Staying Afloat

Written by: Owen B.

After learning about environmental sustainability in class, the students took the bus 30 minutes West alongside the cliffs of Setúbal overlooking the Atlantic ocean. The views were straight out of a fairytale, the rocky cliffs lined with palm trees contrasting with the sandy beaches truly made me feel like we truly were living a dream. We took a short walk from the parking lot and arrived at the beach, which wasn’t as swarmed with people as previous beaches we saw driving here were. I really enjoyed the sense of localness we had and it almost felt like we were just like everybody else.

After dipping our feet in the water we split up into groups, some went to look at small crustaceans and marine life, others went kayaking, and some toured small ruins on the cliffside from the Roman Empire. When it was time to kayak, my group strapped on our life jackets and set off on our adventure. We paddled around a huge boulder in the ocean that some adventurous people were climbing on; when we had sailed completely around the boulder we decided to take a little swim in the water, but ended up flipping our Kayak! We were wearing life jackets the entire time so we were never in danger. We flipped our Kayak back over and paddled to shore. When we got back to shore we got Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and re\laxed on the beach, capping off an awesome day of adventure!

Check out the video below: