While driving in a Blablacar from Sao Paulo we were talking to Míša and she said we are crazy to spend a night at a gas station in Brazil’s most dangerous city of 2015 and offered us to stay at her friend’s house.

We arrived to Caraguatuba around 10pm and were greeted by Rafael at his house. First things first, we opened Becherovka, which made it easier for Míša and Rafael to convince us about staying longer, to go to the best skim boarding beach in the world. We had only a little idea of what it is from Míša’s photos but were eager to see more.

Best skimboarding beach in the world

So it was decided, the next day we woke up early and drove to the beach. We stopped on another beach, where a local pimp gave us a long talk about his life on the beach. Living in a tent, catching fish that he puts on the grill with some green bananas, interesting. The beach for skim surfing was beautiful with no tourists and cool locals. Míša and Rafael showed us what actually skim boarding is (check the pictures). Kuba tried it too and it basically comes down to waiting for the right wave, then running, throwing the board on wet sand so you would just slide onto the side wave and ride like 10m. For lunch, we had our first Brazilian classic marmitex meal - rice, beans, farofa (corn flour fried in butter) and meat, it was amazing and cheap! And for dessert, we bought very good natural ice cream (coco and acerola) for 1R$!

On the way back to Rafael’s house, we stopped at their friends’ house, a lovely family who invited us to join them for the evening to have some food and caipirinas (it was the best one we had and the head of the house who used to be a bartender taught us how to make one). It was an amazing evening, thank you so much Nascimentos!

Not so successful hitching

On the next day we went to have a great breakfast in omnipresent lanchonetes, said goodbye to Míša and Rafael and started hitchhiking again to Ivan’s place in Angra Dos Reis. It was raining and there was a huge traffic jam which we thought would be helpful. As it turned out, not at all, Brazilians probably just don’t want to get their cars wet so we found our first car around 6pm. A young couple going to holidays, they were speaking great English and the guy was doing YouTube videos for a living!

They left us at a gas station some 30km further because there our ways parted, but we did not want to give up so easily so we carried on hitching in the rain and the dark. Put of boredom, we started to count the cars. 50… 100… 250th idiot.… We were hopeless. Drenched. 400th car and we agreed we’d give up on the 500th car. Lucky were we in the end because car n’534 stopped just when we were about to give up and told us that he can take us some 20 more kilometers to a better, safer gas station with buses going to Angra. This was probably the most dangerous ride so far, Kuba called it the ride to hell. In heavy rain and small car with bad wipers and foggy windscreen, open windows with no way to close them.. This made the driver occupied with wiping fog off the window with one hand and driving with the other. Our faces were splashed with rain and it was good to have raincoats even in the car.

We made it safe!! Around 11, we already squatted at the gas station, bought coffee and asked for wifi password. Decided not to sleep to restart hitching around 5am because that’s when trucks start their journey. It was no fun to be stuck there the whole night watching drunk people arriving in cars, get out, fall down, buy more booze and drive back to the party. We made a sign “Podemos pegar um passeio” (aka can you take us on a trip) and at 4:30 we were on our way to hitchhike again!