Sunset In Santos

One of the real advantages to retirement is that I am able to travel whenever I want to instead of just during the summer, Christmas and Spring Break. My wife is still working and part of her job with Halifax Regional School Board is to travel to distant countries to promote Nova Scotia as an educational destination for international students. In September, she was asked to travel to Brazil, and would be visiting cities all over the country, but was to spend five days in Sao Paulo. This was too good an opportunity to pass up. She had her own Hotel room, and there was no extra cost for another person, so I booked a cheap flight to Sao Paulo to see what I could in five days.

Most of my time was spent exploring Sao Paulo, which is an amazing city, but I did get a chance to follow her off on a short side rip to Santos, a city about 80 km outside Sao Paulo. She was in meetings all day and evening, so I had lots of time to explore this interesting city. Santos is actually an island, that has become permanently attached to the mainland. One side of island is a huge container port – I am told the biggest in Brazil, and there was a steady stream of container ships coming in and out of the port, but the other side of the island is a beautiful resort and retirement area with a beautiful beach and over four kilometres of hotels and apartments.

Although I did manage to tag along on a short tour of the rest of the city, the majority of my time was spent wandering the beach, and the areas around the beach. I arrived at about 10:00 am, and had to entertain myself until about 9:00 p.m., so I got to see a lot of this area. There are four kilometres of beach, and the beach is wide and flat. This was the biggest beach I have ever walked on. The distance from the water to the roads was so wide that a group of local youth, set up a full sized soccer game in the middle of the beach, and walking above or below them didn't even bring you close to the game. The beach is an excellent place to walk, and the and is hard and flat, so you are able to walk comfortably all over the beach. In addition, there were bright floodlights spaced along the length of the beach, illuminating the evening soccer game and making it an attractive walk evening after dark.

Although the temperature was around 28 C when I was there, it was winter in Brazil, so the beach was not crowded. The people I shared the beach with were mostly locals I'd say, and primarily walking, running or exercising. There were very few sunbathers are swimmers, even it the hottest part of the afternoon. This was still Brazil however, and the beachwear was definitely the speedo or bikini. Now remember, Santos is a retirement destination, so I was surprised to find that it mattered not the size, shape or age of the individuals, the style remained bikini or speedo.

Santos is built around a series of seven canals that run completely across the island. The majority of the city is built on muddy sandy land, and the many of the older buildings were not built with the best foundations, and many have developed substantial tilts over the years. The canals now attempt to drain the land making it much more stable and the modern buildings are much more stable. It was interesting to look back at these tall apartment building leaning into each other. I'm not sure I'd want to be living in one of the older buildings.

Between the beach and the street, Santos maintains a beautiful park-like walking and biking area. There is a nice sidewalk along the street, but there is also a meandering network of walkways gardens and kiosks between the beach and the street. These walkways were well maintained and extremely clean. I even watched maintenance people dusting off the palm trees. There were gardens, fountains and monuments spaced along this area, with lots of benches and seats. There were people walking and running all day and evening along the beach and the walkways. There was also a bike path most of the way along the beach. This was a serious hazard. Although the walkways crossed the bike path in many places, and signs warned bike riders to yield to pedestrians, they were universally ignored, and you had to be almost as careful crossing the bike path as you did crossing the road. The bike riders refused to even slow down for you.

The highlight of my visit to Santos came as I returned to the beach following a meal at one of Brazil's wonderful Barbecue restaurants. As I wandered the beach for the third time, the sun started going down over the hills at one end of the beach. My digital camera came out and I took close to twenty shots of the sun setting. By then most people had left the beach, and although I was warned to be careful walking after dark, the wonderful sunset was worth it. By then, having spent close to 12 hours walking around Santos, I was tired, so I bought a couple of the delicious Brazilian oranges, and a can of mystery soda (I have no idea what it was made of, but it was cold and refreshing), and spent my final hour in Santos relaxing on a bench watching the sky darken and the people walking and running by.

Thoughts on Retirement

Well, school went back in yesterday without me for the first time in 30 years. I retired on July 27th, but of course I was off every summer, so I didn't really consider this "Retired" yet until everyone else was in there planning and working and the students were back behind their desks. Now I'm starting to actually feel retired.

I hear that many people who retire find it hard to adapt to not working. Apparently close to 80% of males who retire end up doing something else, not because they have to but because they just couldn't get used to "not working". It is still early, but I do not anticipate having this problem. I think two things will help me deal with retirement.

The first thing is that I planned my retirement for the last five years. When I got the forms from my employer stating that I was able to retire in June (I could have actually retired in January, but wanted to finish the year), I looked into the financial implications, attended the retirement seminars, and made a decision to retire this year. The result was that I had five years to prepare and plan. I put some additional funds into RRSPs, I made arrangements to have cars paid off, and loans finished, and I started thinking about all the things I had been putting off because there was never time to do it. Each year I saw retirement as one year closer. The interesting thing was that I was not one of those downtrodden, tired employees who saw retirement as a way out of a job that was no longer enjoyable. I loved what I did. I spent 30 years working in the field of education, teaching elementary children and as an elementary school administrator. When I retired I was principal of a little elementary school with 200 students. On the last day of school in June this year, I went to work with a smile and I left just as happy. There were lots of challanges over 30 years, but for most of those almost 5000 days, I loved my job. I had planned to retire, and what better way to finish up a career. I was happy with everything I had done, and although I'll miss some of the great staff I got to work with and will most certainly miss all the students, but I'm now ready to move on and get caught up on all the things I have put on hold or haven't been able to get to because I was too busy.

The other thing that I feel made retiring easier was that I had two excellent role models. My Grandfater retired early for his generation. I don't know the whole story, but my remembrances of his never involve him actually going to work. He often did things to make a bit of money, but generally he was always retired. He lived to be almost 90, and always seemed to enjoy life so much. He travelled all over the world, especially through Europe and Australia, and had so many interesting hobbies. They never had a lot of money, but they always found enough to do what that felt was important. My father was much the same. He ran his own business, building it from a small home based operation to a major player in the field, and he says that when he got big enough "To be a problem for the big companies", they offered him more than he was worth, and he has been laughing ever since, enjoying "Spending our Inheritance". He retired before he was sixty, and now almost 80, like his father, has travelled the world, and always finds something to keep himself busy.

We shall see how I make out . . . . . I have lots of plans, and I will post some of them and follow up on how it goes. It has only been three days so far . . .