Even before the arrival of winter, this June 21st, Santa Catarina registered intense cold in recent weeks, with negative temperatures, especially in the mountains. That’s where Fernando Moniz lives, who, at age 70, takes advantage of the rare days of snow to practice snowboarding, snow surfing.
In videos published on social networks, Moniz plays in the icy mountains of southern Brazil with the shallow snow, in which he adapts his favorite sports.
Moniz was once a board shaper (who makes the equipment), navigator and fisherman. He is still a surfer, marathon runner, hiker, hang glider and other adventurers, a self-described lover of the sport.
Today, he intersperses the profession of chef, in Urubici, a city that disputes the title of the coldest in the country with Urupema and São Joaquim, with the moments of snowboarder and surfer on the Canoas River.
The snow in Santa Catarina has been little, but Moniz manages to venture out by sliding through the mountains, which reach an altitude of 1,800 meters.
With just over a hundred subscribers to his YouTube channel, it’s not fame he says he’s looking for. “I even tell people not to like it, because what matters is the adventure”, he says.
Moniz was born in Rio de Janeiro and, after living on several beaches in Santa Catarina, has been in Urubici for 20 years. “When it gets too busy, I go out. That’s how I came here, and I live with an absurd quality of life.”
Chef at his downtown restaurant, he mixes personalized dishes with snow surfing. With the background of extreme sports, he says that it was not difficult to go down the mountains. “The feeling is one of freedom and beauty.”
He remembers that he has already practiced snowboarding in Patagonia, Spain and Portugal. “But the thing is different, the rare thing. There’s no comparison. If I put a video skiing in Europe, nobody cares. Now, a video in that shameless snow [risos]it’s a rare thing”, he laughs.
Moniz says he even calls his friends. “I try to drag whoever I can to play with, but it’s usually just me,” he says, noting that, most of the time, he records the videos himself. But he doesn’t use a cell phone. “I had an experiment, I didn’t like it. Everywhere you go, there’s someone behind you; life is tied to it.”
The biggest snowfall Moniz faced in Urubici was in 2010. “There were five days without sun or fog. The snow didn’t melt, there was half a meter of accumulation, and since then I’ve been connected to all the snows”, he says.
“I’m the only surfer in town and I surf the river too,” he says. With a surfboard and a wakeboard cable tied to a tree, Moniz “catch a wave” in the Canoas River. “We invent things to have fun, to move around and play a sport.”
The last snow that fell in Urubici was on May 17, 2022, when the temperature reached -2°C, and the thermal sensation was -16°C. “It appears on clothes, but did not store it”, points out meteorologist Clóvis Correa, from Epagri/Ciram (Santa Catarina’s Center for Environmental Resources and Hydrometeorology).
He explains that the intensity of snow is measured by the depth it accumulates in the ground. With up to ten centimeters, it is considered moderate. More than that, it’s strong. In Brazil, it is usually light. “It may not accumulate, just stay on fabrics or grass, and there’s no way to measure it, because it’s too spaced.”
Still, Moniz enjoys each day of snow in Santa Catarina, no matter how intense the ice or the day. “Life has to be free and light”, concludes the surfer.
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