All day drama

After a dramatic awakening we marched to the big mäss which wasn’t a big mess (great joke). As the kitchen aids put down the food a gust of hungry spirits spread and consumed the minds of us all. After the feast and purging of bad spirits, the time of roll call had come and we gathered on deck for the announcement of the possibility of visting students from a nearby school.

After a delicious lunch consisting of pasta bolognese, myself and a few other students took on the mission of climbing to sete cidades/twin lakes (via a motorised vehicle) and to explore the area. During the ascent we met our Bolt driver José and he was the flippity floppity best. He told us all about the difficulties of a young person living on the Azores while driving up through a beautiful forest which looked surprisingly european. Minute after minute we slowly closed in on the creek of the mountain as a paper thin fog started to form along the mountain top. When we finally reached our destination, we said goodbye to our good friend José and started to wander. The first thing that caught our attention was one of the “official” Sete cidades viewpoints which was a bit overrated but still nice. After all that boring parent stuff, we went to the highpoint of the whole Ponta delgada stay, the abandoned hotel. The hotel was divided into 4 floors, a reachable roof and a sealed off basement which nobody tried to breach because we’re not stupid. Even if you could get down through a crack between the staircases, the probability of falling down to the basement or just not getting out was too large to attempt. The first floor was probably a lobby of sorts, with a kitchen and bathrooms, but not much more except for the two inch thick layer of water and wooden planks that we used as makeshift rafts to cross the lobby to the staircases. After the first few floors, the hotel became a bit repetitive.There were large hotel rooms, graffiti as well as a few uncensored graffiti paintings. Even though it was raining cats and dogs we started to explore the roof which gave us a blend of nature whilst we looked over twin lakes and the abandoned feeling of the hotel which was quite pleasant. After constantly being on guard because of the possibility of taking the wrong step to not slip on the concrete. All of us made it out safe to instantly try and walk a very small forest trail that led to nowhere. After that fiasco I made a few calls and walked back to the same viewpoint and stole some other students' bolts. This bolt wasn’t as nice as our friend José because this guy drove like a flippity floppity maniac. We tipped him ten euros and went on with our day. The day became quite uneventful after the bolt, so we walked back to T/S Gunilla and went to sleep.

Max Eklund/Starboard