The hitchhiker and I

Today I did something I had never done before: I picked up my first hitchhiker. We were driving from Barra da Lagoa to Armação, in Santa Catarina Island, and as the end of the afternoon was coming we saw a guy by the road with his thumb up. I stopped the car and Maiju got out to ask him where he was going and soon my first ever hitchhiker was inside the car.

Meet Gabriel. Gabriel is 17 years old, just finished school and will now do a “cursinho”. He was born in Brasília but now lives in Santa Catarina.

-         Gabriel, do you like it here?

-          Yeah man, I do! Life is really peaceful, there is no stress and the beach is beautiful.

-          Gabriel, where are you going?

-          I´m going to a party, man, in the next town. It starts in two hours so I thought of going early because of the traffic.

So, Gabriel is a local. He is a hippie-looking local, dressed in hemp clothes and with the token longish hair that may one day grow into dreadlocks. I´m not sure we have much in common, my first hitchhiker and I…

He asks me why I have a car, I explain I am renting it, and he gives me that look of condemnation for polluting the environment (though he is happily sitting on the back seat). When I tell him that we came to this town to see the famous beach he tells me that I should also have visited this very cool market – the hemp market – where I could buy lots of cool stuff (I swear I saw him grinning…). He told me also that the place where I was staying, Armação, was where many years ago fishermen would set sail to go kill whales, “poor animals”. I agreed it was a barbaric activity.

During that shared hour of my life and Gabriel´s we must not have moved more than five kilometers. Cars didn’t move at all, it was like someone has pushed the Pause button on the whole traffic jam. Night came and suddenly Gabriel tells us that he needs to leave us and he´ll walk from there on. He gives us the Buddhist salute, wishes me peace and walks out of the motionless car.

I´m sure Gabriel reached the party on time and I´m sure I spent two more hours in that traffic jam. I´m not so sure I will pick up another hitchhiker anytime soon.