Relaxing with friends (Praia Guacá)

Its been a while since we last saw our friends Venera and Charles, who lives in São Paulo in Brazil. So how did we become friends? Well, we still love meeting both locals and other travelers on our way through South America, and maybe you remember our hike to Mount Tronador in Argentina (if not check out this post “The hike to Mont Tronador”)? So at the Otto Meiling Refugio we meet Verena and Charles, who happened to sit down at the same table. Quickly we started talking, and they told us they were from Brazil living in São Paulo, and we were more than welcome to come and visit, if we ever make it all the way to Brazil. The next day Verena and Charles left early to go on a glacier walk, and we returned with our friends to celebrate New Years on Camping Ser. During our travel we have kept contact on WhatsApp with Verena and Charles, and “YES!” we made it to Brazil.

Meet Verena and Charles

It turned out that Verena and Charles were going to their beach house in the weekend in Praia Guacá 200 km northeast of São Paulo, and they invited us to spend the weekend with them. So instead of just driving the 300 km to São Paulo we had to drive 500 km to reach Praia Guacà. So I started early, while Esben was still sleeping in the back.

We did good on the bigger road keeping the speedometer around 80 km/h, but the last 120 km was slow going. We drove a long the beach, where the road was winding and going through several towns with tons of speed bumps and a speed limit of 30-40km/h. Beautiful, and we finally made it just before sunset.

Charles were surfing on his paddleboard

Charles and Verena rent out the beach house on Airbnb, but this weekend nobody had rented it – what a luck  . The beach house has 16 beds, so what a perfect place for a big family weekend (in my family we have one family weekend per year). Big seating area inside and outside. Enjoying having lunch together with our friends.

Going for a hike together! To find the small trails you really need to go with someone, who knows where it is. In the second try Venera and Charles found the right trail

Butterflies – a real challenge for Esben

Made it to this beautiful viewpoint on the cliffs – GO DENMARK! It was really windy this day…

After the walk we relaxed and enjoyed the local drink “Caipirinha”. Traditionally it is made with cachaca, lime and sugar, but this edition is made from passionfruit, cachaca and sugar. Love it

Another walk on the beach, which we will never get tired off – love it , maybe because it reminds me so much about home… expect that the climate here is a lot warmer

The weekend passed by very quickly, and Verena and Charles left Sunday afternoon, and we could stay in the beach house for the next few days. This was just amazing, and thank you so much, Charles and Verena. We got a chance to update our blog, exercise and watch a movie while eating popcorn. One morning a went for a run on the beach… still keeping my snake average at 1 snake per week .

We had some amazing days at the beach house. Verena also helped us book scuba diving at Laje de Santos Marine Park. This meant, that we would have to back track a long the winding beach road to Santos. We don’t like backtracking, but Verena and Charles had told us about this place, that makes 30 cm long pastels (a thin squared dough stuffed with whatever you like).

What’s not to like? We got one with beef and one with Nutella and coconut

First we had trouble booking the scuba diving. Esben had written 10 e-mails to 10 different scuba diving companies, and we had also tried contact on WhatsApp, but we didn’t get a single reply! Thanks to Verena making several calls, she was finally able to book the scuba diving. Since we don’t speak Portuguese, we were not able to make the calls ourselves. It is just so frustrating, when we spend time on arranging tours, and nothing happens. For us this is very typical for Brazil, which also makes it more difficult for travelers like us, to experience Brazil and all its beauty. Then came our second problem. While we were in the beach house the truckers had begone their strike. So what does it have to do with us? Well almost everything in Brazil are transported with trucks including gasoline. Before leaving the beach house we went to three different gas stations, before we found one, that was not “out of gas”.

So we made it to Santos…

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