invented sport that is a combination of volleyball and football. In the winter the surf can reach three metres (nine feet). The water quality varies from clear light-blue water to a more murky green after heavy rains. Constant swells help keep the water clean, and the often treacherous beach break regularly forms surfable barrels. Just west of this colorful section, towards Leblon, Rio de Janeiro, is another popular stretch of sand known as Posto 10, referring to the #10 lifeguard station. The beach is one of many areas that suffers from the city's poor waste treatment. In its waters, "fecal coliform bacteria sometimes spike at 16 times the Brazilian government's 'satisfactory' level." Large amounts of pollutants are still dumped into the sea through the nearby marine outfall pipe, a matter of increasing concern to ecologists. Beachgoers often applaud the sunset in the summer. In 2008, the Travel Channel listed Ipanema Beach as the sexiest beach in the world. Posto 9 Posto 9 is the section of the beach around the #9 lifeguard station, across from Joana Angelica Street. Its notoriety began around 1979 when Fernando Gabeira, now a federal deputy for the State of Rio de Janeiro, returned from political exile in France and was photographed there in a thong. He had been a member of the leftist urban guerilla group MR8, which kidnapped the American ambassador, Charles Burke Elbrick, in 1969 and demanded the release of fifteen political prisoners in exchange for his life. Gabeira became a political celebrity with the publication of a memoir about his experiences as a guerilla and his years in exile. In 1979, he was photographed wearing a skimpy purple swimsuit at Ipanema, and gave an interview to a gay and lesbian newspaper, inciting rumors that he was gay, which he neither confirmed nor denied. His going to the beach at Posto 9 made it famous throughout the country. Posto 9 inherited its status as a gathering spot for counter-cultural types from the area near Farme de Amoedo Street, next to the dunes called Dunas do Barato and a pier that was demolished in the 1970s. It has a long history of public cannabis smoking (illegal in Brazil), police raids, and gatherings of left-wing intellectuals. It is still popular with students, artists, actors, and liberal-minded people. Feira Hippie de Ipanema A group of hippies started a Sunday market in Ipanema in 1968 and the