Trek Across the Atlantic

Saturday January, 29^th- February 6^th 2011

Whew! This week has been CRAZY!!! I think I’ve attended more meetings this week than in the past 2 ½ years I’ve been in college! Another reason why this week has been so crazy is because the Sea Olympics took place this week! This was a big competition between the different seas on board, which is the term used to classify which deck/ side of the ship you live on. Each deck/hallway has a different sea name. For example: the Mediterranean Sea, the Bering Sea, the Red Sea, the Baltic Sea, etc. The best of them all is the Aegean Sea! I live on deck 2 and our sea name is the Aegean Sea! For anyone who has ever been to summer camp or participated in some form of competition involving hundreds of people, divided up into different teams, in which each team is decked out in their team color, and is screaming their teams’ chant at the top of their lungs, this is what the Sea Olympics was like.

So technically this day was scheduled on the calendar to be a Reading Day, which is supposed to be for…. you guessed it, Reading (or studying)! We’re given these reading days when we’re at sea for several days as a way to give us a break from classes. This is definitely needed because on semester at sea weekends don’t exist. Anyway, because the Sea Olympic Events took place on Reading Day, barely any reading/studying occurred. Instead, this is what happened:

First off all, imagine 600 college students who have been on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic for 6 straight days and don’t have class due to “reading day”. From 1:00pm-8:00pm students were running around the ship representing their sea by yelling, singing, chanting, as they go from event to event competing against the other seas in synchronized swimming, volleyball, 3 legged race, stacking a deck of cards, hoola-hooping, trivia, and much more!!! I wasn’t sure what to think of all of this in the time leading up to the Day of the Olympics, but in the end everyone had a ton of fun! Like I said before, not much “reading” took place, but it wasn’t our fault they scheduled the Sea Olympics on our Reading Day!  The most exciting part of all is that the Aegean Sea, my sea, placed 2^nd overall!!! Instead of receiving a silver medal, the Aegean Sea will be the second group to get off of the ship when we port in San Diego at the end of our voyage, which means I’ll get to see my mom and dad that much sooner!!!

Almost in Africa, Ghana be there soon! Ha Ha!

(Me and Veronica)

Amazon Riverboat Adventure- Part 2

Day 2:

After a long night of sleeping in my hammock, I woke up just in time to watch the sunrise. The view I had sitting at the back of the riverboat was absolutely perfect and it was one of the most beautiful sunrises I’ve ever seen.

Just a few hours later we were moving from the riverboat into the canoes and were leaving for our rainforest hike. I mentioned it before, but man was I ready to go with my hiking boots and my pants tucked in my socks! Anyway, we ended up walking through the rainforest for almost 2 hours and I was blown away at all of the useful plants that our guide taught us about. Sid would pluck off a leaf and say, “instead of taking malaria medicine, we just chew a little bit of this leaf and we have malaria medicine.” Then sometimes we would stop and everyone would gather around a tree as Sid used his machete to poke a hole in the side of a tree. Then while watching as a milky substance dripped down the tree he would say, “this is used as a sweetener and can be mixed in your coffee instead of putting cream in it.” I tasted a little bit, but it didn’t have much flavor.

Lots of the information Sid shared with us incorporated jungle survival tips and many of the plants we learned about throughout our hike had medicinal uses. One of the coolest plants he taught us about was a type of vine that you could chop down when in need of water. We all had a chance to take a drink from the vine, which ended up being a really neat experience.

The highlight of my rainforest hike came when we stopped on the trail, and the next thing I knew I saw Sid swinging from a vine that was hanging down from a very tall tree. The funny thing about this was that just before we stopped walking I had been saying how cool it would be to swing on a vine in the rainforest like Tarzan or George of the Jungle! I was so excited for this moment that ended up only lasting about 5 seconds, but my wish came true and everyone on the trip got to swing on a vine like Tarzan. I couldn’t have asked for a better day in the rainforest!

The rest of the day was spent swimming and visiting an Amazonian village. Here we learned about how rubber is made and saw what a rubber tree looks like. However, the best part about visiting the village was playing with the kids until the sun went down. While we were here, 2 futbol games took place. The men’s game was first as we watched the U.S. vs. Brazilians. I actually didn’t watch much of the game because I was busy climbing a big olive tree with several of the village kids. This was by far the best climbing tree I’ve ever seen/climbed in my life! In addition to me there were probably 6 other children in the tree climbing at the same time and several of the children climbed up to pick off the olives and ended up eating them like candy.

After the men’s futbol game was over it was time for the women’s game. Since there were so many of us, and the majority of us wanted to play we decided to split up into 2 teams. This was fun because the teams ended up being half village girls and half U.S. girls. During our game 2 of the American girls got hit in the face with the soccer ball, which made our game more entertaining for all of the men watching, but luckily neither incident was bad enough to cause an injury. After a long hot afternoon it was time to leave the village, which was hard, but so much fun. After a long canoe ride back to our riverboat, our boat crew welcomed us as we pulled up on the beach, and were surprised as they had prepared a feast for us! The day ended with a bang (literally) as they set off fireworks for us while we ate BBQ on the beach listening to Brazilian music. Right before I got back on the boat to swing to sleep in my hammock, I had a bittersweet moment as I helped my new friends build a bonfire on the beach. In this moment I was reminded of the many bonfires my friends and I have made back at school in Kentucky. No, they’ve never been located on a beach, but it definitely made me miss them and made me wish they were here with me! In the end this was by far the best day of my Riverboat Adventure!

To save you from having to read a 3rd part to my Amazon Adventure I’ll cap it all off by letting you know that my 3rd day in the Amazon was spent hiking once again in the rainforest, but this time it was pouring down rain. Before this hike we visited another village to see how tapioca is made. (If you’re thinking it’s the same kind of tapioca found in pudding, its not, but I’m pretty sure it’s made from the same plant it’s just processed differently.) Since it was raining while we were in the village, our guides gave us a choice to go back to the boat or to go on the hike, which was the original plan. In the end, half went back to the boat and the rest of us trekked through the rainforest. Experiencing the rain in the rainforest was fun, but man was I soaked! We returned to the ship wet and dirty, but it was totally worth it! Our ship left Manaus, Brazil later that same night, and spent the next 2 ½ days on the Amazon River sailing back to the Atlantic Ocean. There was a small delay as several people had to get off the ship to receive rabies vaccines after coming in contact with monkeys at a lodge they had visited in the Amazon. This was a surprise to everyone, but luckily everyone is fine and no one had to go home. After reaching the Atlantic Ocean the calendar said it would take us 7 days, and the captain never gets off schedule!!!

Amazon Riverboat Adventure (Part 1)

Tuesday 25^th- Thursday 27^th, 2011

Day 1:

Well after 2 days spent in Manaus, Brazil I was more than ready to get on the riverboat that would take me to see the Amazon Rainforest up close and personal! Let me just say that I’m so glad that I went on a 5 day backpacking trip a few years ago because I was set and ready to go with my backpack, my heavy duty hiking shoes, and appropriate clothing. (Compared to the girls who wore leggings that didn’t fully cover their calves and Ked tennis shoes as they hiked through the rainforest,) I looked like I had done this a hundred times before!

First of all, the riverboat that me and 29 other people traveled on is actually an ordinary form of transportation for the people who live in Manaus. Better known as river buses, these boats, which are 2 story boats, are used to take people up and down the Rio Negro (which branches off from the Amazon). Their transportation system is definitely one worth noting. There is only one highway leaving the city of Manaus, which takes one to Venezuela, but there is no direct highway that one can take to get to Southern Brazil. If one desires to take a car to drive to Southern Brazil, they have to drive onto a barge and travel on the river for about 4 days, which will eventually take them to the next closest highway. Back to the river buses; since there are many native Amazonians that live in Manaus, people will sometimes travel up to 11 days on a river bus to visit family and/or friends in the village they grew up in that’s located somewhere in the Amazon region. When traveling on one of these river buses, each person brings their own hammock and when it is time to go to sleep, they hang up their hammock and proceed to take it down in the morning when they wake up. They will continue to do this for however many days it takes them to get to where they’re going. So this is exactly what we did for 3 days and 2 nights, except the hammocks were provided for us.

Our first destination was, the “Meeting of Waters,” where the black waters of the Rio Negro meet the brown waters of the Solimões to form the Amazon River. To give you an idea of what this looked like, imagine a river that looks like coffee with cream in it mixing with a river that looks like black coffee, which made a 3^rd mixture that looks somewhat like tea. This was an interesting sight to see as you could see the 3 different colors of water as they mixed together. We left from there and later on entered the Lake January region where we had the chance to see the giant Victoria Regia water lilies. These were the biggest water lilies I’ve ever seen! It looked like you could actually sit on one and it would hold you up. Someone actually made a comment about walking or sitting on one of the lily pads and one of our guides said that a very small kid might be able to sit on one without sinking it. In this same area we observed as our guide lured 2 big alligators in by tying fishing line around a big chunk of beef and splashing it in the water, which was a good 12-15 feet beneath the dock/ outlook that we were standing on. Later on this same day, our guides took us out in smaller boats that are equal to a canoe/long kayak/motor boat to go fishing for piranha. The fishing poles we used were bamboo poles that had a fishing line tied to the end of the pole. For bait we used little pieces of beef, and after about 30-45 minutes of waiting to catch a piranha, I finally caught one! Eddie, one of our guides came over to take my piranha off the hook and said, “You caught a vegetarian piranha!!!” He was laughing as he said this, and was making a joke/ making fun of my piranha that had no teeth! That was the only piranha that I caught because I didn’t have the patience to wait around to catch the piranha that had teeth! Seriously though, what are the chances of catching a piranha with no teeth! Of course Eddie was joking around about my piranha being vegetarian, but since it tried to eat the beef off of my hook you couldn’t claim that it was 100% vegetarian. However, Eddie informed me that this species of piranha does eat both plants and meat! Shockingly, there was still more to come as the day continued. We tested out our hammocks as we took a siesta, which was much needed. The night ended as we got back in the canoes at dusk as we observed our guides spot and catch jacares (alligators) with their bare hands. It was amazing to see how quickly they spotted the alligators from the canoe by using a flashlight to spot the eyes of the alligators. The one Sid caught was a little baby one about 1 ½ feet long. He caught it so easily it was incredible! Our canoe pulled up next to another canoe to make sure their guide had caught one and sure enough they had. The alligator that their guide caught was a good 2 ½-3 feet long!!! It was big enough that Sid said, “the girls can hold the little alligator, and only the boys can hold the big one.” Some of the girls in my canoe got offended by his statement and thought that it was wrong of him to make such a judgment. I thought it was funny/ridiculous that these girls were doubting the knowledge our guide had about how strong these creatures were when Sid was just trying to protect us! Why doubt a man who was born and raised in the Amazon who grew up catching alligators, fishing for piranha, and using a machete in elementary school to do household chores! This was just the end of the 1^st day, which was only the beginning of my adventure in the Amazon.

Manaus, Brazil

Sunday January 23rd - Monday 24^th 

After traveling down the Amazon/ the Rio Negro for 2 1/2 – 3 days the ship finally arrived in Manaus. The ride down the Amazon was nice, but man did it get hot! The one day that I tried to do my homework outside I could only stand the heat for 25 minutes, and in the end I didn’t get anything done and had to go back inside! However, it was fun observing some of homes located on the edge of the riverbank and seeing people paddle by in their fishing boats.

My first day in Manaus was spent visiting an orphanage called Monte Salem Orphanage. In the U.S. this orphanage would be most similar to a shelter/foster home for children that have been abandoned, come from abusive homes, etc. They also have a school that the younger children attend while the older kids go to a school within the community. There were 22 children living there and most of them were under the age of 12 even though they do take in children up to 14 years old. This was a fun experience, but also a difficult one because we were only there for a few hours and there were twice as many semester at sea students as there were children. However, this didn’t stop us from having fun! Our tour guide ended up bringing boxes of face paint for the kids, which provided the perfect opportunity to interact with a few of the kids as we painted their faces. This was right up my alley since I love art! The majority of kids were boys so it was fun to see what designs the little boys wanted painted on their faces. The little boy whose face I painted wanted to be an army man so I covered his face in camouflage. Oh did I forget to mention that we quickly discovered how few people speak English in Brazil? This language barrier not only caused complications, but it definitely made for some funny/interesting stories, which made most people’s experiences in Brazil much more interesting than they would’ve been if there hadn’t been a language barrier. The best part about interacting with kids within a different culture whether or not they speak English is that by painting a face or kicking a soccer ball (fútbol) communicates just as much, if not more love than when you can speak the same language. Showing them love and spending time with them even for a few hours makes a world of difference. 

One of the main highlights of my trip so far was the night of the Samba dance party! One of the professors on the ship is Brazilian and may have grown up in Manaus, but he invited anyone and everyone participating in semester at sea to come watch a performance presented by one of the communities. All I knew before hand is that there would be music and there was a possibility that I’d learn how to samba, so once I heard this I instantly wanted to go! A group of my friends, along with the majority of the students and adults from the ship went to a street somewhere in Manaus where the Brazilian professor had reserved an area for semester at sea participants to watch the Samba performance. This performance I learned later was a practice session to prepare for the festival of Carnival, which will eventually take place in March. Carnival is one of the biggest events celebrated in Brazil. In Rio people celebrate non-stop for an entire week with drumming, music, dancing, and singing. In Manaus Carnival only lasts one night, but during this night a large competition takes place between the different communities/neighborhoods as they basically have a big dance off. Several hundred men, women, and children back up the main dancers with an awesome beat as each person has a drum or some other instrument that they play. While playing their instrument they also have coordinated dance moves to go along with the music. We probably waited for about an hour before it started, but my friends and I definitely had the best place to view the performance. We stayed out of the street while the majority of semester at sea participants roamed amongst the well over 2,000 people walking around in the street which was only about a block and a half long. As it got closer to starting they taped off the area where all of the musicians were congregated. The way in which they were lined up reminded me of my days in marching band, but what was even better was that instead of a full band in front of me, it was a giant drum line! Everyone had some type of drum or a type of shaker in hand and when they began to play it was AMAZING!!!!! Blaring out of the speakers, that we were standing right next to, came the music from about 3-5 men that had guitar like instruments and were singing. Once their music and the rhythms of hundreds of drums and shakers came together, it was almost impossible not to dance!!! The best part about the whole night was when my friends and I decided to go out into the street, as the locals wanted us to join them in dancing. This is when I learned how to Samba. The one thing that I know for sure is that Brazilian men and women have legs of lightning as they can move their legs incredibly fast to the rhythm of the Samba. I will never forget this night as long as I live!!!!