Wednesday, March 8, 2006

Twenty meters off the coast, the warm water foamed and spat as the waves crashed against us. The half-watermelon-shaped moon shown through the thin layers of dispersed clouds; the cove where we swam was encircled with rocks and forest; a 15 meter beach bunkered the shore. Northward, across the water, lights shown, marking the line of houses along the coast.

Welcome to Armação Beach, where 16 of us from the greater Florianópolis spent late Wednesday evening and early Thursday morning. Two, full cars met in front of the bus terminal downtown – Dave, Daniel, Leandro, Deborah and I packed into Daisy’s car, while Flávia, Aline, Naíra and Lucas comfortably road with Luiza. The twenty-minute ride went fast and we met another carload at a supermarket near the beach.

Another twenty minutes was clocked as we meandered the paved, lightly lit trail - under, over and around - arriving at our spot. The next task was finding wood to accompany our bottle of Gel Alcohol and box of matches. We felt lucky to find a sufficient amount of broken boards and kindling as it seemed the shore had been regularly combed for firewood.

Somehow I got put in charge of the fire – me and my ZERO experience with beach fires; but that’s all right, with Flávia’s help we got a solid fire started that lasted the entire night. (Sorry if that bench-like board we burnt was yours.)

The soft sand and crashing waves were accompanied by Daniel’s guitar skills, Brazilian freeze-tag, the Weave game in the water, campfire jokes and stories, and stargazing.


It was after one in the morning when we packed up camp and headed out.

Seriously, it was a gorgeous place and just a fun time. Good memories.

As Daisy's full car was about to cross the bridge into São José, an uncommon traffic stop forced us to pull over. After a quick chat with the officer, Daisy, Daniel, Lucas and I were off to drop Lucas off at his house, as we then returned to the bridge, picked up David and Leandro, and Daisy took the rest of us home. Poor Daisy, she was pretty shaken up.

Before the beach, Dave and I got plenty of work done at the SRE office – helping Elder and Sister Cossio with more training, making follow-up phone calls, and planning our trip to Itajaí this weekend.