Neptune Day and Brazil!

Neptune Day

The day of 1/30/06 was Neptune Day!! Neptune Day is celebrated during the crossing of the equator. Well, we crossed the equator at about 3am, but we celebrated it with a wake-up call from our cabin stewards at 7:30am. But these weren’t our normal stewards. My cabin steward Joel (the best cabin steward ever), showed up banging on my door dressed in a native costume. When I opened it I was met with Joel pointing a spear at me and saying with his Pilipino accent, “Michael and Matthew! It’s Neptune Day! Time to get up!”

With that, Matt and I got showered, dressed, and headed up for some breakfast. It was the most gorgeous day I have ever seen. It by far beat any other day at sea that we have had. The weather was perfect, 82 degrees and sunny. The water was BRIGHT blue, and the temperature of it was 80 degrees. I love South America. When the rest of the red beanie crew and I showed up on deck 7, we posed for about 25 photos. Let me explain this…

Matt (my roommate), Tony, and Alex are all really good friends. They wear red beanies to symbolize their not only fondness for the movie, “The Life Aquatic”, but also their connection with sailing the world like Steve Zissou. Well Ryan (Alex’s roommate), Grant (Tony’s roommate), and me (Matt’s roommate), were all inducted into this group and given a red beanie as well. That makes six of us that wear a red beanie around the ship all day. The red beanie crew has become the talk of the ship, if you will. Since many people don’t really know why we wear them, there have been many many rumors that have floated around as to why this group of six guys wear these red beanies. One of these many rumors was that it was to show that we all had taken a vow of celibacy. We even heard this rumor from a teacher! Well, we made sure to kill that rumor, but all the other ones we kind of just rolled with the fun of it. Every day, everyone on the ship receives a sheet of the “Dean’s Memo”, which is a list of announcements and messages that need to be announced to the shipboard community. There is always a section called “Rumor Control”. This section always tells whether the current rumors going around the ship are true or not. For example, it said last week that it is true we will be stopping in Hawaii and Singapore for fuel, but we will not be getting off. So that is what the rumor control section is. Well, yesterday, the rumor control section had us rolling on the ground laughing. I picked up the Dean’s Memo yesterday to read this sentence under the rumor control section, “The Red Beanie Crew was not wakeboarding behind the ship while we were sailing from Puerto Rico. The ship was out of wakeboards during that time, so this would not have been possible.”

That was hilarious. I love our Red Beanie Crew. We are the best.

Anyways, back to Neptune Day. After breakfast and the Red Beanie Crew posing for tons of pictures on the 7th deck by the pool, we waited for King Neptune to arrive. King Neptune is the King of the seas, and we have to transform from pollywogs to shellbacks. This ship goes all out for these events, and I love it. Before King Neptune came out, several of the crew members dressed in foil made Viking hats and colorful costumes with flags came out with drums and started playing a cadence. Everyone was taking pictures and cheering. After that, King Neptune and his wife were introduced. This was the two academic deans, and they were dressed like you wouldn’t believe. Please check my pictures to see it, I can’t even describe it. After they were introduced and seated poolside, we had to prove our faithfulness to King Neptune by taking an oath. Next was the fun part. This is where everyone transforms from “pollywogs” to “shellbacks”. First, you must step up beside the pool, and two crew members will take a pitcher, dump it in a bin full of fish guts and slime, scoop it out, and dump it over your head. Next, you jump in the pool then get out and kiss a fish on the lips. After that you kiss King Neptune’s ring and his trident. Did I take part in this silliness? Hell yes. Matt and Alex went in front of me, then Ryan and I stepped up. The fish guts and slime were poured over our heads, and we jumped in the pool. If your wondering how it smelled, it smelled just as bad as it tasted. It was so much fun though. It isn’t real fish guts. It is a slime substance with junk in it that I have no idea what it is. Maybe it is fish guts…

After that we got out, kissed the ‘oh so good looking’ fish, ring, and trident, then proceeded to complete our transformation. Head shaving. You bet I was going to do it. There was a raffle the day before to have the Captain of the ship shave your head. Matt and I didn’t win, but we watched as the ones who did got their heads shaved. The Captain shaved all 5 winning kids’ heads, including 2 girls. A good amount of girls surprisingly shaved their heads. After the captain was finished, they started shaving everyone’s head who wanted it shaved. Unfortunately, they had one pair of clippers, and it was taking FOREVER. The Red Beanie Crew said forget this, and we went back to Alex’s room and used Grant’s clippers. Ryan, then Alex, then me, and then Matt all had our heads shaved by Grant. We were now officially shellbacks! We all looked so different with no hair. It was hilarious. Grant already had a shaved head, so he didn’t do it. Tony was too chicken, and he won’t do it, so we are going to shave his head in the middle of the night sometime.

After that we ate lunch, then everyone who had their head shaved gathered on deck 4 for a group picture. We all looked up at the photographer on deck 5 and he took the picture of all the shaved heads. I am sure it will be in the yearbook, along with several of our Red Beanie Crew poses. To top it all off, on the most beautiful day of the trip, dolphins began jumping off the starboard aft of the ship. The best day ever.

The rest of the day was pretty lazy. I took a nap, seeing as I got 5 hours of sleep the night before. The night before, at 11pm, about 10 of us had a crazy idea to have a swing dancing party, and we cleared all the chairs out of one of the classrooms for some amazing swing dancing. That lasted until about 2am, and then we had to turn our clocks ahead one hour for changing time zones, again. With the wonderful wake-up call from Joel, that left me with little sleep. That is where my nap comes in. I slept from about 1-4, then I got up and hung out with Mallary on the back of the ship and enjoyed the most gorgeous day ever. We then went to dinner, ate outside of course, and talked until the sun set behind the horizon. The moon was amazing that night. It is only about a quarter moon, but for some reason on the equator, you can see the entire outline of it. It seems much larger and sits lower in the sky. It really was something to see. 3 days later, we landed in Brazil.

Brazil

Wow, I have so much to write, but I don’t want to write a novel here. I will try to sum up my experience in Brazil as best I can, but it will do it no justice for sure. It is hard to read something on a computer screen and take the experience in fully. I know this because I read many journals online from students of the fall voyage last semester. It was a fascinating read, but I have realized that experiencing it is so much more fascinating, and it kills me that I can’t convey to you the same experience I have had. So that being said, enjoy what I write, but bear in mind…. it was so much damn cooler than it sounds!

“Brazil is dangerous. You will get mugged. Keep your hands in your pockets. Wear a money belt. Walk in large groups. Walk with large men. Don’t go out at night. Don’t drink the water. Don’t wear jewelry. Don’t eat food from street vendors. Don’t talk to sketchy locals on the street. Don’t walk, use taxis. Females – don’t wear revealing clothing. Take malaria medication. Beware of people on the street who will offer to exchange your currency. Beware of bag slashing with razors. There is a 100% chance you will be pick pocketed.”

With phrases like these, would you want to visit the country of discussion? I wouldn’t. This is what SAS drilled into our heads in the days before our Brazil arrival. At the pre-port lecture, it was basically an hour of nothing but “all the bad things that not only COULD happen to you in Brazil, but WILL happen to you.” Thanks for making us paranoid SAS, it was not worth it. Because of all these warnings I did not bring a credit card to Rio, nor did I bring enough cash. I got by, but I wish I wasn’t thrown into a scared straight program the night before I were to set foot on a country I had been waiting to visit for as long as I could remember.

Yes, Brazil has its problems, but so does every other country or city in this world. Are Brazil’s problems with crime, prostitution, and drugs a little more serious then let’s say… our country? Yes, of course, but that doesn’t mean that Brazil isn’t one hell of a country, because it is. So here is my consensus of the largest country in South America…

I LOVE IT! Brazil was everything I expected it to be and more. I was a little apprehensive my first time stepping foot into the city of Salvador. This was my real first time being immersed in a culture so radically different than my own. I have traveled outside the country to Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean, but everything there is very Americanized and similar to our culture. Brazil is nothing of the sort. The scenery, people, culture, music, food, and shopping is out of this world. How do I know all this? Here is my story from the beginning…

We were scheduled to dock in the port of Salvador at 0800. I set my alarm for 0630 so I could get up and watch us pull in past the city. I woke up and got to deck 7 around 0700. It was perfect timing. I watched as we pulled past towns and cities, and I got my first look at Brazil. The buildings and homes were built into a terrain like I had never seen before. It was crazy to see all these structures built in with the forest and all the hills. I immediately got very excited to get off the ship and see this country. I had to wait though. We anchored first in the waterway while immigration came on board and checked us all through. At about 0830 we were docked. Immigration took absolutely forever, and we didn’t get off the ship until almost 1100. When we got off, several people and I went to walk around the city of Salvador for a while. When I stepped out of the building at the end of the pier, we were immediately hassled and grabbed at by street vendors and kids trying to sell us crap. I thought to myself, “it’s only going to get worse, but this culture is fascinating.” Salvador is set up kind of cool. There is a lower city and an upper city. The lower city does not offer much stuff other than a few markets in a certain area. There is a huge elevator that we had to take to get to the upper city. Of course, it is our luck the elevator broke when it was our turn, but we eventually got up there. The upper city was really cool. The views of All Saints Bay and the ocean were spectacular. There are many shops, restaurants, and creative architecture that makes walking around fun. Besides telling hundreds if people trying to sell me stuff, “No Obrigado(no thank you in Portuguese)”, I had a great time getting my first taste of Brazil. Most of the side streets are all brick and lined with vendors and shops with everything from musical instruments to paintings. After about an hour and a half of walking around, we headed back to the ship because most of us had signed up for some trips for our class work. I had signed up to go to an Afro-Brazilian museum and Candomble house.

The Afro-Brazilian museum was informative and a bit interesting, but it’s a museum. Salvador is the second most African influenced city in the world outside of Africa. This was good because it gave me a lot of information for my history of Africa class. I have to turn in a field report when classes start again about my experiences with the African influence in Brazil. The candomble house was amazing. Candomble is a spiritual ritual that is most like a religion to the people who practice it. The ceremonies include dancing, drumming, and being put into a trance. The Brazilians dance for hours until they enter the trance where they believe the spirits will enter them. At the house we were able to see the rooms they performed this in, and the decorations that applied. What was even cooler was we were able to talk to two women who were devotees to candomble. This was apparently very rare to be able to speak to these women, and my world music teacher I think almost had an aneurism when he got to speak to them.

After that we came back to the ship, ate a quick dinner, and then everyone was getting ready to go out to the welcome reception they had signed up for. I did not sign up for it before SAS started, and it turns out a lot of my friends did. I decided to get in the waiting list line to get on the trip if people didn’t show up. It turns out they had enough room, and off I was to the reception. The welcome reception is hosted by certain universities in the country, and they have local music, food, and dancing all fused together for one heck of a party. For some reason, there weren’t any other university students there from Brazil, it was just us. There was a youth percussion ensemble there that was unbelievable. They pounded away on their drums for a good couple hours while dancers in amazing costumes danced traditional dances. After that they turned up the dance music, switched on some crazy lights, and the party was on. Oh yeah, this was all in a big church, and they were serving us beer from Antarctica. Talk about confusion. It was one of the most fun nights of this trip I have had so far. We danced and partied until about midnight, then came back to the ship. I had to be up at 3am to go to Rio.

The alarm went off at 0300, and I was running on about 2 hours of sleep. I had signed up to go on a 3 day, 2 night trip called, “The Best of Rio de Janeiro”. We were to meet by 0400 on the 5th deck. Like I said, I woke up at 0300 and got there at about 0330. The crew on this ship is unbelievable. They cooked a huge breakfast for all the trips leaving early that day. It really was a nice surprise. So anyways, we left the ship at about 0400, and went to Salvador airport. We flew from Salvador to Brasilia, then from Brasilia to Rio. Why we did this I have no idea. Brasilia was WAY out of the way, and it took about 2 hours longer than a direct flight would have. Also, when we flew to Brasilia, we flew west to get there, and we jumped ahead an hour. I am still trying to figure out how this is possible. Normally when you fly west you go back time. This time we were ahead an hour when we flew west. No one could really figure it out, and the best thing I could come up with was that there is a weird jump in the timetable map. Anyways, when we reached Rio we boarded nice big air conditioned tour buses and were greeted by our tour guide Marcelo. He was awesome. We first set out for a restaurant so we could eat. We ate at a place on Copacabana beach called Marius. It was the craziest restaurant I have ever been to. I have never seen so much food in my life. There was a buffet that was as long as I could see, with foods I could only figure out what a few of them were. The food was excellent though. What was really cool was that when they served all the meat, they came around with the whole piece of meat on a skewer, and they would put the skewer on your plate, cut you some pieces, and keep doing it over again until you told them you were going to explode. By the way, the bathrooms in this place deserved a picture. When you first walk in, you get knocked over by the smell of flowers, which was kind of weird. When you go to use the urinal, well there really isn’t one. It’s a tub, set in granite, filled with colored stones and ice. The sinks as well. So I opted not to pee on the stones and ice, and instead took a picture.

After lunch we went to go visit sugar loaf. Sugar loaf is a huge set of mountains that are accessible by cable cars and give you a bird’s eye view of Rio. It was a bit cloudy out, but we took the cable cars to the top and the views were amazing. I’m not so sure my camera captured it well, but you will get the idea. There were some pretty smelly foreigners in the cable cars, but we survived. We hung out for a while at the top of sugar loaf and had some drinks while overlooking the city of Rio and much of the forests of Brazil. After that we got back in the buses and checked into the Plaza Copacabana Hotel. We were literally one block from the infamous Copacabana beach. It was gorgeous. When we checked in, the hotel threw us a little get together on the pool deck, which was the top deck of the hotel. The view was incredible. I could see a large section of the beach, and nothing but hilly forests on the other side. They served us what looked to be lemonade with limes, but when I took a big sip I became aware it was straight vodka, yuk. So following our little pool get together I took a much needed nap. I slept a bit on the plane ride down, but the announcements from the flight attendants in Portuguese kept waking me up, then made me angry because I never understood any of it. Flying outside of the USA is so different. They won’t scold you to death if you have a bag in the aisle, or you are listening to an mp3 player during takeoff. They don’t even check the names of the ticket with the person who is using it. On the flight down and the flight back, 2 girls had the same boarding pass with the same name on it. This was after we went through all checkpoints and were at the gate. There isn’t even really security. It’s a wimpy little metal detector and that’s it. Oh yeah, on the way back, for some reason one of the passengers didn’t have a seat, SO THEY SAT HIM IN THE JUMPSEAT IN THE COCKPIT. That’s right, there was a random guy in the cockpit during the whole flight. I give the airlines in Brazil an A+ for security concerns. Other than that stuff, everything was great. They serve meals, unlike in the U.S. Don’t worry, I flew on the most popular airline in Brazil if you are wondering. It is called Varig Brasil. Anyways I am getting off topic.

After my nap at the hotel, Mark realized he did not have any jeans to go out in that night. A lot of clubs or bars will require you to wear long pants to get in. So Mark and I took off for a massive mall down the street. It was a skyscraper and there was just floor after floor of stores. Mark bought some jeans in a store called Taco after I laughed at him, and we grabbed a cab back to the hotel. Speaking of cabs, let me describe the driving in Brazil. It isn’t driving. It is, “let me see how close I can get to you while cutting you off so I can drive as fast as I can without hitting you with no regard to pedestrians while I blast Brazilian samba music and pay no attention to traffic rules at all.” Traffic is crazy. They really don’t drive in any set way, it is all over the place, and I am surprised I am still alive. Anyways, after we got back from the mall, we all decided to head out to dinner. About 30 of us walked down Copacabana beach to eat. We found a restaurant which wasn’t hard. Every restaurant down there has waiters standing out front that basically beg and usher you in there. I went up to one of the guys and he asked me how many and I told him 30, and he said it would be no problem. Surprisingly he was right and we were led into a big restaurant that was very lively. I ordered gnocchis with meat sauce, which I couldn’t believe they had. There was so much of it but it was so good. The name of the restaurant was Sandicotto Do Chopp. I have no idea what it means, but the food was awesome and we had a great time. After that we walked down the beach and found an American pub. Don’t ask me why we went to an American bar in Rio, but we started talking to the guy who owns it, and he is from Chicago and said we would have a good time because there was live music inside. He was right, and we had a great time listening to the guys playing American music and chatting it up all night. I ordered a margarita, but it was the worst margarita I have ever had so I didn’t bother to spend any more of my money on drinks. We left the bar around 1, and then headed back to the hotel. They are setting up a huge stage on Copacabana beach because apparently the Rolling Stones are doing a huge free concert there next week. It looked like it would be pretty cool, even though I don’t like the stones. We could see the stage every time we walked back to the hotel. We eventually got back to the hotel, and I went to bed because we had to be up at 8 for a full day of touring.


Day 2 in Rio was awesome. I woke up at 8, went down for some breakfast, and had some great Brazilian fruit juice that I have never heard of. After that we met up with our tour guides again and split up into 4 different vans. I was with the amazing Marcelo again, and he told us all about Brazil as we took the drive up to Corcovado. Corcovado is where the Christ the redeemer state is located. This mountain the statue is built on is over 2000 feet high, and you can see the statue from pretty much anywhere in Rio. The drive up to Corcovado was amazing. We drove through the Tijuca rainforest on cobblestone streets past little villages and home. When we finally reached the top of the mountain, we walked the 200 steps up to the monument, and it was really impressive. It was higher than sugar loaf and the views were just as amazing. The statue itself was huge and we all took pictures in front of it. There were a lot of people there and it was really crowded, but it was worth it to see it. After that we boarded 4X4 jeeps at the base of the statue and drove down through the jungle in them. It was so much fun riding in the open air jeeps really fast down the mountain. We then drove through the Santa Theresa district where we stopped, shopped, and had lunch. We ate at a restaurant called Sobrenatural, which was ok, but not great. This is the only bad part about SAS trips, when you are doing tours and are not doing stuff on your free time like at night, you go the restaurant they set up and eat the food they pay for. So they only served fish and rice to everyone at the restaurant, and I guess a lot of people either don’t like fish or were allergic so they were mad they couldn’t get anything else. Anyways, after lunch we watched a samba band play in the street while several SAS’ers danced to the music. We then boarded our cars again and were taken to a favela. Favelas are what slums are in Brazil. About 1/3 of the population of Brazil live in favelas. When we got there, we went to a community center that had been set up by volunteers and donations to give children something to do, and keep them off of streets and the life of crime. At the center there was a team of young kids playing soccer. They were amazing at the game. A couple of the SAS kids on our trip who think they are the coolest people on the face of the earth got a pickup game going against the kids. SAS lost, 3-1. You don’t mess with the Brazilian kids in soccer. After that we walked around the community center and saw a dance team of young girls. We then boarded our vans once again and headed to another famous tourist attraction, the cathedral. The cathedral was HUGE. From the outside it looks like a business building, but on the inside it has huge stained glass windows, and the ceiling is unbelievably high. After the cathedral we were dropped back off at the hotel around 4, and the rest of the day was our own. I went to the internet café next door for about an hour and caught up with some people from home on things. Sounds like the social life at UNH is heating up pretty well, and Syracuse now apparently has a problem with playing good basketball. I also got a flood of emails about a ship sinking in the Red Sea. I kind of got the story from some people, and heard that a lot of people were killed on it. I really don’t know what is going on. We don’t receive any sort of news coverage here on the ship, unless I go online and use my extremely expensive internet minutes, which I only do to update this blog, if the internet even works at the time. So basically I will be out of the loop until April. I do hear that Jimmy Buffett will be taking the summer off and touring only in the spring and fall, which works for me because I can work during the summer and save up for some fall shows. Rumors are also pouring in that he will be starting his tour on the west coast in April, so it looks like I may not be coming home as soon as I thought I would. If there is a set of shows out there when we dock, I am going. Look at me, I have rambled again, where was I?

Oh yes, after the internet café I went up to the pool deck with a few people to catch some rays in the beautiful South American sun, surrounded by tropical rainforests and the Copacabana beach. Up on the pool deck we met a man in an unfortunately very tight speedo(as all of the men that aren’t from the U.S. wear), who was from Paris. He spoke enough English for us to have a nice conversation with him, and I learned he was a fireman in Paris, which was cool. He told us some cool things to do at night in Rio, and we then went back down to our rooms to change. A bunch of us then went out to dinner again on Copacabana beach. We walked within the markets first, and several of my friends bought some awesome paintings from local artists. After that we chose one of the restaurants that again were dying for us to come and eat there, and we chose one hell of a restaurant. We heard over and over again how Copacabana is not a place to go at night. We knew that, but we knew how to handle ourselves and were with a big group of people and had no problems. On the other hand, when we were told there were prostitutes and all kinds of stuff down there at night, we didn’t realize the extent of the truth to this until we got to that restaurant. After we got our drinks and ordered our food, we realized that we were at ground zero for hookers. There was maybe one other older American couple in the restaurant, and at all the tables surrounding us were nothing but hundreds of prostitutes and pimps. Within our group that we went to dinner with, there were about 4 guys including me, and about 10 girls. The girls didn’t realize this at first until I nicknamed the restaurant, “Hooker Heaven”. After that we all were laughing at some of the unbelievable sights we were taking in, and we all agreed it was an experience we will never forget. Both outside restaurants on either side of us had maybe one or two people in it. We somehow managed to land in the hooker capital of Rio. It was obvious the restaurant owners allowed this, and I’m sure they got a cut from the big time pimps or whatever. I am laughing as I am writing this because you just had to have been there because it really was a site to see. THEY WERE EVERYWHERE. Besides that, I had some of the best pizza I had ever had. So after dinner, I was too drained to go out. Some people did, but most stayed in. I just went back to the hotel, found one of the American channels on the TV, watched Seinfeld with Portuguese subtitles, and went to sleep.

Day 3 was free for us to do whatever we wanted to do. We all met up around 11, checked out of our rooms, and went to Ipanema. In Rio there are two major tourist areas and beaches. Copacabana and Ipanema. Ipanema in my opinion is incredibly nicer than Copacabana. I think the stores are nicer, it is cleaner, and there are more restaurants. Both have incredible beaches. We shopped for a little while. I did not buy anything because I was short on cash. Like I said before, I did not bring all that much to Rio because we were unnecessarily scared straight. We then ate lunch at a place called Dolce Delicia. The food was great. I had bruschetta. After that we went back to the hotel and hung out for a little while until we had to meet in the lobby to leave. The whole trip group met around 5:45 and we then got on the buses and headed to the airport. We checked in at the airport and went to our gate, but we barely made our flight because there was a gate change and for some reason there is no notification of that anywhere. No screens say it, and everything announced is in Portuguese. So basically we figured out that when it came time to board, there was no plane at our gate and we eventually found the right one. This time we had a direct flight from Rio to Salvador, and we got in to Salvador at around 10pm. We got back to the ship around 11. I went up to the pool bar on the 7th deck with Ryan, and we got some food and I called my parents on my international cell phone. It sounds like the ‘cuse is faring well without me, which is surprising seeing as I hold up that town. Ha, I crack myself up.

Anyways, Sunday was our last day in Brazil, and no, we did not get to watch the Super Bowl. I woke up at 8, and Ryan and I went to go get some breakfast, then we met up with about 5 other people and headed down to the markets in the lower city of Salvador. I bought an awesome drum for 60 reals(about $30 US), a capoeira bow for 3 reals(about $1.50 US), and a Brazilian soccer jersey for 25 reals(about $12 US) that the lady told me was real Nike. Yeah, right. So basically I spent 100 reals that day, and about 100 reals in Rio. That is 200 reals. The exchange rate is around 2.1-2.4% depending on the day. That means I spent a total of approximately $100 American dollars in Brazil. That is awesome. That does not include what I paid for the Rio trip or the soccer game later that day, but that is on my main shipboard account. So later that day after shopping, we came back and exchanged stories with the people who were returning from the Amazon, including the rest of the red beanie crew.

At 1530 we went on an SAS trip to a Brazilian soccer game. Can you say INSANE?? It was one of the most fun nights I have had at a sporting event. We got to the soccer stadium, and were ushered in from the buses as quickly as possible. The reason for this was that there were a lot of women on this trip, and the men that were around were definitely a potential hazard. There were several times during the game when me and a few friends had to either escort a girl to the beer stand, or break up a confrontation where a man would not leave her alone and kept harassing her. It sometimes got difficult to tell them she was not interested and they needed to leave her alone. Some of the behavior of the Brazilian men really disappointed me, because I know that the Brazilians are warm and gentle people, but there are always those who choose to not be. Anyways, the soccer game was intense. It eventually ended with a tied score of 1-1, but when the team we were rooting for, Bahia, scored a goal, the stadium went absolutely nuts. People were lighting off fireworks, hugging each other, screaming at the top of their lungs, chanting, and throwing balloons and towels everywhere. The Brazilians love their soccer. My favorite part was that the referees were always escorted off the field by riot police. When the game was over, we waited about 20 minutes before we left for the same reason as before. When it came time for us to leave, there were about 300 SAS kids on this trip, and we were all escorted out by Military Police. It was awesome. There were riots in the street and stampedes, and the police were surrounding us as people were trying to get in our group and yelling things to us. It was full blown craziness. It was actually a little frightening, but it was so awesome to see. We finally made it to the buses while the MP’s held all the rioting Brazilians at bay.


I then came back and got some dinner with some people, and then we got some smoothies on the pool deck of course. We then set up some chairs on the top of the 7th deck by the edge. I called my parents for a few minutes and talked to them. Alex broke out his mandolin, and we set sail around 11. We left Brazil in the darkness, all lit up and free of SAS. I will be back though. I absolutely loved Brazil, and I can’t justify living the rest of my life without returning.

Now it is time for work. I have several field reports to write up, and we have 8 days of classes. I believe we get one day off for our Sea Olympics. I’m not sure. We dock in Cape Town, South Africa on February 14, Valentines Day. You can bet I will be up fro the sunrise that day. We get 7 days in South Africa, and I can’t wait.

That is all for now. My hair is starting to grow back. I’m not sure if I like this shaved head thing. It definitely is easier to have, but I don’t think I like the look of it much. I may keep it shaved for the rest of the trip because we are going to hit some really really hot places, and it will keep my head cooler. We will see. On a good note, I have yet to get sun burnt, surprisingly. I’m not even that much tanner. It must be the wonderful lack of sun in Syracuse that my skin is used to. Oh well.

I hope you all are enjoying my writings, and stay tunes for more. Goodbye!

P.S. – No, sadly I did not see the girl from Ipanema :-)