Just what I needed?a day on the beach!

We woke up today in Mauritius!

Sara, Ashley and I hopped off right away and set out for the local market. We found it a little bit disappointing considering most of it was imported from India and other neighboring countries and also really expensive! There are no natives to Mauritius by the way, only immigrants and tourist. After a while at the markets, we decided to head to the beach. Our cab driver took us to this BEAUTIFUL tiny little beach where the water was luke warm. We stayed there for the majority of the day and ran into various SAS students throughout the day. At one point, my friends Lindsay and Hadley decided that they wanted to go tubing! So they did and I went on the boat to take pictures of them. It was pretty funny! Afterward, we walked to have some lunch at a Chinese restaurant near by. Then we explored a few of the shops near by and headed back to the harbor area. Thankfully, we got an AMAZING cab driver. He took us through the part of the island that most tourists don’t get to see. He took us by all sorts of Hindu temples, Muslim mosques and through beautiful fruit markets and little shops. He even stopped and let us book a hostel for Thailand at an internet café! He really was the greatest. As soon as we got back to the ship, Kristina, one of my friends who shaved her head, realized that she hadn’t picked up any earrings! (She is collecting earrings) So we made a mad dash for the nearest open shop (everything in Mauritius closes at 4 or 5) to find some earrings! We finally did and then hopped on a water taxi just in time to make it on the ship! It was a perfect, relaxing, beautiful day.

Until India!!!!!!

Best Port Ever. South Africa.

Most definitely my favorite port thus far. Cape Town reminded me of a mixture of San Francisco and Sydney. I think that I am going to make this easier for you and for me and this is how I am going to do it:

Day 1: I was feeling sick this day with a nasty cough and a runny nose. I ended up staying around the waterfront area and explored the different craft markets. I got some really great stuff! Then I met up with Ashley and two other girls and set out for a night of theatre. We went to a little tapas restaurant near the theatre for dinner before hand and met up with other SASers at the theatre. The play was absolutely phenomenal. It was a silent play that used masks and Commedia del arte. It was so beautiful, I highly recommend looking it up! Pictures of You it is called. It’s a story of an older couple and how their life together has changed. There are frightening nightmare sequences that are paired with young love flashbacks. I think we all left the theatre absolutely blown away.

Day 2: I woke up this morning with absolutely no plans. I decided just to go to breakfast and see who I could find. Unfortunately the only people I found were the Chapman boys. Now, they are nice guys, but I have never met a group of people that are so stingy and disconnected from the world. I feel like they haven’t had too many real life experiences if that makes sense. Anyways because cabs cost money, they decided that we should walk to Long Street, one of the main streets in downtown Cape Town with lots of shopping and food and clubs. Well, named appropriately, Long Street is quite long and little did we know that most of the good stuff was at the far end. About half way through, the boys got frustrated and decided to turn back after some ice cream. Well, as they were eating ice cream, I turend to Christina and said, “I think I need to start taking a hold of my own destiny on this ship” and she said “do you want to start right now?” and I said absolutely! We hopped in a cab and had him take us to the closest beach. We ended up at Clifton Beach which is in a very Malibu-esque area with an absolutely BEAUTIFUL beach. After hanging out for a while and watching awkward guys in speedos, we decided to walk down to hill to an area called Camps Bay where there are a bunch of shops and restaurants. We got some ice cream and shopping and then went to the grocery store where we saw JADE FROM AMERICA’S NEXT TOP MODEL!!! Christina got a picture with her and I really hope it turns out!!!! Anyways so the guy at the shop we bought dresses at suggested an AMAZING restaurant to us that had these huge white couches with big blue pillows that you sat on to eat. We had a couple other people meet us there and it was by far the most enjoyable dinner I have had thus far. Good food and great company! Plus lots of fruity girly drinks…including a fish bowl drink called the Jelly Fish that was litchi flavored! YUM! Then we went back to the ship to change and then all went out dancing! It was SO much fun. The best night I have had so far, I can’t even explain.

Day 3: I found my future work place. We did a visit to the Amy Biehl Foundation. For those of you who have never heard of her, Amy Biehl was a student who came to South Africa in the 90s to help ratify apartheid. She was going to pick up her friends in a Township (shanty town where the blacks were forced to live) during a riot, when she was attacked and killed. After her death, her parents started this foundation which provides after school activities for kids in townships. The most amazing thing is that there were four killers convicted, two of which her parents have forgiven and that now work for the foundation! It just blows my mind! Anyways so we went to the main office and learned all about what they do and then they took us to a couple different schools where they have programs. A bunch of the kids performed for us and it was absolutely hard warming. Then we met up with another group of kids in a field hockey program that the Dutch national team had come to teach! They were so ecstatic and full of hope! Afterward, a group of girls and I decided to go watch the rugby game at a local sports bar, well as we were waiting, a bunch of people came by and said that tickets were still available! So somehow we ended up getting tickets and going to the game! It was a lot of fun even though I had NO idea what was going on! Haha! Afterward, we all went to a local jazz club for a drink and some live music. It was the perfect way to end the day!

Day 4: This was the day that I planned a trip all on my own! I planned my very own cycling through the wine lands tour! Little did I know how out of shape I was haha! We met up with our tour guide on Long Street and then headed to the train station where we boarded a very run down train to Stellenbosch. Throughout the course of the day, we visited 4 wine farms and cycled about 14 miles. My butt was aching! But it was a lot of fun in the end and we all definitely met our exercise quota! When we got back to the ship, a bunch of safaris had just gotten back so the line to get back on was HUGE! Butters (a Chapman guy whose real name is Andrew) and I decided that it wasn’t worth it to wait so we wandered around a little bit and got some fancy sushi for dinner…unfortunately it wasn’t very good sushi. Once we got back on the ship, I sort of decided to call it a night. But then Dalia came knocking on my door insisting I come out with her. So we went to an Iris pub on Long Street to see our resident guitar man play. Not only was it Thursday, so the pub was packed, but it was also gay night!!! It was fun and in the end I was glad I went out.

Day 5: Last day : ( Today Ashley and I were supposed to go to a township on another one of my planed tours. Unfortunately, because it is so hard to keep up communication on the ship, the tour didn’t actually get booked, so instead we just hung out around the water front.

I really love South Africa and have every intention of returning, maybe even to work here!

Until Mauritius!

Namibia

Its true what they say about Namibia; the desert bumps right up to the ocean! We started off day one by taking FOREVER to change our money. Then we worked really hard to negotiate a taxi price to Swakopmund because we knew that they all wanted to charge us far too much. After finally giving up we hopped in a taxi driven by a guy named Chico with a gold star in his tooth. He drove us the 25 minute drive to Swakopmund from Walvis Bay. The road had giant sand dunes on one side and the ocean on the other!

Swakopmund is a quaint little German town with all sorts of little shops and a beautiful beach! We started our day (Valentine’s Day) at the internet café where I wasn’t able to load any pictures : ( and then had lunch at a little café near there. I had a vegetarian burger that consisted of mushrooms, canned pineapple, cheese, and a fried egg…it was interesting to say the least. Then once we made a few phone calls, we set out for the day. We walked the practically empty streets to the ocean side where we found the Aquarium. It was pretty small with little tanks filled with pretty ordinary fish. Then they had one main tank with a tunnel that you could walk through. We made it just in time to see a diver get in the tank and feed the fish. There were lots of sharks and bigger fish and one or two sea turtles in the tank, one who was particularly hungry. He literally followed the diver and would go right up to the diver’s face until he was fed, he would swallow the fish whole and then go right back for more. The diver actually had to push the turtle away a few times! Then we went upstairs and found that you could look into the tank from above. While we were up there, the hungry turtle had found a new friend. He would come up and touch her hand and then swim back down. When she left, I put my head over the water ad he came up and gave me a kiss! It was pretty cool, but we didn’t get a picture : (.

When we were upstairs, we were joined by a group of chattering African school children crowdig around our feet and pressing their faces against the glass. We were surrounded and coldnt escape. Then their teacher, a yound English guy, asked them to let us through. He explained to us that they were a group of students from a very poor, rural village in Namibia. He said that they were seeing the sea for the first and probably the last time. Since we are both from California, we gave them first priority.

We left the Aquarium with a humbled feeling and set out to climb the tower in the middle of the town. We figured out that to get the key to the tower you had to go into this little shop and pay some small amount of money. Well it turns out that that shop was the best in all of Swakopmund. I had more fun at the shop than I did climbing the tower! It was run by these amazingly nice women who fill their store with all sorts of crafts and jewelry and gifts made by different collectives throughout Namibia. They know every single one of their craft makers personally and most of the proceeds go to some sort of Women’s tuberculosis village or another. I got some really great stuff there and we talked to them for a long time. We later found out when we got back onto the ship that our dean had also visited the shop and that the women had raved about us to him! They were so sweet!

Anyways we met up with some friends at the shop and then set out for more exploring. We went to this craft market near the water that was a bunch of blankets all laid out next to each other and covered in all sorts of trinkets. We did all sorts of bargaining and saying no thank you until Ashley found something she liked. So we started to bargain with him and we got him down to 50 Namibian dollars ($5) and he gave it to us for that. Then we started to walk away and he brought the same exact thing (a banana leaf picture of two giraffes) to me and said or you 40. So I bought it and then said that he should give Ashley back $10 since he gave it to me for less than her and he started laughing and said no, no, no and I said what you don’t think she’s pretty? And he laughed and said no! I couldn’t believe it! It was pretty funny and it made me feel pretty good about myself! haha!

Then we went to find some ice cream, but instead I found a charm and a patch! It was a really fun day! That night we went out to celebrate Ashley’s birthday. We took this ridiculously long walk to a resataurant called the Raft or the Lagoon as its known by the locals. The restaurant would literally be a 5 minute walk from the ship if we were allowed to go out the other side of the port gate, but there was only one entrance and it was in the opposite direction. Anyways we finally got there and found a table just in time to order food before the kitchen closed. I was so hungry that I ordered the first thing I saw and that was a Hawaiian pizza, not exactly authentic, but delicious nonetheless. I went to the bar with my friend Andrew to order a beer and we got to talking to a couple of locals at the bar. Well we quickly made friends and the one who claimed he was in an HBO series bought us a couple rounds of Jaeger shots. Since it was Ashley’s birthday she got some special treatment and everyone order her some fancy drink or another. Needless to say we had a lot of fun. Towards the end of the night we got to talking to them about life in Namibia. It was a long and tough conversation but the bottom line is that they hate black people and think that the world should be split for white and blacks. Although I disagree completely, I can see where this frustration comes from. In Namibia, whites are the minority and since they used to have the power, they feels as though they should be treated with respect. They think that black people are dishonest thieves, drunk drivers etc. After we had this intense conversation, they offered to give us a ride home so that we didn’t have to take a taxi driven by a black person. It was a nice gesture if you forget about their reasoning. Anyways we got a ride home with a young guy named Waldo who is training to play in the rugby world cup! He was a really nice guy and got s back to the port safely!

The next day we woke up early because we had half a day to kill before Ashley and I went camping and star gazing. We decided to head to dune 7 (a big dune where there are all sorts of sand sports that you can try out) to go sand boarding. Let me tell you, it was quite an experience! We were driven up a GIANT sand dune (thank goodness because you usually have to walk up them) which was a pretty scary experience in itself! There’s not exactly traction when your driving up a big mountain of sand so we had to back up a couple times to get up enough speed. Once we got up pretty far we had to jump out and walk the rest of the way to the top. It was SO sandy! We practically sank up to our knees with every step we took! Once we got to the top our driver man laid out literally a board like the kind that go in the pack of paintings and told us to lie down. It was quite an experience! We went down SO fast on our bellies! It was a lot of fun but my hands got pretty torn up! Then we saw that they had what Sara Weinberg calls a Zorb, but they called a Hydroball. Basically it’s a giant hamster ball blown up with water inside. You climb into the ball and they roll you down the dune! Well we had to try that out! So we geared up and head out to a smaller dune to roll down. It was insane and bizarre at the same time! We were covered in water and it felt like you were weightless inside the ball! After fulfilling our thrill quota for the day before noon, Ashley and I headed back to meet our trip at the ship.

An hour or two later, we left for the campsite. It was a long drive in a hot van with windows that didn’t roll down. I thought I was going to die. We finally got there and saw that there was a larger main tent where there were tables set up for dinner and a bunch of smaller tents for sleeping. We decided once we put our stuff in our tents to explore the rocks and desert around us. We walked to “the river”but it was pretty much a dry bed. We climbed some rocks and hung out on the top of one for a little while. My friend Lindsay and I sat there while Ashley scaled one of the taller mountains. The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. We pretty much hung out and waited in the hot hot heat for the sun to go down and for dinner. Everyone got sick off of the dinner, but we had a nice Marimba band that came to entertain us! So this trip was supposed to be a camping and star gazing trip right? Well, just our luck, we were there the one night probably all year that Namibia will get rain. Needless to say, there wasn’t much stargazing. No one slept at all because it was so hot and the next morning we were all cranky and ready to go back.

This was the morning that I started to get sick. It started with diarrhea that caused me to stop our convoy on the way back and squat behind a bush. Then we got back to the ship and I felt miserable. I was coughing and sneezing and freezing! I must have caught the flu from someone at some point. It was miserable! I was sick all day until we got to South Africa and even the first day we were there! That however is for my South Africa blog.

More later!