Garopaba

I left Praia do Rosa in the early afternoon and headed back towards Garopaba. It turned out to be a proper town, compared to the cluster of buildings of Rosa, with residential homes, stores, plenty of internet cafes, a town square with a park and a nice beachfront with places to eat and drink. It reminded me of a Marin or Napa county town, except with a beach.

I checked the surf and saw a few surfers catching waist high waves. It looked very fun and inviting compared to the larger surf going on 10 km south at Rosa at the time. At an Internet cafe I was pleased to find that the net speed was plenty fast. In fact I was able to have a perfectly clear Skype call with Mie for half an hour. The internet cafe in Praia do Rosa had an excruciatingly slow connection.

Searching the web for places to rent, I came across a few websites for local realtors. Since one was just down the road from the cafe I decided to drop in. Despite the language barrier, I was able to convey my requirements to the employees: an apartment through April 30, and I must have high speed internet. Eventually the owner took me up to see Senhor Siega, an octogenarian who owned not only a house with an apartment for rent, but the town's Internet Service Provider which was located at the bottom floor of the house.

The house was located up a hill on the northern side of town, with relatively few other houses around and cow pastures on two sides. We found Siega in his Bocce court, a narrow rectangular building behind the house where he and his friends gather every afternoon for rousing games of Bocce Ball on his packed sand pitch. Sometime soon I'll have to go in and take some photos of it. Senhor Siega spoke a little english, from his days of living in Queens. He showed me around the place. There were some friends of his staying in the apartment but we did a quick walk through. I thought it was a great place. Two bedrooms, furnished, a view over the town and bay. There was even a pool.

The price was R$500 a month (about US$200 currently) for March and April, since they were off-season, autumn here in the southern hemisphere. He also said the price would include high speed internet access, which he would have installed. I asked him when I could move in, when it would be vacated. He said "whenever, today", as he could just move his friends elsewhere. I told him I would go back to Florianopolis and think about it.

There was an Avis office right next door to the realtor, so I checked if I could drop the rental car off there in Garopaba instead of back at the airport in Floripa. They said it would be only an extra R$75 or so.

Heading out of town, I picked up two more hitchhikers. Two guys from Chile who had been traveling around southern Brazil for three weeks, on break from university. One of them spoke a little english, neither spoke Portuguese. They happened to be going to Florianopolis too, so we rode all the way back together, laughing at the quivering steering wheel and listening to all my Spanish language mp3s (Kinky and Manu Chao mostly).

After getting back to the hostel, I got a call from Michael Reyes, a guy I had met in the Botafogo hostel in Rio de Janeiro. He had taken a bus down to Florianopolis the same day I flew down and was checking in to the same hostel. I told him I was seriously considering getting this apartment down in Garopaba and invited him to spend some time there before he went on to Uruguay.

The next morning, Tuesday Feb 15, I made the call down to the realtor and asked if I could move in that day. It was a bit more difficult communicating over the phone, but it seemed like they understood what I was saying and agreed, so Mike and I packed up and drove back down, stopping only at a bookstore to get a Portuguese-Inglis dicionario.

On arrival, the realtor, Mike and I headed back up the hill to the house to talk to Senhor Siega. He told us that we could move in in a few hours, he just needed time to prepare the place. In the meantime he drove us down the hill to the only cappuccino shop in town, owned by one of his sons. He brought me to an office upstairs where I had a video chat with his other son who lives in New York City. I suppose this was mostly because his son spoke much better english and that way we could make sure there were no misunderstandings.

Mike and I went down to the beach to relax for a few hours before heading back up and checking in. As we were bringing our stuff up, we ran into the lady who was staying in the apartment adjacent to ours. I smiled and said "oi" but she just gave me the stink-eye. Apparently she was none too happy that her friends had to move out for us. Later Mike said he got the same treatment. I hoped she'd move out soon.

We decided to head out and stock up on groceries while I still had the car. I ended up spending R$450, about half of that on wine. It was necessary to look up a lot of words in my Portuguese dictionary, I'm really glad I had thought to buy that before leaving Floripa as I doubted they had a decent bookstore here in Garopaba! I only wish I had thought to buy one before leaving the States because this one is designed for the Portuguese speaker to deal with english, not the other way around. Still, using the dictionary I was able to avoid various animal products I don't like to consume. Unfortunately I ended up with mostly cheese and pasta meals, I'm going to miss San Francisco taqueria's and Mie's home cooking.

That evening Mike and I started in on what would become our most consistent nightly habit: watching an episode or three of the Six Feet Under DVDs I copied to my mac's external harddrive before leaving SF. The apartment still lacked some essentials, like Internet and a wine opener, but it was already starting to feel like home.