7 Days at Sea & 5 Days in Salvador, Brazil

I spent 7 days at sea traveling from Puerto Rico to Brazil and I had planned to put in a blog about that experience, but sadly – I became too lazy to do it! I have been journaling each night so that I can remember the experience on this trip as much as possible, but now I need to discipline myself into blogging too! So, to sum up my 7 days at sea – basically, the ship becomes a routine little piece of life where I get up and work out at the gym each morning, eat breakfast, go to the faculty/staff lounge – do some GLI work, journal, read, look out at the ocean, watch the sunset, eat dinner, go back to the lounge to hang out with the staff (who are just too much fun) – and then it starts all over again the next day. We lost 2 hours in the journey from Puerto Rico to Brazil and we passed the equator. So, I am now officially in the Southern Hemisphere. It is so hot at times that I cannot even begin to explain how hot and humid it is – if you go outside, you instantly find that you are dripping sweat within 2 minutes at most. Needless to say, everyone on the ship smells lovely all the time J but we are getting used to the weather. Inside the ship, the air conditioning is on and so I am freezing, but as soon as I step outside, I am sweating like crazy. It’s fun, as you can no doubt imagine. J Seeing land or birds has become the highlight of the day – so many times, I find that I am just staring out at the water for hours without even realizing it – everything is so peaceful and so far away – that I often find myself having the “I cannot believe I am doing this moments” over and over again. Everyone on the ship is feeling the same, so that there has been an almost instant bonding between all of us as we experience the world together.

Prior to getting to Brazil, the faculty and staff tried to inform all of us about Carnival, which is this insane festival that has been celebrated in Brazil for hundreds of years. Carnival comes from the term carne and val – meaning no meat – and so Carnival is this massive party for 7 days before Ash Wednesday so that the people can release any pent up energy, enjoy life, and just go absolutely crazy before the Lenten season. Such a crazy concept, to let an entire community go hog wild for 7 days straight – and its religiously based – I don’t ever remember celebrating as we went into the season of Lent as a kid – it was all about thinking of your sins, sacrifice, etc. and so the theme of Carnival is really fascinating.

Because Carnival is a non-stop party for 7 days, everything is closed – stores, banks, post offices, schools, work, etc. Everyone is partying, which also means that the area is incredibly dangerous for most people. For the 7 days before we arrived in Salvador, I continuously heard about how dangerous the area was that we were going to – women were told that they would be harassed, grabbed, robbed, beaten, etc. and the men were told that they had the potential to be robbed mostly. Women were told to go out only with other men in the crowd, never alone, and never with anything valuable. Hearing this for 7 days really freaked me out – to the point where I wasn’t really sure that I even wanted to go to Carnival at all. Tom and I decided to try and schedule a bunch of trips outside of Carnival so that we wouldn’t have to deal with all this stuff if we didn’t want to. We got all of our trips and for 4 of the 5 days in Brazil – we traveled outside of the city of Salvador to try and get a better feel for the country and also to avoid the whole grabbing, groping, harassment issue.

The most interesting and sad reality of Brazil is that 70% of its population lives beneath the poverty level, which inevitably breeds violence, robbery and upset throughout the country. As we approached Salvador, it looked to be a modern city and even had the city line of something similar to NYC, but then as we got closer, we realized that all of the buildings were pretty run down, graffiti, holes in the concrete and just really run down. (This visual of course did nothing to soothe any concerns I had about going into Carnival, but it is the reality of the majority of Brazilians). The city itself is filled with thousands upon thousands of squatters homes, which are basically small brick shacks that squatters built because they saw a piece of land and took it. But because the land is so scarce in the city, the houses are all built up on top of one another on hills – so as you drive through the city – you see the upper level of the city (aka the rich area, which is all pretty and nice) and then the lower level of the city (aka poverty stricken area – which we were told never, under any circumstances to go to – one night our cab driver took us through some of these areas and there were people all over the streets, I saw a bathtub on the street with a few people sleeping in it – people seemed to be drunk and they were stumbling over to the cab, it reeks of urine – it is not a happy place). Outside of the city, the country is beautiful – mostly wide open fields, the Amazon, rainforests, small towns and villages, farms everywhere – nothing like the city of Salvador, which appears to be so overcrowded that no one could ever pull themselves out of poverty without some serious assistance from someone.

Despite this initial look at Brazil, we had such an amazing time! We visited and learned about the African religion called Candomble, which is a matriarchal, goddess based religion. As slaves, Africans were not permitted to practice their own religions and so Candomble is their religion, which was hidden with the Catholic Church. Slave owners would try to convert their slaves and the slaves simply hid their religion within Catholic doctrine. Candomble is the worship of Orisha’s (individualized to each person) and the spirits of the earth, dead, and the other world. Each person is connected to an Orisha and she/he will give sacrifices and things to her for assistance. In Catholicism, the Africans simply turned different saints into Orishas. So, whites would think that they were praying to a saint, when in fact they were practicing their own religion. We visited one of the communes for the religion today and it was really interesting. They are very connected to nature and each Orisha is given a home to be worshipped in – so the houses are all painted based on the Orisha that is worshipped there (everything from blue, pink, yellow, green – it makes for a very interesting row of homes!) In one of the towns, Cachoeira, Candomble has a special group called the Sisterhood of the Good Death and they are all women who are direct descendants of African slaves. They spend their whole lives praying and working towards having a good death. Because they live such harsh lives, these women hope for the opportunity to die in a peaceful way. They hold a festival in August for the death of the Virgin Mary and celebrate her peaceful death and pray for the same. Hard to imagine spending your entire life hoping for death, but when life is lived in such a harsh way – perhaps it is not so difficult to imagine.

We also visited a Cocoa Farm and learned all about how to make chocolate, ate the cocoa fruit (tastes like a tart but sweet jelly and is white and surrounds the cocoa beans), visited a self-sufficient farm community (they only make and take what they need and are part of the Land Reform Movement in Brazil, which is trying to get people out of the cities and into the farmlands where they can live much better lives, live off of the land, and the communities that are built are just amazing – very utopian, but they are there for each other and are respectful of the land that they have – they share everything and it was amazing to see this lifestyle that we always hear about, but never get a chance to see). We went to the Itaparica Islands which are off the coast of Brazil, saw a Jesuit Church from the 1500’s at the beach (it was all white with a giant pentacle in the center – da Vinci Code anyone! – it also had a graveyard that was straight out of the exorcist, really really creepy – saw a massive tarantula spider and Tom screamed like a little girl!), spent some time at the beach (it has to be consistently 100 degrees with 100% humidity – I have never sweat so much in my life!), drank out of a Fountain of Youth (3 spouts for Love, Wisdom, and Health/Youth), ate the traditional Brazilian style foods (cooked in coconut milk and with dendi oil – it has to be the heaviest oil on the planet and every time I ate a meal – I felt like I had just gained 20 pounds – it sits in your belly like a weight, but it stands to reason, that when you don’t have a lot of money, the food that you eat needs to fill you up), drank Rosca’s (vodka, lime, and sugar – its their specialty – it is good), also had their light beers (Skol and Antartica – all taste like a version of Coors Light, but it is so cheap – 1 liter cost 2 reales which is equivalent to $1), went to a forest reserve and saw white tuft earned marmosets (pretty much just little monkeys that jump all over the trees – they are really cute), ate a ton of pepto bismal because the doctor said it would keep us from getting sick off of the food – and guess what, it worked!, rode on a skooner around the bay of Brazil, saw 4 dolphin fins on our way to the islands, and of course – we did wonder over to Carnival!

We went to the Pellourino district, which is much more low key, families are everywhere, kids, you can move around and dance without having to be too worried, there are restaurants all over the place, cobblestone streets and the usual insanity that is a massive party. Each night that we went to the Pellourino, I went without a watch, money, or anything valuable. If I did carry money, I stuck it in my shoe – and we always went out with at least 5 people. The Carnival scene was crazy – we saw naked men and women painted silver, ancient African costumes, drum beats, horns, groups of people parading through the streets, dancing, sweating profusely, popcorn, cotton candy – it is almost like a parade, but one that lasts 7 days & nights, went to a Reggae Club and danced with a bunch of locals, met some people from Italy, talked with native Brazilians about their culture, Tom got interviewed by Brazilian TV (I stood in the back with a bunch of the other people we went with – screaming and cheering), followed the most amazing group of Carnival – this Japanese group with just drums – they were so awesome, that we all danced behind them for at least 2 hours, got 1 reale taken from me by this kid who was selling beaded necklaces (I continued to see him for the next 3 nights and he would point and laugh and say what is the equivalent of “Stupid White Girl” – then on the last night, he gave me 2 kisses on the cheek and so the 50 cents that was taken from me was forgiven! J), got bracelets of string where you make 3 wishes for each knot and then when the bracelet falls off they come true – completely superstitious, but people just come up to you and tie them on, by the end of Carnival I had 3 on my wrist, ate candied popcorn that was pink, yellow and green (really awesome stuff!), and basically sweat my butt off! It was so much fun – after all the fearful preparation, we had a wonderful, safe time in Salvador. We did of course hear about the horror stories of the people who went into the crazy part of Carnival (not the kiddy section that we went to) and because of those stories, I am so happy that we just went to Pellourino each night – it was great fun with amazing people, performances, costumes, music and food. I only wish that we would have been able to bring our cameras with us – many people had their cameras stolen as they were held up by knife point – thus we decided, why take the chance! Some of Tom’s fellow staff members got pictures, so hopefully there will be some to share.

So that was Salvador, Brazil and now I am off to Capetown, South Africa!!! I don’t know if I could be more excited about this port. Of course, it is going to take us 8 days to get to Capetown – but I think it will be well worth the wait! I hope all of you are staying warm in the snow (I never thought that I would say this, but at times I really wished that I could be cold again J). I also have to apologize that none of you have gotten mail from me, but everything in Brazil was closed and so I was unable to even get to a Post Office. I promise that once I get to South Africa, the postcards and gifts will be sent!

3 Days in San Juan, Puerto Rico

I am sitting in the faculty/staff lounge right now and Desmond Tutu has his feet up on one of the chairs and is just hanging out, reading his email and playing on his laptop! How crazy is my life right now!?

So, we have officially begun our port visits, starting with San Juan, Puerto Rico – which I have to admit I was not too excited about visiting (in comparison, it seemed a little too much like the US – well technically it is the US) but after staying there these past 3 days – I will admit that I was completely wrong! Puerto Rico was so beautiful that at times I considered not getting back onto the ship at the end of the trip.

Our trip to Puerto Rico started with PR’s Governor greeting us on the ship and giving a little speech about PR, which was really cool. How often does one get to meet with the Governor of Puerto Rico?! So anyways, after he gave his speech we had to meet with US customs officials to be stamped back into the US. Of course, because the customs officers are restricted by US law – they had to meet with each person on the ship personally (some 1000 people) simply because we went to the Bahamas. Needless to say this took absolutely forever – Tom and I missed our first trip because he was busy handing out the passports and thus the beginnings of our experience in Puerto Rico was more or less the same any visit in the US would have been (unruly, painfully long lines, angry customers, and rude officials). It was a great start J

Since we missed our 1st trip around the city of San Juan, we hooked up with a bunch of the staff members and organized our own walk around the area, which turned out to be a much better choice than our original planned event. We walked to San Cristobal and El Morro, which are these massive fort walls built around San Juan to protect the island from invasion. The forts are made from large bricks and at the top of the fort, you can see all the way into San Juan and across the ocean. Its beautiful to say the least. San Juan’s streets are these tiny little brick allies with pastel colored houses. All of the houses have open doorways and often you can see right into everyone’s house right from the streets. The city is really colorful, yet any official type of building is white marble. From most places in San Juan, you can see the ocean surrounding you. The water is the most perfect blue-green color and while we were there, it was sunny and 80+ degrees every day.

We spent our 3 days on sensory overload but got to do and see some amazing things. We ate at local restaurants (I have been busy eating some of the best fish I have ever had and of course filling up on rice & beans – which is always a staple in Latin America), drank at some really great bars in the area (the Pina Coladas were fantastic, as were the Passion Fruit Coladas & Mojitos – from what I have been told! We went to this one bar that was basically a concrete block and when you go they give you a marker to write your name on the wall. The bar tender was from NYC – and so when he found out that we were from the NJ/NYC area, we got a free round of drinks!), went to the beaches, hiked in the rainforest and I successfully escaped the tree frogs which inhabit the forest, Tom and I ran into the Governor of PR while he was out for a jog one night (that was pretty cool), hung out in Pigeon Park where, shockingly enough, I did not get crapped on (this park was filled with 200+ pigeons and if you stuck your arms out they would fly right onto your arms, back, head, etc.- we got some really great pictures of this place and this little boy was there with food and he had probably 50 pigeons on him at a time), we also visited the 2nd oldest Catholic Church in the western hemisphere (very plain, white and modest looking place), we visited with the cats that live in the oldest graveyard in San Juan (they live underneath the grave stones & sometimes if the tomb isn’t set up correctly, they have dug little holes under the coffins. Plus because the island is so small (110 miles by 10 miles), they have to conserve space so families are all buried together/on top of one another. We saw one gravestone that had 16 people in it!) and of course, we made our way to the Plaza de Americanas to purchase many bags of chocolate, diet coke, sugar/jelly bellies/sour patch kids/fruit snacks, peanut butter, coffee mugs, towels (we forgot to bring beach towels), and sunglasses – because I sat on mine.

We kept very busy these past 3 days and now we are back on the ship for our trip to Brazil, which will take a full 7 days. The students have started up with classes again and I am pretty sure that I have lost all concepts of what day it is because I now live on ‘Ship Time’ vs. ‘Port Time.’ I am also becoming a master of nautical time & language (although the whole subtracting 12 from 2100 hours still stumps me). We had tacos for lunch and I thought that I must have died and gone to heaven! The whole ship was running around talking about it being Taco Day – which may not seem all that exciting, but trust me – when you have eaten more potatoes and pasta dishes than you ever thought physically possible – tacos become a feast fit for royalty! I have also done the Susie Homemaker thing today and washed my clothes in the sink. This is a task that I am very much looking forward to never doing again.

So, that was Puerto Rico for me! And El Squat – it was fantastic being in a place where you can add el and la to everything and no one looks at you like you are crazy! I scanned the island for signs resembling “el squat” but, I was not successful – perhaps even Puerto Rico is not ready for the likes of El Squat and El Squattie!

PS I apologize for the lateness of this post - but I am still figuring out when I can get online without having to wait forever!!!

Two Days at Sea

All of the students boarded the ship on Sunday and we departed from Nassau, Bahamas at 5:00 Sunday night. This was the first “sea-legs” test and I have to say that I am passing with flying colors! There are quite a number of people wearing the wrist bands, patches, and taking pills to calm their nausea – but, I am happy to report that the sea is treating me well. And on the plus side, I don’t think that I have ever slept so well – the room is completely dark and the swaying rocks me to sleep like a little baby!

The sea has been fairly calm as well. It rained for about an hour yesterday, but for the rest of the time it has been sunny and beautiful. All of the students are outside tanning all day (many are now burned), but I have mostly spent my time in the Faculty/Staff Lounge reading and chatting with people. It is a very odd feeling to be an outsider both within the student body and also the staff/faculty – Anzaldua’s borderdweller comes to mind constantly. Additionally, we are treated like royalty on this ship. The stewards make our beds and clean the rooms every day, there is a wait staff for the dining halls, a bar crew and even a spa for massages – all of this seems to me, quite contradictory to what should be a “real-life” experience. In essence, the ship has become a version of the so-called 1st World, rather than a collective space for engaging in the difficult questions of this privileged random identity. Perhaps this will happen as time goes on; however, I wonder how that can even be possible, when all one has to do if they feel uncomfortable or challenged – is return to the ship and feel at ‘home.’

Ah the deep thoughts of the sea – I imagine these thoughts of digestion will occupy most of my very open time schedule J Anyways, tomorrow, we reach Puerto Rico and will stay there for 3 days. We set our clocks ahead 1 hour last night and had our first Pre-Port meeting to talk about what people might expect to encounter in the city. I am happy to be leaving the commotion for awhile – The first day, Tom and I are going on a tour of old San Juan and then on the last day, we will be hiking through a rainforest. In between there, we will most likely wonder around. The whole week everyone has been talking about going to the Target in Puerto Rico to pick up some of the odds and ends forgotten or needed – so difficult to leave the American lifestyle behind…

I am sure that I will more interesting stories to report once I return from Puerto Rico, but until then things are pretty calm and dare I say a typical college environment – just on a beautiful ocean. Love to you all.