Day 5

I decided to take it easy this day, as the climbs from the previous days, either on foot or bike, still echoed in my legs and I realized it is not reasonable to sit behind a desk or on a couch for 50 weeks out of the year and then expect them to support me in the crazy stuff I threw at them now. In addition to the restless legs resulting from this keeping me out of my sleep, I suspect that the absence of my weighted blanket was also contributing to my lack of sleep. I had therefore tried to compensate for this by wrapping the bedsheets around me very tightly, but the only thing that that did was make me get out of breath and too warm.
We started a hike again with a steep climb to see one of few waterfalls on São Miguel. One of our group members already knew at the start of the trip that she would be arriving last in all our activities and she was again last today. Although I started out in the leading group, about half way through I decided to take a rest and wait for her. The path was strenuous and challenging, so I thought it would not be nice to be walking it alone without a familiar face coming behind you. The water at the waterfalls was too cold to be dangling your feet in it for more than a few minutes, so I limited myself to that and skipped a dive, which some people did take, though none of our group members. The remainder of our group did decide to take another 2 km path for a steep climb to another waterfall, but I decided to join our last group member on the way down.
After this we made a stop at another village with a sandy beach, where the water also looked inviting, but the hassle of getting in and out of my swimming gear was less inviting, so I sat down for a drink with quite a few others. That evening I joined a group in another direction from what we had been taken to get to restaurants the days before, leading us to the pier. I ordered a big bowl of salad as a starter, which was a nice change as most meals that we had during our two week trip consisted of either meat or fish with a side of potatoes or fries, which I believe are considered to be vegetables here.