Playing beach soccer in Brazil
It took me a few days but I finally had a chance to play beach soccer in Brazil.
I've mentioned before how this northeast city of Natal is a beach town, with a soft sand coast that stretches for at least a couple miles. We've been down there nearly everyday...
Above the beach the scene could be anywhere in the world - a street lined with restaurants, bars, souvenir shops and hotels. The nights are lively, and at least this week, the places have also filled up with tourists to watch the 11, 1, or 4:00 pm World Cup games.
Boulders line the top of the beach, though every couple hundred feet you find stairs or ropes to guide you down via sandbags to access the beach.
The beach itself is lined from one end to the other with different colored tents, each operated by different vendors who urge - and charge - to use their space and chairs. They also serve drinks and food, but there are a ton of street vendors who roll their stands through the sand and make themselves available to anyone. The most common seems to be crepe vendors, but you can also find skewers, fruits, corn, coconuts, liquor, or jerseys, trinkets, blankets, or...really it seems like an assembly line of vendors selling everything.
On one end is a huge sand dune, which, of course, you can explore by renting a four-wheel buggy, but can't do it on your own as the area is controlled by the military - from which they test missiles and explosives. Nearby is a futevolei court - these guys are good!
Kids can be seen going around the end, over the coral / rocks with fishing poles in hands. Small boats seem to come in more often then we've seen them go out, and are wheeled off the water by the old school rolling logs.
Wandering a few blocks back we found a clay / dirt type soccer field, supposedly used by one of Botofogo's academies.
The water is comfortable, rock free, and for the most part stays about 100 feet away from the tents, providing a nice wide wet sand surface for pick up soccer games to break open. And this week, we've seen quite a few games.
After watching Italy play Costa Rica at a bar up on the strip, we walked down, grabbed a tent, ordered beers, and began a search to join a game. It took maybe a minute.
A few Brazilian kids had started a game and were needing one more - and the 10-year old future Neymar yelled over and asked if I wanted to play. I joined in the 5-5 game, which grew to 6-6 with different beach goers jumping in to replace tired legs. Besides the four kids - two of which clearly play everyday and have no fear embarrassing adults, Curtis jumped in and our mix of adults included two Mexicans, an Australian, a guy from Ghana, a couple of Italians, and two other Brazilians guys.
The goals were coconuts one end and flip flops on the other side. The ball looks normal but is much lighter. The sand is wet but also hard. I scored one goal, back-heeling a pass from one of the little kids. Even they were impressed.
After 40 minutes I had to surrender to my tightened up left calf, my hurting feet, and the quickly developed blisters. That and how tired I was. But the beer tasted better and the water was even more refreshing after having played beach soccer in Brazil.
I then turned photographer and captured some unfiltered photos of another game as the sun was going down. That was our last day in Natal. On Saturday we leave for Manaus.
