress waned. All of a sudden he was shouting at me, Adam, Adam help I’m drowning. I just chckled to myself thinking he was playing tricks but then he shouted Adam I’m not fucking around help me so then I reliased he was serious and swam on the board towards him as fast as I could. He was clearly shaken up when I reached him and I gave him the board as a buoyancy aid and which perhaps saved his life. I then swam for it to try and get help from the shore and could see the life guards running and blowing whistles at the shore. I had made it out of the doldrums and I’v enever felt such relief when my feet touched good old terra firma again but Steve had drifted away further out to sea on the board and the lifeguards told me we shouldn’t have been out so far and whether there was anyone else out there I pointed towards Steve and they quicky fought against the waves to his rescue. Steve was shaken up when he reached the shore with them and shook both of their hands for saving his life. We certainly had been out of our depths and although I had probably saved Steve’s life, we had both been pretty foolish to be so far out in the first place and it could easily have happened to either of us.

After this escapade I made the decision to stay out of the water for the rest of the day and go in the search of some nature to photographs since the surrounding area was very naturally beautiful with heavily vegetated marshland areas as well as sand dunes and forested mountains to either end of the beach so I was determined to get some good snaps. Unfortunaltely my main objective was to go back to the area we passed on the way to the beach which was a marshy grassland where I had heard loud shrill calls from what I can only assume were chicks of some bird but everytime I got anywhere near they simply shut up and because the grass was so dense I simply couldn’t see benetath it and didn’t want to tread on then so I had to give up on that idea which was a shame. Instead I went on the hunt for any other wildlife I could see and got some good snaps of some exotic looking plants and flowers, pretty butterflies, dragonflies, beetles and a large clumsy looking bird that flew out unexpectedly from the bushes. This was an enjoyable experience although at one point i nearly lost a flip flop in what can only described as quicksand my foot was literally swallowed up in the stuff! Luckily my other foot was on a more solid part so I just pulled my foot out and had to wrench my flip flop back from the clutches of the evil wet sand! I then headed to the sand dunes where a slightly diffenret slection of wildlife existed such as crabs and birds with long beaks that I couldn’t identify. After a while trying but faliing to get a picture of a sand crab as whenever they saw you they scuttled back into their holes my battery decided to tell me that it was about to die so now my mission was to climb to the highest point of the hill to get a picture from up high of our beach Santinho and the neighbouring beach Praia dos Ingleses (Beach of the English) but unfortunately just when I reached the end of the beach and the foot of the hill my battery died completely and so I just turned back and told myself I’d get the crabs and the hill view shots myself as well as some nice close ups of the vutures sitting at the top of the hill. Having spent the day in the sun with just swimming trunks and flip flops on I was looking pretty red even though I had applied suncream on regular occasions but the pain set in later and with my feet still in agony with blisters from football and flip flops that hurt to walk on as the strap was too far into the sole meant that it was not a nice night. I could barely walk and it hurt to lie on my back so the pain was almost excruciating. We had a cold tile floor in our room and walking in bare foot on my blisters was like someone slowly peeling a plaster off you every time i lifted my foot. It’s hard to describe but I hadn’t felt pain like this for quite some time. Just to add to my ailments I was feeling like I had heatstroke but nonetheless I was so tired from the previous nights lack of sleep that I quickly fell asleep even with the pain and the extremely uncomfortable heat in the room and bed.

The next day however we decided to go to Ingleses (the nearest beach town) to book our coach tickets to Uruguay and try Praia do Mozambique (Beach of Mozambique) as recommended by our receptionist but we missed the bus and after waiting around for another for around 20 minutes we just decided to go back to our local beach which I was pleased about as it was a great beach and it meant I could those shots I had wanted. Again it was an eventful day at the beach and I got the blame when Lee went out on the board and nearly got knocked out by the board which incidentally cracked in two over his head as he had seen me use the technique of throwing the board over the big waves so that you don’t have to worry about losing the board with the force of the wave and then perhaps catching the board on the next wave and riding it in. Lee hoever threw the board and relaising he may lose it if he didn’t get it back dived at it with full force and the wave duly obliged with full force literally smashing the board in two over his head. Dazed and now with a broken board Lee came back to us to say it was my fault as he was copying my technique! Well excuse me but it’s not my fault if your technique sucks J.

After an unsuccessful few attempts at catching some large waves and riding to shore on them and still a little wary of the water after the incidents of the day before, I decided to climb the hill that I would’ve done the day before if id had battery so off i set this time equipped with a full battery, music and comfy trainers. On the way i even managed to coax a crab out of its hole and got some good shots of it. Up the mountain I got some great shots of both beaches as well as the some good close ups of the vultures towards the top. I met a nice Argentinian guy and his son who spoke excellent English and even spoke to me about Premiership football which I guess all the Argies know about these days with Tevez and Mascherano being in the league. Kiindly he took some photos of me and advised me that it was thick and dense further up as I enquired about whether I could get higher but he said with my shoes it could be possible but he’d never found a path. So off I set trying on my mission to get to the top and get the money shot but this was certainly not worth the pain as there was no path and every other plant was a spiny one. After trying to fight my way through this thick scrub for about half an hour and getting cut all over I decided to turn back as I was in pain from blisters, in pain from sunburn and now the pain of the spines all over proved too much. I got some great shots though and i felt like I had achieved my goal anyway. Heading back to the beach I got back to where we had been and found they had gone back so I headed back to the hostel and we ate all dinner and got a fairly early night ready for the long trip to the border of Uruguay at 4.30pm the following day.