Best Beach In Brazil

 We pulled in to the campground entrance and a dude came out with a clipboard. He stared at our front number plate then he came to the driver’s window, they do that thinking I know what I’m talking about. “You aren’t Brazilian,” Mafra said after he introduced himself. “Are you from Argentina?” No I said we’re from the United States. He looked puzzled. “Where’s that?” he said. That was a first; I’d finally found someone who’d never heard of the US. This campground promised well I told myself as I signed the form and promised to pay $17 for spot number 30 in the São (San) Francisco do Sul campground right on the beach.

We had a slow start yesterday, getting up after eight, walking Rusty a little as he likes to take his morning dump far from here he sleeps. Then we exercised and washed the dishes and littered about half excited to get on the road and half sorry to be leaving the lovely campground at Pomerode. Mario came to say goodbye. He’s lived in this town all his life and he runs the tidiest campground we’ve seen in South America. I was genuinely sorry to say goodbye.

We stopped by the bakery to share a lunch sandwich and met a woman and her family from Tallahassee who was astonished to see a Florida license plate. Her husband is Brazilian and they were back to visit his family and take a tour of southern Brazil that they had never before seen. On a more important note this was my opportunity to have a strudel so I took it.

It was a nonconformist production with a mild crumbly cheese where the apple should be but I am very fond of pistachio so the flavors worked for me and the pastry was properly buttery and flaky. Be jealous. 

The drive to the coast was supposed to take about three hours and it was pleasant meander at first. 

Then we turned off the main highway and took a smaller back road through a series of banana plantations with the characteristic plastic bags covering the fruit to encourage ripening.

And just for fun there were endless numbers of speed bumps. 

And that was when the journey got bogged down and we were stuck in stop and go traffic for an hour. 

There was a little red on the blue Google line and we expected it to have dissipated by the time we got there. 

Three ambulances passed us do whatever it was that created the back up must have been a mess. 

It uncoiled itself eventually and we drove out onto the peninsula at the end of which Layne the campground we had located in iOverlander. 

Our biggest concern was that it might be full so we figured we might have to free camp in the streets for a night if it came to that. 

We stopped at a supermarket alongside the highway to load up with perishables and while Layne was Shipping I was beset by people curious about our trip and our weird van. 

We chatted about Brazil and traveling and our strange gasoline powered van. She has a cousin living in Boston and he has an aunt living in Doral and the older guy in Orange wanted to know what our Promaster  is. 

Lovely people Brazilians and don’t believe anyone who tells you it’s dangerous here. Common sense is required wherever you travel or indeed choose to live. 

And do we drove through the beach town to the very end of the land. 

We forgot on the foreigners section so our neighbors are from Argentina, a lovely Spanish speaking couple. Everyone else is Brazilian. 

Pomerode

More rain yesterday of course and as if that weren’t enough Layne had decided this was the spot to prepare our taxes so it was a quiet morning aside from the droplets hitting the roof of the common area.

Rusty wasn’t interested in facing the elements. I was reading a book at my desk, the story of climbing Cerro Torre in Argentina. 

Once the taxes were on their way to the accountant in the States we exercised, watched most of the vans in the campground leave and planned our day under cover of museum roofs. First up lunch.

Layne had a sausage sandwich while I had a Key West style egg and cheese. 

Mine was quite cheesy. 

After sharing with Rusty who was sitting under the table we went to check out a wood museum, at least that’s what they called it. First we had to bounce some damned cobbles. 

Marceneiro in Portuguese is carpenter in English. 

It started out in 1945 as a furniture factory and the family still runs it and ships wooden items round Brazil. 

They powered the factory with a water wheel which in turn got its power from the river outside. 

The store was full of wooden household gadgets and kitchen tools for sale fresh from the factory but Layne could only shop for souvenir items small enough for van life, a spatula and a knife while I took Rusty for a walk. 

We have had a couple of sunless days but even when overcast we can make ten amps from our solar panels  to cover running our 12 volt fridge and our inverter to charge our devices. The campground has good WiFi so we can turn off our Starlink which sucks up energy when we use it, but we decided we wanted to drive a bit to get the batteries charged.  One day soon we will be able to plug in again on rainy days and use campground electricity…

We drove toward Blumenau a large city which also boasts German roots half an hour from Pomerode on a rather boring road through industrial suburbs. 

Our friends Herbert and Agnes had preceded us and warned us that Blumenau wasn’t worth visiting but the batteries got charged…

…and we indeed saw nothing of note so we turned around and scuttled back to little Pomerode. Not before stopping to pick up some supplies at a small market. I saw a sign advertising daily specials listed by day: 

I cannot get over this Portuguese habit of numbering the useful days of the week.

This town isn’t a Disney style representation of a sanitized or idealized German community. 

To my eyes Pomerode looks very much like a modern German suburb, a contemporary community similar to any how non sentimental ordinary German town might look were you to look  across the ocean.

People here are just living their lives not posing in costumes for tourists with phone cameras. 

Oh and there is one rather odd traffic moment. A street that cuts through a downtown park defies normal traffic patterns. “Drive on the English side”says the yellow sign. 

For some reason madness has infected German orderliness and this cut through the park requires you drive on the left “ in the English manner.” And people do:

It seems the stupidest thing and it confused me when I first tried to turn in to find a parking spot. Drive on the left indeed. For one solitary block. 

Layne went to check out a museum dedicated to a local artist where she met the artist’s son and had a good poke around and sent me her pictures. The sculptor’s son who now manages the museum: 

Ervin Curt Teichmann was born in Germany in the city of Kiel in 1906 and his family emigrated to Pomerode in 1914. He grew up here and got married in 1933. His profession was teaching and art was a hobby. 

In 1939 Brazil passed a law forbidding foreigners from teaching and apparently Teichmann was still viewed as an emigrant so he lost his job. And that prompted him to go full time into sculpting. He died in 1992 in Pomerode, an honored Brazilian artist. 

The sun was making an effort to break out so Rusty and I were out enjoying it together and left the museum to the intrepid and ever curious Layne.  

Layne got it into her head we needed an infusion German beer of all things so we set off to look for a beer garden. 

Much nicer under clear skies but the cobbles are always a pain in the ass. 

We found the oddest place, a pub attached to a gas station. An English speaker who had worked in Atlanta for 15 years helped us out and showed us how to work the self service beer dispenser. All this at a gas station while Rusty watched and kept watch over GANNET2. 

We had used a card system at the Gardens Hotel wine bar in Key West so we soon got the hang of it. $2:50 got you a decent pour of beer from any of several taps and they had snacks inside the convenience store. 

I’ve never done that at a gas station before.  It worked. 

With the sun scheduled to put in an appearance we are now planning to head to a beach campground we’ve found. Sea sun and sand I hope.