Santos - the beach

The beach at Santos is really quite amazing. Here is a statue for the first European explorer.

The beach is at least 100 yards wide and about 4 miles long. The sand is a very fine white sand.

There are a few palm trees which I suspect were planted. They are located up near the park that runs along the main road. The beach was very clean.

Off in the distance I could see many cargo ships anchored waiting for their turn in the port.

All the housing is built just on the other side of the main road. On the summer weekends the city about doubles in size. Many Paulistas love to leave the big city and go to the beach.

If you look real close you will see people in red shirts. They were teaching kids how to surf. The waves were small and not very impressive.

The beach was not very busy since it is still winter here and a weekday. Although it was about 80 degrees and a beautiful day.

There are clubs that you can join and they go out and stake out some territory and provide chairs, umbrellas and carts that sell food.

I didn't take off my shoes to dip my toe in the ocean. I figured a shoe in the ocean would be good enough. I didn't want to have to deal with sandy feet.

There were fountains in the park area all along the way. This one has a surfer with water splashing up around him.

This statue honors the Brazilian who introduced surfing to Brazil. Now that is a long board.

This city is very bike friendly. This bike trail runs the length of the beach and there were lots of people using it. All through the city there were bike paths. I think I would be tempted to come back and rent a bike and go riding up and down the beaches.

When Mike was on his mission he worked in Santos a couple of times. One time he lived on the 17th floor in an apartment that overlooked the beach. It was memorable because it was leaning. While driving down the road he spotted the building and I quickly snapped a picture out the car window. He was surprised to see the building still standing after 40 plus years. Maybe they went in and shored up the foundation.  The lean is hard to see in this picture but believe me, it was doing some leaning.

The drive home was interesting since the road climbs up about 2,000 feet in elevation and we had lots of trucks leaving the port to keep us company. It was pretty slow going until we topped out and then it opened up. It took us about one hour to get to Santos and about two hours to get home. But the drive was beautiful and the whole experience was totally worth it.