We Can Dance If We Want To

Hey hey people. So, we are getting to end of the longest cruise of the whole trip, from Brazil to South Africa. Let me just say that I am SOOOO over classes right now. I have just come to the conclusion today that I really don’t like ANY of my classes. That’s right, not one. Shitty, huh? In the immortal words of Peter “It’s really the prof that makes the difference,” and these profs suck! Seriously. In my oceanography class, we spent over an hour the other day on POWERS OF TEN. Like, write this number in scientific notation. And the prof was getting them WRONG. Not to mention that he lacks any sense of structure in any of his lectures. My Japan teacher is a cool guy, but he talks so goddamn slowly, it is fucking amazing. I think about a quarter of the class falls asleep every time. In my religion class, we talked for 30 minutes last time about VOODOO ZOMBIES. People, I can’t even make this shit up. Instead of addressing really fundamental questions about religions, or even talking about the origins of the major world religions, we have really only talked about very obscure native African and American religions, and the prof keeps trying to convince us of the power of the animals spirits. And Global Studies? I mean, I could probably deal with this one if it wasn’t at 9:20 AM every fucking day. The professor is as pompous as shit, but he can usually hold my attention for the 75 minutes. Oh, by the way, every class is 75 minutes which is soooo long.

OK, sorry about the bitching, but I just had to get that out of my system. Aside from classes, though, I am having a fucking blast! Lots of fun stuff has happened during this cruise. September 20th was Neptune Day. Neptune Day is usually celebrated on the day you cross over the equator, but it got postponed until after we left Brazil; we actually crossed the equator the day before we landed in Salvador. The best thing about Neptune Day was that we had NO CLASS! I can’t tell you how amazing it was to be able to sleep in. There were some festivities that happened at 9 AM, which involved getting fish guts thrown at you, jumping in the pool, and then kissing a fish, but there was no fucking way I was dragging my ass out of bed at 9 AM on our one day off. I am really OK with not getting fish thrown at me also. Another thing that is customary to do on Neptune Day is shave your head. I passed on this too. Yeah, I’ve done the shaved head thing, doesn’t really look good, and I really didn’t have anything to prove in doing it. In the end, only maybe like 50 guys shaved their heads; whatever floats your boat I guess. Some girls did it too. And while the Sinead O’Connor look might have once been in style, let me tell you, the time has passed. But yeah, it was a gorgeous day outside, so I spent the day just chilling up on the deck, doing a lot of nothing, and it was amazing. Definitely one of the best days I’ve had on the boat so far.

Other than Neptune Day, there has been a lot of movie watching, pub-nighting, and general time wasting. Someone picked up a bootleg version of Wedding Crashers in Brazil, so I watched that again, which was awesome. They have started showing good movies on the ship’s TV, which provides some good procrastination; I am FINALLY gonna see Boondock Saints tonight, which my roommate described to me as “Badass motherfuckers doing badass shit.” Sounds like my kind of movie. We had a birthday dinner for one of my friends from the Venezuela trip, so that was kind of mini-reunion thing, which was cool. But perhaps the best thing in recent memory was the 80’s theme pub night last night. It was pretty nuts, people really went all out with the costumes; I just stuck with my headband and aviators. There was a dance floor and they were ROCKING out the 80’s music. Notable moments included Safety Dance and some hot Jackson Five action. People were just going nuts, everyone was having a blast, and the rocking of the ship made you feel drunker than you should have been after 4 beers.

Today, we got some bad news. We are not going to Kenya. The political situation is just too unstable, and there have been lots of terrorist attacks recently, including the killing of a tourist safari group. There is also the serious threat of pirates in the waters off of the Kenyan coast. And not your eye-patch, parrot, peg leg, “ARRR” pirates—your bandana, AK-47, take no prisoners pirates. Not quite as fun. Apparently, if we do see pirates, our defense is for the crew to take our fire hoses and stand at the balcony and spray the pirates, which sounds like just about the dumbest thing I have ever heard. I am pretty bummed—I was really looking forward to doing my safari and going on a hot air balloon, but oh well, the situation is really out of our hands. They have not told us where we are going instead, but the speculation is that we will just chill out for the 5 days on some beach islands off of the east coast of Madagascar. Not quite as amazing as driving through the Serengeti plain, but hey, can’t really complain about 5 days on a tropical beach.

One last thing: During this sail, Archbishop Desmond Tutu has been our guest on the boat. This is pretty cool; for those of you that don’t know, Desmond Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for working in South Africa to end apartheid. He also headed the Truth and Reconciliation Committee under the post-apartheid government of Nelson Mandela. There was not as much interaction with him as I would have liked, but he did do some question and answer sessions which were very cool. He also did a round table discussion with some students and faculty today during Global Studies; of course, I choose TODAY as the first Global Studies class to skip. Well fucking done, Evan.

I think that about wraps it up for this leg of the journey. Two days until Cape Town. I am pumped; so far, I’ve got a two-day rafting trip planned, and am doing Habitat for Humanity one of the other days. I’ve got two more days unplanned. A lot of people are doing some extreme sports trips for one day; there has been talk of skydiving, bungee jumping, and shark diving. Shark diving would be pretty awesome; can you just imagine being in a cage underwater and have a Great White chewing on the bars. We’ll see if I can get a group together to do this on one of my free days.

Good talk, see ya out there.

The Amazon

So, we left for the Amazon river and Jungle on Wednesday, about noon. Once again, it took almost a whole day to get to our destination, but, like in Venezuela, it was worth every minute. The journey went like this: Ship-->Bus to airport in Salvador-->Flight to airport in Brasilia-->Flight to Manaus-->Bus to ferry on the banks of the Amazon-->Ferry to our lodge. Whew. The traveling was pretty painless though—talked to a lot of new people, ate lunch in the Brasilia airport, which is really nice (reminds me of a US airport), and drank some Capirinhias to kill time during the layover.

On the flight from Brasilia to Manaus, I got into an intense religious discussion with a kid named Lee, who would turn out to be my roommate at the lodge. He’s a hardcore born-again Christian who leads the bible study group on the ship, and the conversation began when he noticed me reading my textbook for my religion class. As you may or may not know, I am not a religious person at all, but I was interested in what he had to say. Throughout the whole conversation, though, I was thinking of the last time we say Lewis Black. I restrained myself from screaming “FOSSILS FOSSILS FOSSILS FOSSILS I WIN.” No, but seriously, I think it is amazing that this guy really does believe the Bible word for word. His proof? In his heart, he says, and in his faith. I’ll stick with physics and evolution, thank you very much.

OK, so anyway, back to the Amazon. The lodge that we stayed at was ridiculous. Imagine us really roughing it. Then imagine the complete opposite of that, and that was our lodge. It was this secluded hotel with a big pool, dual-person cabins with nice beds and hot water showers, and big buffets for every meal of the day. The front of the lodge opened onto a private beach on the banks of the Amazon. There were two monkeys that roamed around the hotel grounds, and a bunch of parrots and macaws. The monkeys were so awesome; they were totally not afraid of people, would play with us, take food from your plates if you weren’t careful, and spent the day just climbing around the hotel and the surrounding trees. They just seemed like they were having so much fun, I was jealous.

We got to the lodge pretty late at night, and just went to bed that first night. We started the next morning with breakfast, played with the monkeys for a while, and then did a trek into the jungle. It was HOT. We were in the shade the whole time, but it must have been like 95 degrees and 100% humidity. I was sweating balls. Aside from that, though, the hike was awesome. There was this network of wooden bridges that we walked on for a while; I felt like I was in an Indiana Jones movie. Our guides show us some cool plants, like the plant that is used to make Vicks Vaporub. We climbed a wooden stairway to get a view of the forest canopy, which was quite amazing. We continued hiking, an dour guide found us a HUGE tarantula, seriously about the size of my fist. I have sweet pictures, but I’ll be honest, I was scared shitless. Then, our guide gave us a short course in jungle survival tips, which was cool. We didn’t really see any larger animals, but then again, we were in the Amazon, not in a zoo. Animals try to stay camouflaged, not out in the open for tourists to take pictures.

After lunch at the lodge, we took some motorized canoes to a small hut where an Indian family lived. Their means of supporting themselves was by growing and cultivating Manioc, a root vegetable kind of like a potato. They showed us how the plan was grown, harvested, and processed to remove the cyanide that is found naturally in the plant. It was amazing to see how simply these people lived. Their efforts were totally focused on the tasks of everyday living (The daughter did attend a public school in Manaus via ferry, however.) I cannot imagine living like that, but I am sure that these people think that our materialist culture and pace of life is absurd as well.

That night, we went out with our guide alligator hunting. Oh man, this was probably the highlight of the trip. We were out on a canoe with a big searchlight, scanning the beaches for the telltale reflection off of the alligators’ eyes. Once we found one, our guide caught him and brought him back onto the boat, where we all got to hold him and take some awesome pictures. That’s right, I held an alligator, and I still have all of my fingers and toes.

Day 3 began with a boat ride along the coast of Manaus and a trip to the Meeting of the Waters—the point where the Rio Negro meets the Rio Amazon. Manaus is a very interesting city. It is right on the banks of the Amazon, pretty much in the middle of the jungle, but it is this huge industrial center. Tons of manufacturing goes on here because it is a duty free center for Brazilians. It is quite the stark contrast, untouched jungle landscapes right next to manufacturing plants and oil refineries. The Meeting of the Waters was cool too—because of the differences in the temperature and density of the two rivers, they do not mix, so there is this sharp boundary with cloudy, red water from the Amazon on one side and clear black water from the Negro on the other.

For lunch, we took our riverboat to this small floating village, which was very cool. Afterwards, we walked to a nearby lagoon with huge lily pads and other wildlife—there was this really cool turtle just chillin on a log. We walked back to the floating village, and went piranha fishing! This was also a highlight—we just had these bamboo poles with hooks and little pieces of meat, and our group must have caught like 50 piranhas. I’m glad I didn’t fall in the water—individually, the piranhas were small and not that intimidating, but in a group, these little fuckers could do some serious damage. Too bad we didn’t have some kind of small mammal we could throw in the water, and just seem the piranhas swarm and devour this thing. That would have been CRAZY.

Finally, we returned back to the lodge for our final dinner and a party with other SAS kids that had been on riverboat trips around the Amazon. This was cool, a performance group dressed up in traditional Indian garb and danced around, and we all eventually joined in. There was fire breathing too, which was pretty sick. After the party, we started the long ass journey home—I think we traveled for like 15 hours straight today. We had some really long layovers in airports on the way back, and I had my first experience being a hobo and sleeping on the floor of an airport. Surprisingly comfortable, I must say, guess I have been missing out all of these years.

So, yeah, another great port experience. Defintely NOT what I expected from a trip to the Amazon River, but it met, if not exceeded, anything I could have hoped for. And now, goodbye South America, and we begin our journey over to Africa.

Bahia, Capoeira, and Sudaka

Finally, in Brazil! The past six days on the boat have been loooong...apparently Semester at Sea is trying to change its image and this year, they are making the classes a lot harder. WTF mate?! Yeah, so I´m doing a hell of a lot more reading than I want to be, and am actually going to every class, which is more than can be said for my time at Stanford. Anyway, it´s good to be in port again.

Yesterday was fricken´ sweet. Salvador is a cool city, and I think in the one day I have here, I got a good idea of what was going on. Took a huge elevator to the upper city, called the Pelorino. From up top, you could get an amazing view of the whole city and the port. Had a traditional lunch of acaraje, a dish made of fried black bean husks and stuffed with hot peppers and shrimp...not my absolute favorite, but pretty good. Also tried Caipirinhia, which is an amazing drink a lot like a Mojito, but tastier and stronger. A few of these through the afternoon made the day much more intresting to say the least. Wandered around up top and bought some souveniers, including a CD of a local Samba band called Olodum. This stuff is awesome, Ill play it for you guys when I get home. After exploring the upper city, we went back down the elevator to the Market Modelo, a huuge indoor/outdoor local market with every type of souvenir you could ever want. I bought a hand drum used in traditional Capoeira, which I am totally gonna rock out on the deck when we set sail. The only problem I had with Salvador was that I don´t speak a WORD of Portuguese, and most people here speak ONLY Portuguese. It is NOTHING like Spanish, which I tried repeatedly. I feel that I could have had a richer experience overall if I had been able to communicate with more than just simple hand gestures. Oh well.

Everywhere you go, there are people practicing Capoeira, the local dance/martial arts style. It is so fucking cool. Musicians around the circle keep the beat with drums and tambourines and an instrument called the Birembau , which is a one-stringed instrument that is slapped kind of like a Bass. The Capoeira is very fluid, there is no contact, and everyone is always moving, standing on their heads, cartwheeling...these people are incredibly strong and incredibly flexible. I watched a bunch, and want to learn more.

That night, we went to a welcome reception at a nearby university. I thought it was gonna be a chance for us to mingle with Brazilian students, but mostly it was just a big party for us. There was another Capoeira demonstration--I jumped in at the end and learned some basic moves. Then there was a mock Carnival ceremony, with lots of drumking and dancing. But the absolute coolest part of the night was this percussion group called Sudaka. There are no words to explain how hard this concert rocked. There were four guys, all playing different instruments with an electronica background. I have never danced so hard. Absolutely unbefuckinglievable...the first thing I am doing when I get home is ordering this CD .

So Day 1 in Brazil was a huge success. Today, I head off for the Amazon Jungle, which should be really cool. I hope we see some crazy animals, maybe even an anaconda.

The Venezuelan Adventure

Hey people.

OK, first, let me give you a longer description of my trip in Venezuela. We arrived in Venezuela the morning of Saturday, September 3rd. I went on a SAS trip called La Gran Sabana, which means The Great Savannah in Spanish. We left the boat very early in the morning, and drove to the La Guira airport, where we took a short flight down to Puerto Ordaz, about in the middle of the country. We were going to the southeastern part of Venezuela, and Caracas is on the very northern coast, so this first day we traveled a LOT. After we got to Puerto Ordaz, we met up with our guides for the trip, Arturo and Juan, who were awesome guys. We got into our vehicles for the trip, 2 big white Land Rovers with jumpseats in the back. These would be the closest thing we had to a home for the next 4 days, as we traveled all over La Gran Sabana. After we loaded up, we started the long drive (~6 hours) down to our destination. We had a really good meal of Cachapas (corn pancakes) and chicken and cheese at a local stop along the way. The trip down was quite eventful actually. We were stopped for the first time about an hour after lunch, when we encountered a huge tree that had fallen across the road. After waiting a bit, it was clear that it was going to take at least a few hours for the tree to be cleared, so we off-roaded it around the tree and were on our way. Another few hours later, and we were stopped again, this time by a car accident. This was pretty intense. A small car that was just about 100 yards in front of the first Land Rover flipped over and spun around like a top. Thanks to some good driving by Juan, we avoided hitting the car as it careened across the road, and slammed it into reverse, because we thought there was some danger of the car exploding. We wanted to help, but our SAS leader adamantly insisted that we stay back, because she didn’t want anything to happen to us. I understand her concern, but it was tough just waiting around and watching the local people help the driver out of his car. Fortunately, the driver was OK—just some minor scrapes on his face—but the whole thing was still a pretty scary experience.

A few hours later, we got to our lodge for the night, in a mining town called Las Claritas. The lodge was a lot nicer than I expected—clean beds, hot water in the showers, even air conditioning. We were all just happy to be out of the cars and done for traveling for the day. We had dinner at the lodge, and then went out to a local bar. Everyone was feeling much better after a few Soleras (the local cerveza). There was also a guy outside the pub that had this big snake that he let us hold and take pictures with. It was the first time I have ever held a snake, and it was WEIRD. It is very dry, not slimy at all, and just feels like this big muscle that is writing in your hands. Terrifying, but very cool.

The next day, we were up early, and after a quick breakfast, we continued onwards to La Gran Sabana. We stopped at a monument called La Piedra de La Virgen, or The Rock of the Virgin. It was this huge granite boulder with a shrine to the Virgin Mary. Got some cool pictures, and then kept driving. About noon, we got to the Aponwao River, where we were going to see Aponwao Falls. We took a river canoe ride to the mouth of the river, and then hiked down to the falls. It was AMAZING! You could FEEL the power emanating from this 300-foot waterfall. Standing at the base of the falls, feeling the mist shower over you, was incredible. Mother Earth 1, humans 0. After basking in the glory of the falls for a long while, we continued our hike to this cool secluded area, where there was a much smaller waterfall and a pond where we could swim. After the hike in the hot Venezuela sun, this was a great relief. We hiked back up to the top of the falls, took our canoes back to where our cars were, had lunch, and were off again. That evening, we were staying in a remote lodge in the middle of the plains. This place was amazing. There was literally no other settlement within a 30 mile radius. After a long day of off-roading and hiking, it was good to have an evening just to chill, play some cards, and do some GREAT stargazing—there was no light pollution, so you could see sooo many stars.

Day three was definitely our busiest day of the trip. We hit up no less than SIX different nature sites, which were all cool. It’s not worth really going into detail for all of them, but there was lots of swimming, hiking in the forest, great pictures, and at one stop we even got to jump off of this 30 foot ledge into a pool at the bottom of waterfall. The natural landscape here is just incredible—pictures to come later. That night was spend at yet another lodge; slightly less remote than the previous one, but cool nonetheless. A Venezuelan group was having a big birthday party at this lodge, so we got to make friends and get our pictures taken with lots of local people. We were as much of a tourist attraction as anything else, and all of these partiers wanted to take pictures with the Americans, so that was cool.

On day four, we started our trip back to the Puerto Ordaz airport, but were stopped when a protest in Las Claritas had closed the roads. Apparently, the miners were upset about the government not rationing enough gas for the town to power the mining machines, and were also demanding that the mining companies open up some more mines for people to work in. After a few hours, it was clear that we were NOT getting back through on this road, and SAS called a private plane to meet us at a remote airstrip back in La Gran Sabana. To be honest, most of us were hoping that we would NOT make it back to the boat on time, because then we would have had to just fly to brazil and chill there for a week to meet up with the boat. That would have been SWEET—instead of class, an extra week in Brazil. Alas, it was not to be, and the private plane got us back to Puerto Ordaz just in time to catch our plane back to La Guira. By the time I got back on the ship, the only thing I was thinking was SHOWER—I hadn’t showered since the first night of the trip, and while we had done a lot of swimming, everyone felt pretty grimy. On the bus from the La Guira airport, we met up with another SAS trip—these people had gone to another part of Venezuela, the Caura River, and apparently suffered a massive wave of food poisoning the second night they were there. Their trip was known among everyone on the boat as the Vomit trip—I am so glad that wasn’t us. The only thing we had suffered was a huge amount of bug bites—from these black flies that drank OFF for breakfast. I am still itching like crazy, but hopefully these will be gone before Brazil.

ANYWAY, yeah, in summary, Venezuela was fucking awesome. The people on my trip were very cool, and I spent 4 days in close proximity with these 13 other students, so it was a good boding experience in addition to an amazing time in nature. Looking back on the trip is just crazy—I just spend 4 days in fucking rural Venezuela hiking and off-roading in the back of a Land Rover! The bar for the rest of the journey is set high, people.

Whooo Civil Unrest!

So, I´m sitting in a small mining town called Las Claritas in the south of Venezuela. We were SUPPOSED to be driving up to a city called Puerto Ordaz where we going to catch a plane back up to La Guiira and the ship, BUT there is a protest in this town and the only road north is closed indefinitely. Crazy, right? Apparently, the town is not getting enough gasoline to power the mining machines on a regular basis, and are protesting to demand more gas from the government-run industry. We drove up to the north end of town, and there is a big party up there, with demonstrators on megaphones and literally hundreds of people and cars blocking the road. At this point, we are pretty sure that we are going to miss our flight back up to the boat, and are working out contingency plans--either they will hold the ship in port for us for a day, or they will fly us down to Brazil where we will meet up with the boat, or something. But no need to worry, it is a very peaceful protest, we are already set up at a nearby lodge, and this is more just a cool experience than something I am worried about. I´ll write another entry about the whole Venezuela trip at some point, but for now, we chill in the Internet Cafe and enjoy an extended trip to Venezuela.

Almost to Venezuela...

So, I’ve just finished my second full day of classes, and am getting more comfortable around the boat. Classes are eh. Global Studies, the class that we all have to take, is somewhat boring, but will be really easy. It does give some good relevant background on the countries we are visiting, but the professor is long-winded and every topic is the most important thing that has ever been lectured on. Oceanography has a TON of work—6 papers, 5 pages apiece, in addition to journal entries and a midterm and a final. The professor is on a high horse in this class also—the first class he was asking us “What is science. Can you prove science?” Seriously, come on. This is not a philosophy class. Anyway, I’m thinking of switching out of that one—I am not really that interested in the topic to warrant that much work on the boat. Modern Japan is fine, not great, but not terrible. And finally, Religious Traditions is the only class that actually held my interest the entire time. This will be my first official religion class, and I think it will be interesting to see how different religious practices are played out in different countries. Anyway, so yeah, that’s all I have to say about classes, I guess they will keep me busy while I’m on the boat. Still gotta kick my brain in gear though, the summer has been long and I have killed a lot of brain cells, as usual.

I’m finally getting to the point where I am seeing familiar faces and having more conversations rather than just introducing myself over and over again. The social scene is still pretty fluid, which is cool because I don’t really think that people are getting pigeon-holed into cliques yet. We had the first Pub Night on board last night, which was quite the experience. First of all, you have to stand in line for, in my case, 30 minutes, and possibly longer to get your 4 drink tickets for the evening. Seriously, you would think they were rationing bread or something. 4 drinks is also just barely enough to work up a social buzz, gotta get better at sneaking booze on board during our port visits. Despite that though, it was fun to see a big social gathering on board, met even more new people, someone brought a boom box down and was rocking the 80’s music, which was awesome. Definitely better than playing board games, which was the activity of choice the night before. Oh, by the way, my computer monitor crapped out yesterday, which is FANTASTIC. Seriously, what fucking unbelievable timing. So, my ability to watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force and all of these movies I brought on my hard drive has been all but eliminated. Oh well.

Tomorrow we get to Venezuela, and I am fucking PUMPED. We dock at 8 AM, at which point I am going on a 4 day trip called La Gran Sabana. It is an outdoorsy trip, with hiking and visits to waterfalls and sleeping in huts. I’ll tell you more about it afterwards, because I really don’t know exactly what to expect right now.

Good talk, see ya out there.