Yesterday we celebrated Neptune day, though we crossed the equator before Brazil. The day started at about 7:30am when members of the crew came yelling and drumming through the halls waking everyone up. At 9:00, the student body made their way up to the 7th deck to pay our respects to King Neptune (Captain Jeremy). Here is the procedure for turning from a pollywog into shellback: 1. get fished guts dumped over your head. 2. jump into the pool, which is already filled with fish guts water. 3. get out of the pool and kiss two dead fish. 3. kiss king neptune’s ring. 4. be sworn a shellback.
From this point on a good percentage of the boat shaved their heads. Rumor was that we were closing in on the SAS record of 70 girls shaving their heads, im not sure if we broke it or not. Needless to say, the student body is now a bit different looking. For dinner, we got a feast of a barbeque for dinner. Man how I’ve missed me some ribs, burgers, dogs, corn on the cob and ice cream sundaes.
On Friday night, an open mike comedy night was held and Slava (my roommate) was one of the two performers. Everyone thought the night would be a disaster, but about 100 people showed up and found Slava hilarious. Both he and the other comic was great and the night was a surprising success.
On Thursday morning (I realize im going backwards in time now). I was lucky enough to get a tour of the bridge, these tours are a precious commodity here. We learned about the ships communication, navigation, and fire systems and got to take lots of pictures of the equipment and the view from the bridge. We also were able to take pictures sitting in the captains chair. Fun fact: when running full throttle on 2 engines, the MV Explorer burns $1000 of fuel an hour (this is when we are averaging 20 knots). When the ship is running on all four engines (30knots, the captain hasn’t done this yet) the engines burn $2000 of fuel each hour. And people wonder why this program is $20,000…..
We are about halfway to cape town as a write this and once there I will do my best to get pictures from both Brazil and the beginning of Africa up online.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Salvador Brazil
As I sit down to write this up, we are about an hour away from pulling out of Salvador. My time in Brazil has been absolutely amazing. I was fortunate enough to have seen both the rural side of life as well as urban life. For the first three days of our stay, I went on a SAS overnight trip to Praia do Forte, a small village about an hour and a half north of Salvador. When I returned to the city, I was able to catch the last couple days of Carnival; it was an experience that will be difficult to forget. Brazil was the first port that I witnessed extreme poverty. Though Brazil is the 16th richest country in the world, 2/3 of its population lives in poverty. For most, this means living in favelas – poor shanty neighborhoods without any amenities. The shacks are made of brick and whatever materials their inhabitants can get a hold of. The neighborhoods cover the majority of Salvador. Brazil also has a major problem with street violence; most young boys do not see their life make it past the age of 25. Check out the movie City of God for a great portrayal of urban life in Brazil. Because of the violence and crime in Brazil, the administration of SAS heeded many many warnings to us passengers. We were warned not to take digital cameras out into port and there was a strong possibility that we would be held up, robbed, or pick pocketed. Fortunately, I avoided any of these situations, but others weren’t so lucky. Because of not wanting to risk getting my camera stolen, I wasn’t able to get many pictures of Salvador or Carnival. I was able to get some from Praia do Forte and ill be trying to get those put up on my picassa album in Cape Town. Here is the day by day rundown of the last 5 days in Brazil.
Saturday: I got up at 6 to see the boat pull in to port. It was pretty hazy so it was hard to see the city. After docking, I passed through immigration on deck 7. I had to keep my passport on me for my trip, which was very nerve racking. If I lost it I wouldn’t have gotten to sail to South Africa and because of that would miss 20% of the academic part of the program and therefore would have been dismissed from Semester at Sea, not fun.
After getting my passport everyone went to the diplomatic briefing where the US consulate talked for a bit. I then met with the group for my Praia do Forte trip. I was pretty nervous for the trip because I didn’t know anyone going on it and had no idea if it would be worth the $600 I paid. The group included 7 SAS students, the conduct officer and his wife, and a professor and his family.
We got on a little bus/van and met our tour guide Eddie. He was the man and was with us for the whole three days. He was just so nice and helpful and had a great personality. On the drive we were able to see the favelas. Despite how poor the neighborhoods are, it is these neighborhoods that are the biggest part of carnival, they take every penny they make and pour it into creating costumes and floats for carnival, it’s their only passion in life. We also drove past the soccer stadium, it holds 90,000 people, but it’s limited to 70k because of new restrictions. As we got off into the country, we saw horses and cattle just roaming the hills. All the dirt here is bright red, like Arizona. In each town we passed through, the soccer field was always the nicest place, strange.
We got to Praia do forte around noon and checked into our hotel. The village seemed like a popular vacation destination for Brazilians. After checking into our hotel we went to the turtle project. It’s just a bunch of sea turtles in small pools, it was pretty interesting, but not that exciting. I took some cool pictures of the turtles. It seemed like they were always trying to stick their heads up out of the water and look at the people. We even saw some baby turtles that were just a week old and would fit in the palm of your hand. We then headed to lunch in the village. I won’t get into the meals that we had on the trip, but following the trend of Puerto Rico, they were delicious. I hate to say it, but there is a lot better food in the world than in America, so far anyway.
After lunch we headed to the beach where the water was very very warm. There were some Brazilians surfing there and one of them was able to do a headstand while surfing, I got a great picture of it. We headed back to the hotel for a bit, then off to a great dinner. We headed to bed pretty early.
Sunday: We got up early at 7 and had breakfast at the hotel and got picked up in this big 4x4 jeep vehicle and we knew we were in for an adventure. We had another guide named Eric to lead this part of the trip. We rode in the 4x4 for about a half hour and through a little dirt road village. We walked down to a river where there were 3 person canoes waiting for us. We canoed for about an hour down the river, stopping to swim along the way. We started passing these huge sand dunes and began see the coast. We brought our canoes ashore and walked over a sandbar and all of a sudden we were on a pristine beach. We went swimming for a while, then got back into the canoes and paddled further down the river where the truck was waiting for us. We headed back to Praia do forte for lunch and showers.
We then headed to castle de torra (I think that’s it) a castle built in 1551 by a very rich landowner. It was mostly built buy slaves and took 27 years to build because the rock was imported from Portugal. It was pretty awesome and we got to walk all around inside. The slave trade in Brazil was much much worse that it was in the US and Brazil imported over 4 million slaves from Africa.
Next, we drove further on and got out of the truck for a hike through the rain forest, we got to see spider monkeys, hummingbirds, all sorts of different trees that Eric told us about and also ran into some fire ants (OUCH!!! I got bit on the leg once). Part of the trail was flooded and we had to wade through this area, everyone was pretty scared but Eddie assured us (jokingly) that there were only small crocodiles in the water. We finally exited the trail after about an hour and a half of walking/wading and got back on the truck. We took a drive through some terribly poor villages, rural versions of the favelas. We saw families bathing and washing their clothes in the water and living off the land the best they could. It was a really devastating thing to see. We did, however, run into a mini carnival celebration where people were dressed up as a TV crew and proceeded to run down our truck and pretended to interview us. We headed back to the hotel for showers. The power went out and was out for about 3 hours. We walked to dinner in the dark, and began ordering in the dark as well before the electricity came back. After dinner we headed to bed as there was another early day ahead of us.
Monday: After breakfast, we took a 4x4 ride through this really thick brush a little ways from PDF. The soil was thick beach sand and the road was really narrow. I thought for sure that we were going to get stuck in the sand, but our driver was very capable and got us through all of it. We got out to look at some of the plants; some very interesting cacti and flowers. The truck then dropped us off a little further down the path and we walked through a mangrove. We ended up at some sand flats that were covered in crabs. JR (our conduct officer) put one in his mouth. We got to another river and all got into a huge 12 person Indian canoe. We paddled down river, stopping to swim. We ended up at the mouth of the river where there was a very popular Brazilian beach. We got out here and back onto the truck for the drive back to PDF to head back to Salvador.
That night I met up with some friends who had been in Salvador the last couple days and we headed out to a Brazilian steakhouse. I know I said I wouldn’t talk about food anymore, but i've never had so much delicious red meat in my life. We had a great time at the restaurant and for $25 American I think I ate enough for the next week. After returning to the ship, I headed out to Pelirihno (Old Salvador) with Kyle and Laura hoping to get a little taste of Carnival. We were a bit too late, however, and not much was going on. We came back to the ship around midnight.
Tuesday: Kyle and I went to the market in the morning to pick up some souvenirs. It was my first try at bargaining and it went fairly well, I managed to talk most of the retailers down to half of what they originally asked. Kyle had a SAS trip planned before noon so we headed back to the ship. It seemed everyone was off on trips for the day so I ended up spending the afternoon resting and relaxing.
After dinner onboard the ship, a group of four of us headed Barra, the oldest and most popular location for Carnival. The night was amazing. For anyone that doesn’t know what Carnival is, think mardi gras combined with Woodstock on wheels. Huge trailer trucks stuffed with sound equipment and a band on top crawl through the streets while 2 million people dance around them throughout the night. The music is high energy and non stop. I had a great time.
Wednesday: After sleeping in, a group of us headed out to the market and to Pelirhino and got to see Sao Francisco, a famous church built in the 1700s. Its inside is completely crusted in gold leaf. We spent a while admiring the church and all of the artifacts that were housed in it. We spent the rest of the day just walking around, made some phone calls back to the states. (Mom and dad you really need to stay off the phone, it’s always busy)
Anyway, this entry is far too long. We have 8 days at sea until South Africa. I’m looking forward to our lectures from Archbishop Desmond Tutu enroute.
Saturday: I got up at 6 to see the boat pull in to port. It was pretty hazy so it was hard to see the city. After docking, I passed through immigration on deck 7. I had to keep my passport on me for my trip, which was very nerve racking. If I lost it I wouldn’t have gotten to sail to South Africa and because of that would miss 20% of the academic part of the program and therefore would have been dismissed from Semester at Sea, not fun.
After getting my passport everyone went to the diplomatic briefing where the US consulate talked for a bit. I then met with the group for my Praia do Forte trip. I was pretty nervous for the trip because I didn’t know anyone going on it and had no idea if it would be worth the $600 I paid. The group included 7 SAS students, the conduct officer and his wife, and a professor and his family.
We got on a little bus/van and met our tour guide Eddie. He was the man and was with us for the whole three days. He was just so nice and helpful and had a great personality. On the drive we were able to see the favelas. Despite how poor the neighborhoods are, it is these neighborhoods that are the biggest part of carnival, they take every penny they make and pour it into creating costumes and floats for carnival, it’s their only passion in life. We also drove past the soccer stadium, it holds 90,000 people, but it’s limited to 70k because of new restrictions. As we got off into the country, we saw horses and cattle just roaming the hills. All the dirt here is bright red, like Arizona. In each town we passed through, the soccer field was always the nicest place, strange.
We got to Praia do forte around noon and checked into our hotel. The village seemed like a popular vacation destination for Brazilians. After checking into our hotel we went to the turtle project. It’s just a bunch of sea turtles in small pools, it was pretty interesting, but not that exciting. I took some cool pictures of the turtles. It seemed like they were always trying to stick their heads up out of the water and look at the people. We even saw some baby turtles that were just a week old and would fit in the palm of your hand. We then headed to lunch in the village. I won’t get into the meals that we had on the trip, but following the trend of Puerto Rico, they were delicious. I hate to say it, but there is a lot better food in the world than in America, so far anyway.
After lunch we headed to the beach where the water was very very warm. There were some Brazilians surfing there and one of them was able to do a headstand while surfing, I got a great picture of it. We headed back to the hotel for a bit, then off to a great dinner. We headed to bed pretty early.
Sunday: We got up early at 7 and had breakfast at the hotel and got picked up in this big 4x4 jeep vehicle and we knew we were in for an adventure. We had another guide named Eric to lead this part of the trip. We rode in the 4x4 for about a half hour and through a little dirt road village. We walked down to a river where there were 3 person canoes waiting for us. We canoed for about an hour down the river, stopping to swim along the way. We started passing these huge sand dunes and began see the coast. We brought our canoes ashore and walked over a sandbar and all of a sudden we were on a pristine beach. We went swimming for a while, then got back into the canoes and paddled further down the river where the truck was waiting for us. We headed back to Praia do forte for lunch and showers.
We then headed to castle de torra (I think that’s it) a castle built in 1551 by a very rich landowner. It was mostly built buy slaves and took 27 years to build because the rock was imported from Portugal. It was pretty awesome and we got to walk all around inside. The slave trade in Brazil was much much worse that it was in the US and Brazil imported over 4 million slaves from Africa.
Next, we drove further on and got out of the truck for a hike through the rain forest, we got to see spider monkeys, hummingbirds, all sorts of different trees that Eric told us about and also ran into some fire ants (OUCH!!! I got bit on the leg once). Part of the trail was flooded and we had to wade through this area, everyone was pretty scared but Eddie assured us (jokingly) that there were only small crocodiles in the water. We finally exited the trail after about an hour and a half of walking/wading and got back on the truck. We took a drive through some terribly poor villages, rural versions of the favelas. We saw families bathing and washing their clothes in the water and living off the land the best they could. It was a really devastating thing to see. We did, however, run into a mini carnival celebration where people were dressed up as a TV crew and proceeded to run down our truck and pretended to interview us. We headed back to the hotel for showers. The power went out and was out for about 3 hours. We walked to dinner in the dark, and began ordering in the dark as well before the electricity came back. After dinner we headed to bed as there was another early day ahead of us.
Monday: After breakfast, we took a 4x4 ride through this really thick brush a little ways from PDF. The soil was thick beach sand and the road was really narrow. I thought for sure that we were going to get stuck in the sand, but our driver was very capable and got us through all of it. We got out to look at some of the plants; some very interesting cacti and flowers. The truck then dropped us off a little further down the path and we walked through a mangrove. We ended up at some sand flats that were covered in crabs. JR (our conduct officer) put one in his mouth. We got to another river and all got into a huge 12 person Indian canoe. We paddled down river, stopping to swim. We ended up at the mouth of the river where there was a very popular Brazilian beach. We got out here and back onto the truck for the drive back to PDF to head back to Salvador.
That night I met up with some friends who had been in Salvador the last couple days and we headed out to a Brazilian steakhouse. I know I said I wouldn’t talk about food anymore, but i've never had so much delicious red meat in my life. We had a great time at the restaurant and for $25 American I think I ate enough for the next week. After returning to the ship, I headed out to Pelirihno (Old Salvador) with Kyle and Laura hoping to get a little taste of Carnival. We were a bit too late, however, and not much was going on. We came back to the ship around midnight.
Tuesday: Kyle and I went to the market in the morning to pick up some souvenirs. It was my first try at bargaining and it went fairly well, I managed to talk most of the retailers down to half of what they originally asked. Kyle had a SAS trip planned before noon so we headed back to the ship. It seemed everyone was off on trips for the day so I ended up spending the afternoon resting and relaxing.
After dinner onboard the ship, a group of four of us headed Barra, the oldest and most popular location for Carnival. The night was amazing. For anyone that doesn’t know what Carnival is, think mardi gras combined with Woodstock on wheels. Huge trailer trucks stuffed with sound equipment and a band on top crawl through the streets while 2 million people dance around them throughout the night. The music is high energy and non stop. I had a great time.
Wednesday: After sleeping in, a group of us headed out to the market and to Pelirhino and got to see Sao Francisco, a famous church built in the 1700s. Its inside is completely crusted in gold leaf. We spent a while admiring the church and all of the artifacts that were housed in it. We spent the rest of the day just walking around, made some phone calls back to the states. (Mom and dad you really need to stay off the phone, it’s always busy)
Anyway, this entry is far too long. We have 8 days at sea until South Africa. I’m looking forward to our lectures from Archbishop Desmond Tutu enroute.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Day 1: Slava and I got up really early to catch the ship pulling into San Juan harbor along with the sunrise. To see the sun rise up over Old San Juan was beautiful. At then entrance of the harbor stands El Morro, an almost 500 year old fort built to defend Puerto Rico from pirates and other invaders. Around 8:30am, shortly after the ship had docked, the governor of Puerto Rico boarded the ship and addressed the entire student body. He welcomed us to Puerto Rico and gave us some background on the island. Accompanying the governor was a rather large crew of cameramen, reporters, and photographers from all the news agencies on the island, including Univision and Telemundo. This was a first for Semester at Sea, to be greeted by the governor. We then had to wait our turns in going through immigration. Within the first couple hours of the morning I was able to use my cell phone to call my parents and Emily. It was a nice luxury to have normal cell service the three days we were here.
After going through customs, a few of us made the 35 minute walk into old San Juan, walking along the coastline, what a sight. We passed fort San Cristobal and the capitol building (looked like a mini version of Congress in DC). We spent the morning walking around, checking out some shops. We got to El Morro and spent a good amount of time exploring the fort, the place is amazing and offers some great views. We met some other SASers for lunch at a local Puerto Rican restaurant where we tried some local food and it was great. Apparently this restaurant was the birthplace of the pina colada, so a couple of the people we were with tried those out. We then went to Pigeon Park where, who woulda guessed it, but there were a ton of pigeons. Some people went so far as to hold corn in their open hands and the thousands of pigeons engulfed these brave souls. I wasn't about to partake, though it was a pretty absurd sight. We then headed back to the ship because I was signed up for the Bioluminescent Bay trip that was to leave at 4:30pm.
A Bioluminescent Bay is a natural phenomenon that takes place in only 6 places in the world, 3 of which are in Puerto Rico. We kayaked into the bay and noticed that our paddles begin glowing green in the water. Some people went swimming and their entire bodies glowed green. The trip was awesome.
That night we wanted to go out and see some San Juan nightlife, however because there wasn't any on a Wednesday night, we ended up with the rest of SAS at Senor Frogs, so much for seeing some of the culture…..
Day 2: Short and simple: we went out to a beach called Ocean Park and rented some surf boards and attempted (key word attempted) to go surfing. It wasn't a successful endeavor. We hung out on the beach where I burnt my back quite badly in a strange pattern due to some not so thorough sun screen applying. We headed back to the ship around 2 and found that the McDonalds across the street from the ship had free internet, I took the time to upload the pics from my previous entry. I went out to Old San Juan again to get some souvenirs and came back for an early night.
Day 3: Our original intentions were to go to El Yunque (the rain forest) on our own, however we found out that doing so might not be the best idea because of unreliable public transportation. Instead, we filled some empty spots on the SAS trip to El Yunque and Luquillo Beach. Hiking in the rain forest was incredible; we got to go swimming at some waterfalls where the water was so clean and pure, just like the oxygen intense air in the whole forest. After a hike of probably 2 miles, we got on the busses and ate at a local restaurant. Once again the food was amazing; Puerto Ricans sure know how to cook. We then went off to Luquillo Beach, one of the best beaches on the island. In short, this place just looked like a post card: a sandy beach with palm trees and blue water, with the mountains of the rain forest in the background. It was beautiful. After a few hours we headed back to the ship. I took one last trip into Old San Juan for some last minute things and boarded the ship for good.
Overall, Puerto Rico was a great port, the people were very friendly and I think I crammed as much into three days as I could. Some of my Spanish began coming back to me as it has been stored deep inside my brain for about four years of not using it. Next up is seven days at sea enroute to Salvador, Brazil. In the middle of this we will be crossing the equator. That's all for now, sorry for the length.
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Some Pictures
Blog update to come tomorrow, San Juan has been great. Here are some pictures of Nassau, my first day on the MV Explorer, and the first day of Puerto Rico.
http://picasaweb.google.com/ggallant1/
http://picasaweb.google.com/ggallant1/
Monday, February 5, 2007
Nassau and Embarkation
My parents and I arrived in Nassau around 4:30pm on Thursday evening, the weather there is very humid and around 80. On Friday and evening I met up with Slava and eventually the other two kids from Babson, Isiah and Nicole. For the three days we had in the Bahamas, we were able to relax and I also met probably 20 or 25 kids that were going on SAS between my hotel, the Atlantis, and the hotel where the other Babson kids were staying. The Atlantis is an amazing place with the world's largest open air marine habitat. There are over 70,000 sea creatures in the many aquariums and tanks. Among them are barracudas, sharks, stingrays, tarpin, and many other tropical fish. In one aquarium, there is a HUGE man-a-ray, which probably measures 12-15 feet across.
Overall, the time in the Bahamas was great and a good vacation with my parents. It was also good to meet some people that were going on SAS. I did have the oncoming of a cold while I was there, which scared me because I didn't want to get sick when I got on the ship, but I think it is starting to clear up.
Finally, on Sunday morning, I took my bags down to Prince George Wharf and stood in the REALLY long line to board the MV Explorer. After being in line for about an hour, our bags got checked and searched through and our passports were taken in exchange for our Explorer ID cards. We then went through a metal detector at the top of the gangway and boarded the ship. We went through some initial procedures (similar to the first day of college) and found our cabin #4044. We have an inside room (no window) on the top deck that houses students, we are also in the middle of the ship, which means that we will feel the rocking of the ship the least. Me and Slava unpacked and set up the room, its really nice, and though its close quarters, we have storage space for everything, its pretty nice. We had some lunch out on deck and took a little tour of the ship. This place is amazing, after looking at pictures for a year of this place, I finally got to see it for myself and its indescribably nice. Around 1:45 my parents boarded the ship to visit. I gave them a tour and they were pretty blown away just as I was. At 3:00 there was a small welcome reception for the parents and the Captain and other top ranking people were introduced and proceeded to ensure the safety and great experience that we would have. After saying goodbye to my parents, the rest of the day was filled with lifeboat drills, and some orientation that lasted until about 10pm. We decided to go to bed relatively early and I was surprised with a phone call from Emily, it was great to hear her voice. The ship pulled away from Nassau around 5pm to a full pier of waving parents.
Today is filled all day with orientation activities and meetings, and classes begin tomorrow. Just one day of classes until we get to Puerto Rico. Hopefully, I will get to internet café while im there and be able to make another entry and upload some pictures from the Bahamas and Puerto Rico.
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