I’m writing this from a small, propellor-propelled little bunny of a plane as I chug chugger my way from São Miguel island to Terceira. It was 08:21 when I began this piece; it’s now 08:22. 3. Whoops. When it dawned on me in about January that The Island Life was indeed for me, I made a lofty promise to myself that I would visit all of the nine islands in the archipelago. Bucket list stuff, right? I failed. Or life failed me. Or life happened! Who knows? But I didn’t. I got to Santa Maria, I nearly got to Flores, but a dose of the miseries, cold feet about wild camping alone in storms and ultimately, a storm which cancelled my flight meant I never made it. But today, much to my excitement, I am on my way to my third island, poetically named Terceira! Cor Blimey, that was quick! We’re landing. We’re about 20 mins early haha, I guess it’s just a skip over the pond. See you in a bit to finish this!!!
The reason I started writing this piece back at 08:21 was to reflect on the elasticity and playfulness of the human mind when stuff happens. It wasn’t actually a bridge to complain about the annoying man singing to himself in the hostel where I’m trying to work from…. Where was I? You see, by 07:55, I’d woken up, showered, been locked out of my internet banking, regained access to it and navigated the mind-numbingly poor user experience of the WTF Mobile App (my phone network provider) to top up my internet. By 08:04, we’d taken off.
By 08:07, I’d processed the last moments of the sunrise from the plane as we turned around and then was greeted/mindblown by the quite incredible fest of landscape, texture and greenery as we soared at a satisfyingly low height over the breathtaking lagoons, mountains and lakes of my island. On a typical flight, said soaring takes place at prohibitive altitudes (this is my academic voice, can you tell?), thus preventing the neuronal extravaganza that tooketh place in my head during this voyage. Normally, due to cloud coverage and requirements for higher flying velocities, the typical passenger cannot view natural spectacles like this from the birds-eye-view perspective of the aeroplane. On this occasion, due to the itty bitty nature of the vehicle taking me to Terceira, I could, and it was stunning. It was unexpected, but wow! (back to non-academic voice) I was blown away.
After some tricky months and a steady turn in favourable fortune following quite successful therapy, I found myself craving an adventure and some solo adventure. I’ve had 2 of my closest friends visit me in the last month. I see my friends every day, and because everyone I know on the island is so lovely and accessible, it can be bleeding hard to fit in some alone time into my calendar. Indeed, this is made slightly worse because I can’t drive/don’t always have the energy to bus and hitchhike my way to somewhere pretty.
I had planned on doing a travel blog in general, simply because it’s nice to write for myself and break the repetitive nature of writing SaaS copy. I can express myself how I want, which is very cathartic as a writer. However, I didn’t think I’d share my blog post so early in the trip! I mean… after all, not much has happened, right? I got up, showered, caught a flight and took a cab to my hostel to start a days work. There’s nothing overly curious about a quick 35-minute flight across the Atlantic, is there? Nah! Nothing magical could happen in that time. The funniest thing that happened was some moron trying to open the door to the cockpit of the aeroplane because maaaaybeee they were a bit sleepy before their morning coffee and thought it was the toilet of the plane (yes – ok, fine! This moron was me, and walking back past the stares was as mortifying as you’d think)
Cheers to travel, cheers to adventure! Until next time.
