Location: Machico, Madeira

Day 45:
Fresh water and instant ramen rations are running low. Pretty soon, we will have to resort to cannibalism!!

Today the crew of Vela woke up to some philharmonic orchestra to the surprise of everybody who knows my music taste but to the delight of the students. We proceeded to eat breakfast and clean up as usual. We then got right into classes. We started off with a very interesting Marine Biology lecture on seabirds and marine reptiles. I was not aware of this, but apparently, a seagull is not a species of bird. It turns out there is a whole family of gull birds that terrorize beaches worldwide!

We finished classes today with a leadership presentation/discussion on communities and how to make a community healthy and prosper. After classes, we ate lunch which was fried rice, and it was delicious. We then cleaned up and headed to land. Although today was supposed to be a surfing day, the conditions and wave quality were a bit too calm, so we decided to have more of a beach chillax day. I started my beach day off with a brunch of champions; virgin pia coladas and ice cream.

I, along with Bubba and Tyler, later proceeded to look for a fishing store with no apparent luck. With my head held low and my dreams crushed, I moped my way to the beach, where I found other fellow Vela chillaxers chillaxing. I naturally decided to chillax it with them, which completely cured my abyssal sorrow caused by this town’s lack of fishing equipment. Jack, Kendra, and I decided to finish our day off with some adventuring, so we made our way to the abandoned building we had had our eyes on since arrival. We did our looking, then hurried back to the dingy’s to get back in time for dinner.

Photo 1: Stunning Avenue in Machico
Photo 2: A beautiful sunset over the Island
Photo 3: Toes for days
Photo 4: Team breakfast with Emerson, Grace, Jamie, Helayna, Clara, Arden, and Dani