The island is known as the Brazilian version of Ibiza, with similar clubs and enjoys a good party. We opted to stay in a quieter area, but close to the beach.
It's still a large island and to get around the local busses take ages, as they don't go the most direct route. We hired a cr as was suggested, a lawn mower sized engine (1 litre) in this Golf GOL. With constant right, right, right (drive on the right hand side of the road) reminders, my navigator and I arrived at the hostal. It was very basic, but a good location.
Straight down to the beach just as sun disappeared, along with a couple of beers and caipirinhas.
Looking for something to eat we found a beach football game starting up under floodlights. Grand stands full of people surrounded the ground and as far as we could work out, the regional teams league. All quite serious and one guy in the local team had a serious hoof on him.
The next day was straight onto the beach. A short drive away is one of the main surfing beaches called Praia Mole. We were one of the first people on and had the full stretch of soft sand to choose. Now being very Brazil beach experienced we hired our chairs and umbrella, got out Mand's sarong (no beach towels in the whole of Brazil, and sat down in our Brazilian costumes. These are a good deal smaller than regular costumes and board shorts, so we needed to continue working on tanning the whiter bits.
I love body surfing. A beach is not a beach without waves, but although Mole had the waves, the accessible waves would dump right close to the shore line. They were as powerful as Durban's Salt Rock waves. This meant that we'd swim through them behind the impact zone and this would give us good people watching opportunities, of which there were plenty. Many less adept wave swimmers entered the water and would be taken out over and over with each new swell.
Beach tennis is popular, but is something to behold. No rallying to each other, it's full on war. Old vs young, male vs female, no holds barred!
Our beach waiter would bring out drinks to us and we tried our first acai, frozen berries and chocolate, muesli and nuts - a good morning snack.
Mole was a great beach.
After lunch, with the scorching sun beating down, we headed up the coast. Mozambique was the next significant beach and is kilometres long, but only a hand full of fisherman and bathers.
We continued up to the northerly part of the island stopped in a couple of more places, but nothing anywhere as nice as Mole. We eventually reached the more known party spot, Jureré praia. We walked up the narrow beach next to the calm ocean and nothing much was happening - no Ibiza beach bars with DJ's playing while someone on a saxophone blows out rifts surrounded with people dancing. The big parties had been, but now the second week after carnival it was super quiet.
We drove the 30 minutes back to the Lagoa close to where we were staying and Mands got treated to her favourite food, Sushi. I ordered salmon hand rolls and they were the best I'd ever eaten.
On our last full day we headed down to the south of the island, Pantano do Sol, the fishing side. Locals ambled up to collect their fresh catch from a small fishing boat and families chilled on the calm beach. Too calm for us, so we headed off to Matadeiro beach further up on the east coast.
This too didn't seem to have much happening, so we grabbed an ice cream and went for a walk. A few minutes on and we found the path to the proper Matadeiro "by foot only" beach and you need to cross a small river to get there. Where the river flowed into the sea, two net fishermen tried to catch their dinner. The river outlet kicked up well forming waves that a group of surfers took advantage of.
We set up in front of a beach bar and soaked up the rays. That was for all of 5 minutes before I was lured into the ocean. Fantastic body surfing waves curled in one after another. A good three foot face came crashing over and peeling left and right. The waves were a good distance out and a great surf in. Probably the best body surfing ever. Mands and I went round after round of sit, soak and surf.
There were no non-swimmers here like we'd seen in Mole, but we did see three people being rescued after a rip took them out a bit far.
More surfers, competitive beach tennis and football skills on the beach - these Brazilians all seem quite comfortable with the round ball.
Matadeiro beach was fantastic!
I'd said we'd go to a place I'd seen on the hilltop next to the lagoon for sunset, so we headed there. The lagoon is huge so for sunset you have the added reflection off the water.
We headed down to the lagoon's waters edge for a dinner and now expected accompanying live music.
Ending off we needed to get the rental car filled up with fuel. Sounds easy, but with most cars in Brazil now a petrol / ethanol hybrids, I had no idea what to do. Licking there are petrol attendants and after a few questions from them and a few clueless yes answers from me the car was filled.all good.
Florionopolis brought an end to our fantastic Brazilian beach time. We leave with local swimming costumes, good tans and new havianna sandals. Will we ever use a regular towel again?
Off to waterfalls, a kilometre long!
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