of course

Hey to everyone that reads my blog. Sorry I am such a slacker. I'm approaching exam week. And I've been having fun catching up on papers. haha

I realize I haven't written about China, South Africa, or Ghana. And I'm very sorry.

I will try and do that.

 

I return to the states on May 5th. But I will be in Florida until the 10th.

Soooooo you are more than welcome to visit me at my house in Roseburg after May 11th. :)

 

See you guys soon!

Cape Town

So, we finally hit a new continent. Africa. I remember cruising along the shore line a few nights before we arrived, we could see the African lights in the distance.  I spent a lot of time outside that day because I was having a “trapped” day. Being outside and seeing Africa was a huge breath of fresh air almost. I stood on the deck trying to imagine what South Africa had waiting for me. Although I know that I go into every port with zero expectations, as I looked at South Africa from a distance I felt anxious. The only movies I have seen about Africa (besides The Lion King) have been pretty violent. It didn’t exactly help that the entire administration on the ship was warning us about the violence and pick-pocketing. They didn’t mention how incredibly warm the people were. They didn’t mention the gorgeous scenery. (Not until pre-port at least; which is the night before we arrive in a country.) They didn’t mention that our ship would be pulling up to a huge expensive mall. There were a lot of things that would have been really nice to know before entering the country. Like… how not to get ripped off by the taxi drivers for example. Or “don’t worry! You’re probably not going to get stabbed while in Cape Town.”

 

South Africa is beautiful. The people are so loving. I believe it is my favorite port so far. I really don’t like saying that, because each country I have seen is completely different from the next. And I absolutely loved each country for completely different reasons. I’m just gunna go ahead and say that it is by far my favorite African country I have seen so far. Ha-ha Alright so here is how I spent my time in Cape Town, South Africa…

 

Day1 – Before getting off the ship, we were introduced to a special guest speaker; Amy Biehl’s mom, Linda Biehl. Usually I throw a couple grunts at the very thought of sitting through another pointless diplomatic briefing (we have these right before we clear the ship.) Not this time. In fact, I showed up 30 minutes early just so I could get a great seat in the union (the big meeting hall.) I’m not sure if you know anything about Amy Biehl, so let me sum it up. Amy was an activist (from the states) living in Cape Town who was stabbed 200 times in 1993 (during the apartheid years.) Linda Biehl started a foundation in Cape Town called the Amy Biehl Foundation. It’s an after school activities foundation for youth in townships. So, at this diplomatic briefing I was privileged enough to be able to sit through Amy Biehl’s amazing story, and shake Linda Biehl’s hand.

After that briefing ended, my friends and I quickly left the ship and took our first steps in Africa. First stop= Table Mountain. We jumped in a taxi and headed for the cable car that would take us to the top. (We totally would have hiked it but we only had so much time.) We were completely shocked when we arrived because we hadn’t realized that table mountain was a huge tourist attraction. There was a huge line to get on the gondola. We waited for an hour!! It was ridiculous. We finally got to the front, and bought our tickets (my friend Julie Anne told the lady at the desk that she was 17 years old and got away with a child’s ticket. I couldn’t believe it. Her ticket was half price!!!!) The gondola ride was really weird. It fit like 65 people in it at a time and the floor spun around so we could get a panoramic view. Well… everybody except me. I wasn’t standing by a window so I didn’t really see much. Except Eric’s back. haha The view from the top was so magnificent though! In the distant there was a small fog cover over the ocean that actually looked like it was connecting the blue sky to the blue ocean. The sky and ocean were one. It was absolutely gorgeous. The fog wasn’t covering the city or anything though. It was just far out in the ocean. It was really pretty just walking the pathways through all the rocks. We strolled for a bit and snapped some pictures before we found a restaurant and ordered lunch. We literally only had an hour on top of Table Mountain, which is not long enough at all!! After lunch we quickly headed back to the gondola to make the trip down. I got to stand by the window this time. It was delightful. So we then jumped into a taxi and sped back to the ship. (They drive so fast in South Africa. Even on sharp turns. It’s really quite scary.)

Back at the ship, the friends I was with had to run to catch a township trip. That’s when I was really confused on what to do with myself, but I ran into my friend Helen and decided to head to the District 6 museum with her and her crew. It was definitely interesting learning about these unfortunate townships that were burned down. We spent a good amount of time there before we decided to stroll down the street to the random castle in the middle of Cape Town. Apparently it was built by the Dutch, but I don’t actually know all the details about it because it closed 15 minutes before we got there. We hung out in the grass outside of the castle. It was a lot of fun. From there we walked towards this huge square in front of the town center. There we met 2 older women, an older gentleman, and a small child. They were so nice to us. One of them invited us over to her house the following day but none of us could make it! I talked to the older gentleman for a while. Turned out he was a priest, and had 4 wives and 19 kids. I asked him if he had any grandkids and he said he had too many to count. He told me this as I stood there and stared at him with a blank look on my face. Ha-ha I didn’t know what to say! After a couple minutes he had me read some of his sermons. I literally could not understand anything that we had written down. I don’t know if his sermons were just too smart for me to read, or if he just wrote down every big word he knows and threw random periods in there to make it look like a bunch of sentences. It would have been super interesting to talk to him about his beliefs, but I legitimately couldn’t understand his sermons. Ha-ha. Whatever; he was nice anyway.

Alright so we left there, and headed back to find some taxis. We stood at the corner we were dropped off at for about 30 minutes. There were a bunch of teenagers playing soccer in the street right next to us. That’s when Max got out his video camera. Sooner or later everybody in the group was making faces and dancing in front of the camera. I’m sure it is a great video. I have yet to see it. So, our taxis never came back to get us. We ended up waving down a taxi and asking the driver if we could cram 7 people in there. Ha-ha he was so against the idea, because it would be a fat ticket if the cops found us. Me, being the little one got to lay across everyone’s laps. It was actually quite cozy. I was pretty cramped up by the time we got back to the waterfront though. It was funny watching the faces of people watching us unload out of the taxi. They were laughing because more and more people kept coming out of the taxi. It was a fun time. We all started singing Indiana Jones at one point in the taxi. Anyway, the taxi didn’t drop us off right at the ship. There was a huge fancy mall between us and the ship, so we all ran through the mall. My friends had to make it back in 5 minutes to get on the pirate ship trip. I just ran thru the mall for kicks and giggles. Ha-ha.

Mauritius

Alright everyone. Here I am. I know I have been a complete slacker. I don’t remember if I finished writing about India yet. Probably not. But I’m going to move on to Mauritius. (We just left South Africa. Haha So I’ll write about that after)

We spent two days in Mauritius. It was the perfect relax vacation spot. I really no plans or ideas of what I wanted to do in Mauritius, so I just jumped on the train of 14 people going to Blue Bay. It was the biggest group I have travelled with yet. And it was messy. We hired a taxi to take us there. It was about 45 minutes to an hour away. And it was absolutely gorgeous. My good friend Thomas had his mom book a hostel for us before we got to Mauritius. It was a beautiful tucked away house with enough room for all of us. Actually I figured most of us would be spooning, because looking at the house from the outside… you wouldn’t believe the hostel could sleep 20+ people. So we dropped all of our stuff off at our little hostel (which by the way had an amazing view of a brown river behind the house) and headed for the bus station. Somehow on our walk to the station, we lost half of our group. Haha Ridiculous how that happens.

Note- it rained most of the morning. But the weather cleared up and was gorgeous by the time we made it to the beach, where we were bombarded by men asking if we wanted to snorkel. In fact we did want to snorkel, but we decided to eat something first. We sat down at this chill restaurant directly across the only huge resort on the beach. Having been travelling the world, eating foreign foods, we all decided to order pizza. Haha With pineapple of course! I really questioned how good the pizza was going to be. But we really hadn’t eaten pizza in so long. I feel like they could have dumped ketchup on a cracker and we would have enjoyed it the same. It was actually really good! Actually it was almost better than the pizza in the states. Haha nahh I don’t know. Enough about Pizza. We also ordered our fair share of cocktails. Most of us got Pina Coladas (is that even how it’s spelled? I don’t know. Spell check doesn’t even know!) I didn’t though. I ordered something else. I can’t think of the name right now. Haha But it was blue, and very strong, and delicious all the same. Anyway, so we finished up our lunch and crossed the street to look for some snorkeling. We jumped in a glass bottom boat at 3(ish) dollars a piece and went snorkeling. It was a definite struggle at first (for me at least.) I definitely think I drank more salt water than I did cocktail. Haha Just kidding. It was so beautiful cruising the coral reef along the island, and chasing the fish around, trying to catch them. I swam down closer to the bottom of the reef until my feet decided that they couldn’t breathe anymore. (I was wearing size 5 flippers. My feetsies are size 7 and a half. Yeah, I couldn’t feel my feet anymore, so I swam back to the boat.) Our captain took us to 2 different snorkeling spots. The second one more gorgeous than the first, which I didn’t think was possible. The water was so crisp and clear. Against the beach and its white sand, the water was light green and as I got deeper in the ocean the water turned light blue and then darker and darker. But out aways from the beach there were big light green areas where you could see down to the white sand at the bottom. I’m sure you have seen those annoying Sandals, Jamaica commercials that talk about it being the perfect vacation spot and then it shows a couple rolling around in the beautiful white sand (but not really.) Well… picture that, but a lot better, and there were no people rolling around in the sand, so that was great. Mauritius is gorgeous.

After snorkeling we all just hung out. Our plan was to head back to the hostel, shower, and then go find a restaurant. That didn’t happen. Across the road we spotted a soccer team of strapping young men so we went and watched them run lines. Haha There was a perfect grassy field right next to their practicing area, so we sat in a circle and just talking. It was perfect. Everybody had a beer in hand, and something to share with the group. We sat there for a long while. Until sunset, actually. I remember this because the sunset was gorgeous. We all got up and ran to the beach to see it. The sky was every color of the rainbow, and the clouds radiated the colors even more. So, the sunset, and everyone began to franticly search for a taxi, except me. I stood there and enjoyed the beauty of being there, and the easiness of knowing we will make it back to the hostel. Haha And we did. Of course it took 2 taxis. As we waited for the second taxi, Jay and I talked with an older man with crazy dreadlocks sitting on the side of the road. He was so incredibly nice and funny. He had a bag of live prawns and got them out. At that point I was almost standing at the other side of the road. Haha Jay thought it would be funny to chase me around with a prawn. Definitely wrong. Finally the taxi arrived to take us back to the hostel. Or rather, the bus stop. We had to walk from the bus stop to the hostel, which is not a far walk, but it definitely was for me because I had to pee so bad. Anyway, got back, peed, showered, prettied myself up, and then we all headed to dinner. We ended up at this really nice restaurant right on a river (I think.) I table and everything was set up really nice, but there were deer heads all over the walls. It was ridiculous. I just loved that it was an outdoor restaurant. I think I ordered some vegetarian noodle dish. It was really yum. So then we were 14, but we met some other foreigners there. 2 of them were from Holland, and 1 was from Germany. There were all so incredibly nice. I told them all about my adventures in Europe and that I was going to be living in Italy for a couple months. We got along so well! So I invited them to cram in our van and come with us. We didn’t know where we were going. No bars were open, because it was a Wednesday or Thursday night I think. We ended up back at the hostel. But the night was still young. Our Dutch friend asked around to see where we could buy some beer. The new plan was to buy some beer and walk to the beach. So that’s what happened. We found a neighboring house that was selling beer, and we each made our purchases. We stood there in the street for a while. I beat up Jay while we waited for everyone, and then we all walked to the beach. Apparently I was walking too fast or something, because somehow I beat everyone to the pier. When I got there I collapsed down on the pier, and stared into the sky. It was the most beautiful moment. Everything was quiet around me, except for the water rushing towards the beach underneath me. It was the first time I’ve had real alone time, since I got on the ship. As I laid there I memorized all of my surroundings so that I could later come back to the moment. If I close my eyes now, it’s as if I am there. After a couple minutes, everybody found me and we all sat in a circle on the pier, and just talked. It was so peaceful. A night I will always treasure. I’m not sure how long we were there, but it felt like a century. We finally trekked back to the hostel (coincidentally our European friends were staying at the same hostel. I think I am the only one that didn’t know that. Haha)

Next morning- headed back to the beach to find wind surfing. We spent most of the morning looking for a place to wind surf. It never worked out, which was a bummer. Jay and Eric couldn’t find scuba diving either. So, we all ended up snorkeling again. This time it was a much smaller group, because 5 of our friends had left early that morning to go exploring somewhere else. Snorkeling was more fun in a smaller group. Haha Or maybe it was because I had practiced breathing through that tube the day before. Haha I didn’t drink as much salt water. It was another great day of snorkeling. We left the beach early afternoon via bus. We were headed back to Port Louis. The bus ride was very nice. I sat with Julie Anne, and we listened to music most of the way back. Thomas and Deirdre sat across the pathway from us, and Jay sat behind us. As you can see, our group really dwindled down. A lot of the group chickened out and took a taxi back to Port Louis. We were the more adventurous group that jumped on the 2 hour bus ride. When we got back to Port Louis we then had to adventure to find the ship. We had no idea how to get there, so we asked around. It took about an hour to find it. We made it on the ship 15 minutes before “On Ship Time.” (Basically if we arrive after “on ship time” then we get dock time in the next country. We would have to sit on the ship for 3 hours after everybody has already gotten off.) It was a close call.

So, Mauritius was gorgeous. And I suggest you see it. It would be a nice Honeymoon spot. ;)