FLORIANOPOLIS - Gone trekkin´

Some days are worth any price. Some make a holiday or, indeed, a whole week or month worthwilde. I can safely say that the trek from Pantano do Sul to Lagoinha do Leste on the south of Ihla Santa Catarina may well have been worth the price of my entire year´s journey. And this was in the week when my cast was finally removed (that´s ten weeks of my right hand I still want back from somewhere. I´ve got a backlog of jars that need opening)

Wednesday was a holiday here (no, can´t remember which one) and was the first genuianly sunny day for a few weeks. So we decided to catch up on all the beach exploration / visiting we´d been missing out on. Then Geraldo, one of our resident homestay brothers, recommended that we take a trek away from the main tourist beaches around a particularly large looking hill to one of the island´s less visited lagoons. "It is a long walk." He warned us. But is it a pretty one? "Sure," he shrugged. "Just remember to bring some water."


Trekking over the wild hills of Brazil. They flew those boulders into New Zealand to make Lord of the Rings, I think. Or maybe New Zealand has a few of its own? I´ll let you know in due course.

Cue one and a half hours of jungle, waterfalls, and at times near vertical climbing followed by another hour of clambering over rocks on the edge of windy cliffs to reach the top of the hill overlooking Lagoinha do Leste. Quite literally, a picture paradise beach completley inaccessable by any other route but the long, hilly one. Not quite white sands and not quite empty but, hey, what do you expect for a Wednesday afternoon on real life planet Earth? Fictional perfection? Actually, some hardy souls had managed the same trek with surfboards, tents and all manner of strange accessorys.


Lagoinha do Leste. The view they invented postcards for.

Of course, the need to return to a place without darkened stumbling over cliffs meant our stay at the beach had to be shorter than our combined walking time too and from it (only took us two hours on the way back. We got this trekking thing down) And our level of preperation was somewhat lacking, so that some hardy souls had to do the whole thing in flip flops. Which was pretty impressive, really. I was, of course, wearing the exciting Gore-Tex boots (see: Expensive Shoes) which were wonderfully successful, until I slipped and got thigh deep into mud. Gore-Tex doesn´t work so well when you get the boot wet on the inside. Stupid Gore-Tex.

There were some sore muscles, the odd bit of sunburn and some cuts and bruises for everyone´s trouble (note to you all: if you see surfers crashing out on waves near large rocks you can rest assured that you´re probably *not* in a safe swimming area) but, undoubtedly, the whole experience earnt itself a top level placing in my all time favourite Brazilian Treks league table. And if we do it all again, apparently there´s an even steeper path over an even bigger mountain to try out. See you at the top.


Team Global Adventures return from Lagoinha do Leste. It´s all smiles until everyone begins to feel the lactic acid welling up in their calf muscles...

And lastly: a plea. I see from the ever reliable Internet Movie Database that Joss Whedon´s Serenity has been released on both sides of the Atlantic to general acclaim and not very much money. I beg. Nay, I plead. Please go and see this film so it makes some money. If not, someone might decide it´s not very good and deem it unworthy of attaching Portuguese subtitles to and releasing in the small, crampt lectue theatre which they put a sign saying ´Cinema´ on the front of here in Floripa. I medically need to see this film on a big(ish) screen, please can all Browncoats who´ve seen it post their obviously positive reviews here and everyone else then go forth and do what must be done to make this world work. Which is: spending money to make me happy.