The road out of São Paulo feels like a slow exhale.
For anyone familiar with the energy of the Southern Hemisphere’s largest city, the contrast is striking. The traffic eases, the skyline disappears, and the countryside gradually takes over. You turn off at km 99 of the Castello Branco highway, pass through the security, and arrive somewhere that feels far removed from the city you left behind.
Boa Vista Village is the creation of JHSF, Brazil’s leading luxury lifestyle company. Founded in 1972, today, the Company has operations and projects across Brazil, the United States, Uruguay, Italy, Portugal and the United Kingdom, further expanding its presence in strategic markets.
What they have created here, across more than three million square metres of São Paulo countryside, is not a surf resort. It’s an entire ecosystem.
As we drove through the property, I kept assuming we were about to arrive at the surf club. Instead, we passed residential neighbourhoods, lakes, tennis facilities, a racquet club, an equestrian centre, the Boa Vista Village golf course designed by Rees Jones, the Fasano hotel, and a charming town center with the CJ Boa Vista Village mall inspired by destinations such as Carmel and the Hamptons, complete with restaurants, galleries and a cinema.
The further we drove, the more the surf pool started to feel like one piece of something much larger. And that raises an obvious question: where does surfing fit into a place like this?
Where Surfing Fits Into the Boa Vista Vision
At the heart of Boa Vista Village sits the Boa Vista Village Surf Club and its PerfectSwell surf pool, measuring 220 metres long by 160 metres wide. Opened in 2023, it became the first American Wave Machines installation in Latin America, launching with surfers such as Italo Ferreira, Stephanie Gilmore and Carissa Moore.
JHSF’s relationship with surfing extends beyond a single project. The company has continued to invest in wave technology through initiatives such as São Paulo Surf Club, while integrating surfing into a broader vision.
More Club Than Surf Park
One of the first people helping me understand that ecosystem was Maria Allebring.
Originally from Sweden, Allebring now lives at Boa Vista and has become one of the most recognizable faces around the surf club. She welcomed me in fluent Portuguese before showing me around the property, and it didn’t take long to realize how deeply connected she is to the community that has formed there.
Reception staff greeted her by name. Coaches stopped for quick conversations. Security guards waved as we passed. By the end of the day, I had yet to find a corner of the property where somebody didn’t seem to know who she was. That sense of familiarity extends to the surf club itself.
Access is restricted to property owners across the Boa Vista complex, which includes Fazenda Boa Vista, Boa Vista Village and Boa Vista Estates. Membership is family-based, covering the member, their spouse and up to three direct dependents under the age of 35.
There are no day passes. No casual visitors dropping in for a session. Everyone in the water has a connection to the place. That fact shapes everything about what it feels like to surf there.
The atmosphere around the pool that morning had very little in common with the commercial wave pool experience. The session schedule is released every Tuesday through the club’s dedicated app, with members booking their sessions for the week ahead.
Surfing at Boa Vista
My session had eight surfers. Level 5 with an easy take-off that gives you time to think, then a steeper and faster section that builds enough speed to attempt your first real manoeuvres. It felt, immediately and unmistakably, like surfing perfect lefts somewhere in Indonesia.
What makes the Boa Vista session genuinely different from any other wave pool I have surfed is what happens poolside. The coaches don’t simply select a wave setting and press start.
The number of waves in a set can change. The recovery time between sets can change. Different parts of the session can be adjusted according to who is in the water and what they are trying to achieve.
World Champion and Olympic Medalist Italo Ferreira is a regular presence at the club, sharing the same pool as members working on their first turns. It is not unusual for aspiring competitors, progressing intermediates, and one of the best surfers on the planet to be using the same facility for entirely different reasons.
What the Pool Gives You
Just a day before my visit, Allebring had returned from Peru. She had been training at Punta Rocas, one of South America’s most respected point breaks and the confirmed venue for the 2026 ISA World Surfing Games, where she hopes to represent Sweden.
The trip was designed to expose her to conditions very different from the ones she experiences at Boa Vista.
“I went there to challenge myself in conditions that are way bigger than what I’m used to,” Allebring says. “The wave is powerful no matter the size. When it’s big, it’s really powerful. And then there are the logistics. You paddle twelve minutes just to get out. It’s choppy. It’s windy. You don’t know what you’re going to get.”
The trip quickly became a reminder that progression in a wave pool and progression in the ocean are not always the same thing.
Over the last few years, Boa Vista has become a central part of Allebring’s training routine. Multiple sessions a day. Coaching. Video analysis. Thousands of repetitions.
The progression is undeniable. But what makes her perspective particularly valuable is her willingness to speak openly about the limitations as well.
What the Ocean Still Teaches
The biggest gap, according to Allebring, isn’t technical at all.
“My technique has increased a lot because of the repetition here,” she says. “But my ocean awareness has actually decreased because I haven’t spent enough time in the ocean. And I know it. I can feel it clearly.”
It’s not a criticism of wave pools. If anything, it’s a reflection on how effective they can be.
Spending weeks preparing for Punta Rocas reminded her that reading conditions, understanding a lineup and knowing where to position yourself remain skills that can only be developed in the ocean.
“What you don’t get in the pool is that you can’t read the ocean,” she says. “The ocean shifts. Even on a point break, there are bigger sets and smaller sets, and it doesn’t break exactly the same way every time. You have to dial in the wave. Understand when it’s going to close out, where to sit, how to handle the crowd. That’s something you can only learn by spending time there.”
Maria arrived with the wrong equipment. She had to adapt. She had to learn the lineup ans navigate crowds that looked very different from those at Boa Vista.
“I didn’t see a single woman in the water,” she says. “Not at Punta Rocas, not at the other breaks. Zero.”
That observation led naturally into a broader conversation about access, progression and the role wave pools can play in bringing more women into surfing.
Building a Surf Community Away From the Coast
According to Allebring, many of the women surfing regularly at Boa Vista simply feel more comfortable progressing in this environment.
Some learned entirely in the pool before venturing into the ocean. Others drive from São Paulo for early morning sessions before heading back into the city for work. Some are complete beginners. Others are training for international competition.
The result is a surf community that looks very different from a traditional surf town, yet shares many of the same characteristics.
More Than a Wave
By the end of the day, the original question had largely answered itself. Surfing isn’t the reason Boa Vista exists. But it has become one of the things that gives the place its identity.
The pool may be the physical centre of the surf club, but the real story is the community that has formed around it. A community where a Swedish surfer chasing ISA qualification can share the same wave as someone learning their first turns, where conversations continue long after the session ends, and where one of the world’s busiest cities feels surprisingly far away.
Driving back towards São Paulo that evening, with the traffic slowly building again and the city drawing closer, I found myself thinking about the next session drop. I’m not a member.
But after spending a day at Boa Vista Village Surf Club, I understood exactly why people want to be.
