HORTA, AZORES

We’ve arrived in Horta!!

And I’ve crossed the Atlantic Ocean. It was very rough with almost half of the boat being seasick including myself. For about three days I was very naucious. Then the seasickness ended for a day and we hit a storm the next day and I got seasick again. It was very hard and during the seasickness i was really homesick. But one of the first days of seasickness there was an announcement that there were dolphins on port side bow. Everyone ran over and there were about 15 dolphins including 5 babies. For those ten minutes everyones seasickness was gone. But eventhough I was sea/homesick seeing those dolphins made me realise that it was all worth it! The other sealife I’ve seen so far are some pilot whales and a blue shark! The sail was 12 days in total and I’ve seen some amazing things. I saw my first shooting star and amazing sunrises and sunsets. It’s undescribable waking up in the morning walking out of the door on to the deck and seeing only water. Then the morning came after twelve long days and we could finally see land! It was beautiful. Seeing the islands and the sun rising behind them gave me an amazing feeling. All our hard work was finally paying off. And i couldn’t wait to step on land. Then finally after docking and doing the mooring lines we got to explore Horta. It is absolutely gorgeous here. The weather has been fantastic and the locals are so nice. The first day my friends and I hit the beach. In order to get there we had to walk up a small hill. once we got to the top and saw the beautiful beach and the clear blue water we lost it! It was so beautiful and so surreal that we were actually finally here. The water was great and we stayed at the beach for a few hours. The second day we had a port program and went for a hike. We took a bus to a sunken volcano and hiked the 8 km circumferance of the crater volcano. It was very tiring but well worth it since the views were to die for! After that we went to a popular swimming place. Were they have natural pools and platforms built of cliffs to jump into the water from. Again the water was great.

On our last day in Horta we went to a whale museum and learnt about how whale hunting worked. After the museum we went snorkeling. It was beautiful. The water was clear and the fish were everywhere. We leave this morning for 11 days to Dublin, Ireland