In the rainforest’s shadow, Brazilian surf capital blossoms
SAO SEBASTIAO, Brazil — As most of Brazil tuned in to watch two local clubs battle for the continent's soccer championship last month, 14-yearold Luana Reis was far from a television set.
She was surfing bluegreen waves with a soaring rainforest backdrop, competing with dozens of other teens in the yearly municipal tournament at one of the country's premier surf beaches, Maresias.
She deployed snaps, cutbacks and aerials to win the under-18 women's title and then emerged from the water sitting atop the shoulders of four friends, mimicking her idol, Gabriel Medina — a world champion raised at Maresias who has helped make Brazil's surfers as admired as its soccer stars worldwide.
Next year, Reis said, she aims to contend for the national under-18 women's championship.
“Everyone here dreams of being the next great surfer from Brazil,” Reis told The Associated Press. “There's a lot of competition, especially here in Maresias. Doing it here is hard.”
The beach in the town of Sao Sebastiao is ground zero for surfing in a nation that unleashed “the Brazilian Storm” on the world — a generation of professional surfers who have won five of the past seven men's world championships.
Many came into their own along a 120-mile stretch of shoreline in Sao Paulo state. Reis' parents moved here largely so she could train every day.
Medina, 28, has led that crusade, winning three world championships – a feat accomplished by only four others since the modern surfing league began in 1983.
At one moment in this year's championship heat in San Clemente, California, Medina snagged a small, clean peak and veered his board to the left as he popped to his feet. He watched patiently as the wave walled up, then completed a few turns while casually throwing in a few air reverses along the way.
He “turns a mediocre wave into something of substance,” said television commentator Mick Fanning, himself a threetime champion. “That first air was incredible.”
When the buzzer sounded, sealing Medina's victory, runner-up Filipe Toledo paddled over to offer a congratulatory hug. The two grew up surfing the same waves, with Toledo's home just up the coast, in Ubatuba. Third place went to another Brazilian, 2019 world champ and gold medallist in the Tokyo Olympics, Italo Ferreira.
Sao Paulo state's string of North Shore beaches were relatively unknown before Medina put Maresias on the professional surfing map with his first world title in 2014, and he lifted the trophy again in 2018.
Speaking to the AP by phone, Medina said Maresias' simple lifestyle is an asset for surfers.
"We don't have any tall buildings here. It is just houses, beaches and a lot of nature,” Medina said. “I travel all over the world, but I still value the place where I live, where I came from. I feel complete here. This place gives me peace and ease to do everything I'm able to do.”
The surf towns dotting the coastline are inside the Serra do Mar park, which the state says is Brazil's largest continuous protected area of Atlantic Forest. It acts as a barrier to the urban sprawl of metropolitan Sao Paulo. Thick forest blankets rugged mountains and valleys, where waterfall pools drain into streams that wind through mangroves before emptying into an emerald sea.
The area's waves went virtually unridden until construction in the 1970s of a coastal highway, which surfing trailblazers followed to explore.
“Back in the 1980s, there were just a few of us; this was an isolated region of the coast,” said 58-year-old Adriano Garcia, a fisherman born in Sao Sebastiao who has surfed for four decades. "The championships started, surfers from here became dominant and — boom!”