Bus trip with all the students and Bye-bye Azores

The Portside shift woke us up at 7 am, before we ate breakfast and got ready for a trip around the island of San Miguel. We left T/S Gunilla at 8.40 to go to our bus. The tourist guide was a great guy who told us a lot about the history of the island and the places we visited. The first stop was a beautiful view point at the coast, with a small souvenir shop.

The second stop was a tea plantage and factory, where we got to know about the whole process from leaf to drinkable tea. Then they showed us the machines which grinds the leafs and the cellar where they dry them. The whole machinery was powered by an electric motor from ASEA, with the logo used before 1933 on it (search if you don’t understand).

After that we went to view point number two, on the edge of an old volcano. Our tourist guide told us that this was the place where he proposed to his wife here on her birthday a few years ago. It was almost impossible to imagine it as volcano though, even if the guide said there was a crater, there laid nothing but some houses and a big lake. Mostly though, there was so much vegetation and everything was just green. Our guide told us that the ash from the volcano worked as a great fertilizer, not only for the local species, but also for the invasive ones. The guide pointed at a small soil field at the bottom of the crater and said that our lunch was there. Before we drove down there we went to a place where small hot springs were found. It also sprouted sparkling water out from the ground, which was very weird but great tasting. Something more noticeable was the stench, without saying too much.

Then we drove down in the crater and walked to the field. There were some holes in the ground were the food was prepared, only thanks to the heat from the volcanic ground. So, two of my classmates picked up the food from the hole and we headed to the restaurant. They prepared the food we had picked up, which was a classic Azorean dish called cozido.

The sixth stop was the hot springs, which the majority mean was the best part of the day. They had two smaller pools and one bigger and the temperature of the water was very hot. It was unbelievable that the water was heated from nothing else than just the ground. We swam and had fun in more than an hour. Lastly we went to a beach where the Nature class did a beach excursion and the Seafarer’s class went to a pastry factory. My classmate and I even took a bath, which was very fun in the big waves.

We came back to Gunilla at 5.30 pm and we had planned to leave the Azores 7 pm sharp, which meant that we were a little short on time. The Starboard shift had to jump into their work clothes almost on spot and start preparing for departure.

My shift in the kitchen started at 8 pm, where we continued the cleaning after the dinner and made scones to the others in our shift. At 12 pm ended the shift and we went to bed, fully exhausted in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

Tor Sandström