The Beach
Tonight the conditions were just right for the terns, the egrets and the kite surfers. There is a prevailing wind of about 25 miles per hour from the east, sweeping the beach along its length, which runs nearly a perfect east-west trajectory. Tonight the wind was a bit higher and seemed to have shifted a bit to the north, blowing large waves across the bay. The tide came higher than usual, shrinking the beach to a fraction of its normal width and creating a huge expanse of damp, slightly packed sand. Each long rolling wave brought new little creatures to the shore, attracting terns and egrets. There were the occasional clusters of young “boot camp” athletes running around orange cones they laid out in a beach course, thrashing along to a techno beat from a portable music system. They didn’t discourage the birds or anyone else because the offshore wind blew the sound away from the water. Even the egrets don’t seem to care because the peck about in the shallow tide pools without much concern for human. Also, there were always a dozen or more kite surfers in sight. A 25-30mpg wind gives a wild ride. The strongest of them could heel hard into the wind, gathering their strength to leap some ten feet into and over the waves. The stronger ones could reverse field and sail back into the wind to prepare for the next downwind run. It is the beginning of a long weekend, and the beach is as clean and wild as it will be for days.
What is the physical experience of living near the beach? (Not quite what you would think if you have been looking at travel posters from Rio de Janeiro)
There is a new world of physical experiences for those who have spent most of their mortal existence not far from the 42nd parallel in the northern hemisphere. In the so-called temperate zones of the northern hemisphere the southern and northern weather systems compete and shift the weather from cold to warm and even hot, for a short time. The winter days are short and the summer days long. Temperatures may range over the year from 95degrees for a few days in the summer to long stretches below zero in the winter.
Not so here on the equator.
Actually we are a degree or two above or below the equator but the difference is too small to notice. By the way, that is the – 0th parallel, 42 degrees away from home. Instead of large shifts in the temperature and number of hours of daylight, there about 12 hours of daylight and 12 of darkness each day, every day of the year. Some sensitive souls seem to find a few minutes difference from one solstice to another, but 12 hours of sun is pretty much guaranteed — and what a sun it is! Dawn is about 5:30 to 6:00 am and comes rapidly. By 7:00 there is a strong sun, by 8:00 it is bright and by 9:00 the sun drops on your head like a hammer. The heat is mitigated by the prevailing winds at the beach, but deeper in the city you are on your own with the noonday sun. When it is at a peak, you may remember the old British song about “Mad dogs and Englishmen,” who are the only ones odd enough to go about in midday.
Here it is the laborers and people in service positions who have to keep moving about in the sun. The middle class is air-conditioned and indoors, but the young man delivering 50-liter water bottle or tank of propane gas on a bicycle is on the street.
Being near the beach is wonderful for an early riser. I can stretch and practice yoga on the (small) balcony from 6:00 to about 7:30 when it becomes a bit too sunny in the reflected heat of the ceramic balcony tiles to be pleasant. Then a walk on the beach – so far, to the east into the rising sun in the morning and to the west, into the setting sun. The ocean air (maresia) coats your glasses and your lips with a thin film of salt. The firm sand surface is soft enough to walk on barefoot but it doesn’t hold you down like the light, fluffy sand in the travel posters. Walking is easy and comfortable. Jogging, bicycle riding, dog walking and various physical disciplines (including soccer) are native to this beach.
But on the beach you walk leaning into the wind, which is relentless at 25 or so miles an hour. The sun drops suddenly at about 6:00 pm as if someone had flipped a light switch. By then you have had your 12 hours of sun, most of it between 80 and 90 degrees. With the darkness, the temperature may drop to about 70-85 degrees… or it may not.
Physically, you are almost always comfortable in shorts and your wardrobe is,well, basic .. unless you have to go to town, or appear on the evening news where an uncomfortable black suit seems to be the style for local announcers (90 degrees and all). However, most of all, it is the suddenness and intensity of the sun and the constancy of the temperature that creates the world of physical sensations that are so different from the “temperate” climates. It is not that all this is exotic or so much more appealing, but that the body and the spirit react differently. The noonday sun drives you inside just as the northern winter does.
The sunrises and sunsets are lustrous if you catch them at about 6:00am and 5:30pm.
What is Sao Luis like?
This may sound more exotic than it is, even though I’m writing from the balcony of a small apartment near the beach in Sao Luis (Maranhao).
Like much of Sao Luis, an underserved and infrastructure-poor state capital in the far northeast of Brasil, the beach area is a bit rough-cut. This particular apartment is not quite ready for guests (unless they are really good friends), but it has the charm of my graduate school days and my first years of travel in Europe. It is refreshing to do your laundry in the shower and perform the agitate/rinse cycle by stomping on the freshly soaped clothes.
Old fashioned home laundry is generally not a problem because things dry in a hurry (some are on a drying rack next to me on the balcony), and because your normal wardrobe is a pair of shorts and sandals. Sandals can come in rubber flip-flops or leather, and you can wear a shirt if you insist, but the wardrobe is pretty basic.
Besides, we are moving later this month to an apartment with a washing machine.
When we go to the most interesting part of the city – the old historic city center — to meet with culture officials bureaucrats or for the festivals I wear long pants ….. reluctantly… and only then because (1) the city/state offices won’t let you in if you are in shorts, or (2) within the physical culture of Brazil it is appreciated if older guys with long white legs bow to public aesthetics and cover up a bit.
More at the beach
The beach at peak times is nice enough, but this is not place for soft bossa nova music lilting The Girl from Ipanema in your ear. That is Rio, and only in the travel advertisements. What the ads don’t show is that people on the beach in Rio carry only what they can carry (to avoid theft), avoid the nighttime, and have bodies pretty much like you and me. The breathtaking bodies of popular image are there in a dizzying way, but we see them mostly because the camera are not pointed at the middle-aged couple with stomachs and tiny bathing suits just next to you.
Here, in Sao Luis, the bathing suits are bigger than the Rio “dental floss” (fia dental) suits, and the diversity of bodies is pretty much representative of the human race in general.
Though this not Rio or any other travel poster beach, the early morning and evening here are remarkable in their own way.
This is not because the beach is idyllic and romantic, but because this is a public beach with all the life and diversity you expect in a busy place. There are walkers/runners/joggers from some of the more elegant apartments nearby, and there are the morning maintenance crews, fishermen, yogis, dog walkers and early morning vendors.
Like the rest of Sao Luis, it is a bit ragged.
In the morning you may see:
A dozen or more large ships waiting offshore for a berthing place at the city dock
Guys with shovels trying to move the beach back to the water to uncover the restaurant tables that are gradually sinking into the sand
A horseman exercising this mount along the beach, or perhaps he is just commuting.
A few children already in the water
Eco-friendly walkers picking up the trash washed on the beach (we are averaging about three bags a day). Others notice this peculiarity and once someone brought us her some trash our bag. She handed the plastic bottle to us and remarked that “when people hurt the environment like this, they hurt themselves.”
Philosophers and artists and poets are at home in Sao Luis, and sometimes they are out in the morning … and sometimes picking up plastic bottles.
On the other hand, a more practical philosopher stopped by to point out that “You ought to wear gloves.”
A local cultural note: the most common beach trash (except from endless coconuts left by the consumers of “coconut water”), are the plastic bags that vendors use to sel shrimp and nuts, little plastic cups, water bottles, and little bottle of bleach. The last takes a bit of explanation: my fashion advisor explains that Brazilian women use the bleach to lighten the hair on their bodies and legs. You do it at the beach, of course, so you can wash it off in the surf. You wear little rubber gloves while you are bleaching and soaping, and these sometimes join the beach detritus.
And, of course, there are various creatures that wash up on the beach and try to find their way back.
Mid-day and peak times are a little less appealing (see “Dia dos Criancas” photo above). There are crowds and usual beach behavior, of course. And not all of us love the beach life. Three hours at the beach is a long day, or two days, it seems. The reason it seems so long is that you cannot read or converse or sleep. There is a constant trail of vendors selling sunglasses, nuts, roasted cheese, beach towels, shrimp, huge bags of crabs, and curiosities of all sorts (not to mention the caricaturists and artists with jewelry and paintings).
So much for reading and dozing in the sun.
This complex social and economic system is compounded by the fact the beach is lined with restaurants. Each has tables and umbrellas where you can sit and graze your way through greater and lesser meals, the water from green coconuts (or a whole coconut, for that matter), drinks of all sorts, and even gargantuan plates of fish.
The beaches are democratic and open to everyone, but an umbrella comes at the price of incessant commercial attention. Seasoned Brazilian beach-goers seem to welcome this as part of the buffet of being on the sand – conversations must be limited to the time between vendors and waiters, so it is best if you have an attention deficit disorder.
The mornings and evening are non-commercial and these are the times when the older beach people and joggers are out. One morning we even saw and heard a large cohort of coast guard or firefighters running in cadence and shouting.
For someone who did not grow up near the sea, the moods of the beach are a revelation. There are high tides in the morning and evening. The beach is long and flat so the water comes up high on shore. This creates an interesting beach. It is generally moist and washing by the surf all day — except for the dunes along the roadside where the restaurants are. This means that the sand is somewhat more packed and solid so you can comfortably ride bicycles, vendors can push carts, you can exercise your all-terrain-vehicle … or your horse. Walkers and joggers have a forgiving surface without sinking into sand. For extra resistance they walk in the water and do a sort of water-aerobic walking/jogging.
It has moods by time of day as well. In the morning the local walkers and joggers are out in large numbers. Families start to appear by early mid-morning, and the beach cleaners are usually finished by then. The most energetic of them have wheelbarrows and shovels and try to take the loose sand from the restaurants (where some of the tables are gradually submerging) and move part of the dunes back to the beach. This goes on every morning. When the winds are high some of the tables are unusable because the sand is too deep for a chair. It has a slightly “Planet of the Apes” feel where nature takes over from the annoying and invasive human species.
The one thing nature cannot do is easily dispose of the plastic waste that people leave on the beach – the hired beachcombers do that in front of each restaurant, and there is a crew that cleans the rest of the beach periodically.
Recently there have been other moods. When there is a firm beach and a section of dry sand, the fine sand drifts over the packed surface in waves and streams, skimming along the beach.
Even more beautiful are the small pools that gather during the higher tide washes but stay as little ponds. They are adored by children who use them as little play pools. They are adored by photographers by early morning and late afternoon light because they catch the light and create the effect of acres of small lakes reflecting the colors of sunrise and sunset.
This creation of shallow tide pools echoes in miniature the immense dunes of Lencois to the north where hundreds acres of dune landscape are preserved in a series of parks. In Lencois, rainwater fills hundreds of small lakes that can be used for swimming. The dunes are ideal for diving, rolling down the incline into the water (sliding with your body), or using to “write” with your feet a philosophical or trivia message (“UWM,” has appeared, but then so has “I am confused.” These messages were done, I think, by different groups).
The notion of “popular” beach is important in Brazil. It means both “public” and “for the people.” The wealthier have their own properties and zones of less accessible beaches, but the popular beaches are democratic and diverse. In Sao Luis they don’t seem as risky as those in Rio often are, with petty criminals and young people coming to the beach to snatch up whatever is left loose. People in Sao Luis do not carry much to the beach either, but during the daylight hours the beach is active, democratic, and safe. The elite are not here, for the most part. But the restaurants are moderate to a bit more expensive, several have live music, and a few are famous for the musical talent they have on weekends. Further down the beach, they say, is Sao Luis’ most famous “roots reggae” bar, which they say is for a “vibrant young crowd.” We haven’t been there yet, and may wait until we have some “vibrant young” guests visiting us.
By the way, a last comment on the bossa nova mystique of the Brazilian beach. In nearly three weeks I have not heard the One Note Samba or Girl from Ipanema once – not once. I have heard a Pink Floyd cover band with a dismal version of “Another Brick in the Wall,” Abba and the BG’s, popular songs that all sound pretty much alike, and occasional rock/folk groups. There have been nights of major talent, but that is at the end of the beach where there is a small amphitheater and stage.
When you visit here, bring your own sound track. And while you are at it, bring plenty of sunscreen, a silly beach hat (the safari-type with a neck cover is ideal for northern skin), and perhaps your surf board or kite-surfing rig (see below).
