As the crow flies

Waking up at 5.40 was way harder than i could imagne, but the 1 hour sleep I got on the floor while waiting for the ferry did me good. While sitting on the ferry with Elvira who is my roommate I got all exited for the hike that i now started looking forward to.

Arriving at Santo Antao, me and my group that were supposed to hike together stared gathering together before taking a pickup taxi up in the mountains. The view on our way to the village we were staying at was breath taking, ive never gotten so many impressions at once before. Our group got nervous when our driver accidently drove us to the wrong village at first but it didnt take long until our queen Kicki helped us argue our way to the right place, a real ”power-pingla”. It was hard finding a place to stay the night since we had a limited budget to stick with, a group of 9 girls plus it were a Sunday. After looking for a while we eventually found an RBNB that suited us well. We wanted to start our hike as soon as possible so that we could spend the afternoon in peace in town, or so we thought. We packed our bag with snacks and a small bottle of water, and a towel incase we wanted to go swimming.

We took a cab up the mountains and decided to wander our way down. Our cab-driver asked us many times if we had enough water or if we wanted to stop at a groccerystore to buy more water when we told him wich hike we were planning to go. We brushed it off our shoulders thinking he saw us as stupid tourists, little did we know we should`ve listened to him. As soon as we started our hike we saw a sign that said 14 kilometers til Ponto de sol, (the town we stayed in). Sounded like a perfect hike for our likings. After 2 hours of hiking in 30 degrees in direct sun with no signs that told us where we were, i started to get worried even though it was a beautiful hike. 3 Hours in we finally saw a sign that said we were halfway done, sounded weird since 7 kilometers normally dont take 3 hours. At this point i had run out of water. Infront of us we saw a high mountain that we were supposed to hike our way up, this was only the beginning. For 4 hours straight we wandered up and down for theese mountains, after a while my legs started to give up. After 7 hours of hiking in mountains with no possibility to bur more water or food we finally saw Ponto de sol, and i had never been happier. Straight to the first groccerystor to buy water, after that we went to the first restaurant we saw. Never have i been happier to lay down in a roock-hard bed. When we googled how long our hike was, it was 14 kilometers linear distance, 34 kilometer-long hike.

This hike was a whole experience, im so glad i did this.

Tyra Gansmoe