House at the End of the World!

Before I left Floripa, I had one more pretty spectacular solo ocean adventure, but this one was on the shore…

My destination in the distance on the right

In my time of less surfing, I decided I should pay some attention to the beach’s other delights, which I have overlooked in my single-minded obsession with catching waves. So the other day I headed to Praia Mole on a sparkling clear, and wildly windy day with the objective of clamoring across the impressive rock formations that lined the south end of the beach.

Way in the distance, I could see a giant monolith of stone, almost flush with the water, sticking out into a wild white-capped ocean. It seemed that if I was clever about my route, I could make my way along the boulders lining the steep shore all the way out to

Making my way across rocks

the spot. I decided this was the perfect destination for my afternoon rock climbing mini-adventure, so I spent the next couple hours scampered up scattered obelisks of stone, leaping across little crevasses, and creeping along ledges along the edge of crashing waves and a sparkling blue ocean, while my inner monkey giggled with glee.

But then something really cool happened!

The little house in the distance

Near to the giant rock in the distance, to which I was heading, there was a tiny little cottage and boat house. Their remote location, at the end of a rocky headland, surrounded by scrub covered hills, led me to assume that they were abandoned, or used in the high season to ferry tourists to remote beaches. But as I got closer, I noticed a person running up the hill to the neat little cottage, and then going in and out of it, in a way that seemed like he lived there. I also noticed that the cottage was nicely painted, and looked much more like a home than an abandoned fishing shack. Assuming that a person who lives in a house so far from civilization would want to be left alone, I tried to stay out of sight. I imagined I must have looked pretty nuts to this hermetic inhabitant, a lanky brown Gollum creeping and loping across boulders on an endless beach all the way to his house. But in just a few moments, I saw a smiling face sticking out of the foliage above me, waving at me to come up and visit the house. So I climbed up the hill and discovered what was pretty much the house of my dreams, as well as the amazing fisherman who lives there. The house sat on a perfect bluff overlooking the ocean, with a beautiful outdoor kitchen, surrounded by plants, and replete with a friendly yellow dog. My new

The indoor kitchen

friend proudly showed me his well-stocked kitchen and his “dining room table” which was a gorgeous slab of rock overlooking the ocean. He invited me to come back for lunch on another day and then showed me the safest path for reaching the headland.

The outdoor kitchen

So I went off again, leaping and crawling across rocks, paying extra attention to the little piles of stones, the placements of slabs of wood, which made the path easier, imagining that they may have been placed by my new friend, and the other intrepid fishermen who love being out on these rocks as much as I do. I finally reached the headland, and stood out on the end of it, full of the wild energy of the ocean that surrounded me on three sides, and feeling like an extremely blessed surf adventurer.