Freestyle Hiking

Freestyle Hiking

When travelers think of Brazil, they conjure images of shopping in Sao Paulo, walking along the sandy beaches of Copacabana and the sun drenched bodies of beautiful women on the shores of Imapena; even the jungles of the Amazon come to mind, but I am fairly certain they rarely think of the Island of Florinopolis. “Floripa” (as it’s known to locals), is a southern city on an island about an hour and a half flight south a Rio. The island itself is of 200km in length, which in a car would take you about two hours to traverse from tip to tip. The beaches are filled not with Europeans and Americans looking for a cliché party experience, but actual Brazilians, pro surfers, and locals who call this place of a million parties: “Home”.

There are different scenes for different people. It’s a “get in where you fit in” situation. The northern coast is home to the beaches of Juere International. With it’s skyscraper lined sands and brightly decorated bars, this area very much resemble South Beach.  On the west coast you’ll find El Centro, he main hub city; a bustling community of commerce and urban activity. There is the East Side of the island, with its sweeping winds brushing the iconic shore; this area is the main destination for world-class surfers, as the waves are touted as some of the finest anywhere. To the South there are National Parks, great swaths of forest, for the very few inhabitants that do live there, they enjoy their privacy in a world that seems so detached from everything else, one could mistake it for another planet.

As a surfer, to come to Floripa and not go to Praia Mole is like a diver flying all the way to Australia and passing up the Great Barrier Reef.  So that’s where we went. It was quieter there, less populated, cozy. The island of 300,000 balloons to a whopping 1 million in the high season, so we were very grateful to have arrived just in time before the tourist take over.  On Praia Mole (Praia means beach in Portuguese) there are two beach bars that bump beats all day from a live DJ. The Caiparinnas flow, but the vibe is so relaxed you don’t associate the scene with a “Scene”, it’s not “sceney”, at least not at this time of year; it’s just a calm destination for local surfers and the occasional tourist. Walk north along the beach and you’ll pass dozens of tanned bodies clutching surfboards on their way to the surf beach which you can only access on foot. This beach is also rumored as the spot in which one can easily elicit sex from strangers, should that be your forte.  This is where our adventure began.  

The rocks the rock the rocks of Praia Mole. They are incredible. Grand slabs of stone, smooth and comforting to the touch, beaten soft from years of wind. Gargantuan creatures; protectors of the shore, sitting proudly against the sea’s edge. We climbed these rocks. Hoping from one skyscraper to the next, leaping between rock walls; pulling, pushing, and throwing our body weight in any which way we needed in order to get to the next boulder. Scamper, scamper, scamper, hop, hop, jump, jump, climb, up, down sideways; lock this foot in here, wedge that limb there and hoist! Up, over, jump down, go under, in between. The nooks and crannies between the rocks were both perilous and inviting as we navigated our way further down the coastline. With each new bend came an even more impossibly stunning view of Mother Nature, unbelievable sights of grand beauty, sights that humans can only behold if they venture along the path the way we had. Where we had ventured to there were no roads, no piers with Ferris wheels, no sign-posted path to a look-out landing. No, our adventure was not for the fat or the faint of heart, you had to be crazy enough to get here by foot, by rock.  It was a few hours into the climb when we realized we were well beyond the boundaries that most humans ventured, and with that realization we laughed, acknowledging that we re insane to be doing what we were doing, and should either one of us fall, twist an ankle, vanish into a slippery crevasse or tumble into the sea….we were far from civilization and we’d be in trouble. We could easily disappear out there. Newspaper headlines flashed past me: “American Tourists still missing: day 26”. They’d never find us.  We started calling this action-adventure-sport: Freestyle Hiking. Rock climbing with no gear, just our limbs, our intuition, our reflexes and our smiles. We would have gone all the way to the point had we not run out of water and besides, sunset was near, we recognized that without light, our shenanigans, which had already gotten pretty out of hand, could quickly turn into a nightmare, so we decided to call it quits.

After a warm meal and a dreamless sleep rooted in exhaustion, we woke up the following morning and decided to head south. This time we had a destination: Joaquino, the next beach over. By foot it had taken us about an hour to walk there on the main road, which was the only way to get there…unless you were two insane tourists that like to test their physical boundaries. So off we went. Hop, hop hop, scamper scamper, up and over. Our muscles were sore from the day before, our palms thrashed, our calves  on fire; and yet our bodies rejoiced in their power to continue, to fight, to preserver: we felt strong, we felt invincible. The southern coastline was ragged with shiny black lava rock. Slippery when wet. The previous day we were above the sea, this day, we were often right on the water’s edge, giving us an new element to play with: water. Wet rock does not bode well for climbing.  We learned this quickly. When we hit a patch of rock we couldn’t scale, we’d head up to higher ground. Though the rocks beat you with their impenetrable surfaces, their impossible cliff faces and dangerous angles, they are far safer than what Mother Nature created on the mountain. Nothing hurts more that the sting of the aloe vera plant, and we’d found a forest of the stuff. From a distance, the mountainside looked lush, soft and inviting, but as soon as we ascended upon it, we understood what trouble we’d gotten ourselves into. Upon closer examination, one will find that what looked lush and inviting is actually a bouquet of jagged, thorned, torture devices known as tropical plants, complete with every type of thistle, needle, barb and razor to slice and dice any predator. Every species has to protect itself, and this fauna was no exception, and the danger was no joke.  So we found ourselves literally stuck between a rock and a hard place. Going down was death, but going up wasn’t going to be much better. As we maneuvered through batches of natural razor blades, we decided that the Aloe Vera plant is so good at healing cuts because it fucks up your skin so badly it has to give you something in return to help you out; we called it “Natures Karma”. At one especially perilous juncture, as he gingerly maneuvered through the forest of evil botany, I heard my friend bellowing a symphony of “ow, ohh, ouch, FUCK!”. He stopped and yelled to the heavens “This shit is NOT FUN! This SUCKS! I’m NOT having FUN right now!”. I just laughed and kept going, what were we going to do? We couldn’t turn back, we had to just keep going forward, and this was the only way. Until we could find a spot in the roughage to dip back down to the rocks, we were feasts for Mother Nature. I tried with all my might to not think about the countless animals we were cohabitating with and the number of Google searches I’d have to do on “poisonous Brazilian plants” and “rare skin rashes”.  This was freestyle hiking. We took it all, the good, the bad and the Aloe Vera. A few times we came across some fishermen who looked at us like we were insane. Their faces were priceless. No smiles, no waves, just stares, as if to say “what the hell are you crazy people doing and how the fuck did you get out here?!? Surely you didn’t WALK!”. We just smiled and kept climbing. 

 

By the time we got to Joaquino we were dirty, punctured, bloody, tired masses that had been through one of the most intense endurance tests of our lives. We hiked up to the beach, passing tourists that looked at us as though we’d just been through war.  In a sense we had gone to war, us against nature. We had to use every part of our bodies to survive. We had to develop heightened senses in order to figure out each situation. We worked as a team and we kept each other’s spirits up when times got grim.

 

We took the road back to Praia Mole, drinking beer along the way, smiling, laughing  and recounting our day’s adventure. We stopped at an excellent sushi restaurant about a mile from home, which quickly became our new watering hole. Dirty, beaten and tired, we drank Sake and regaled our stories to the restaurant owners, as our heads got fuzzy and our limbs tired; we were completely fulfilled. Full of sushi and rice wine, we jogged home and promptly passed out. 

Freestyle hiking isn’t for everyone, but for those who want to see parts of the world that no one ever sees, for those who want to experience a side of nature devoid of trails and warning signs, for those who want to experience extreme adrenaline and push themselves to new limits physically, spiritually, mentally and emotionally, come to Florianopolis, come climb amongst the rocks, throw all caution to the wind and go for a hike.