We just spent an entire week in Brazil. Do I even go to school anymore? It's going to be quite the adjustment to get it together for classes again, especially with the unbelievable amount of work our professors are loading us up with as the end of our time on SAS rapidly approaches. 24 days until home, I wish I could double that number, I'm ready to see you all back at home but not nearly ready to say goodbye to the MV Explorer. We only have 2 countries left to go, a week on the ship then Barbados, then 4 ship days to Cuba, then a few days later we're home. Send in gift requests before time runs out!! JK I have no money left sorry.
I spent the first two days in Brazil in Rio.
Getting off the ship after 14 straight days was a great feeling although it was actually a little strange, I think they call it sea legs, I felt like I was still rocking when I was on solid ground. We awoke day 1 at six to watch the ship pull into port, something everyone says you absolutely HAVE to do for Brazil. We were a little unlucky because it was pretty hazy but it was still a Really cool view. After eating breakfast I had to go to the union to meet for my marketing field lab. For this field lab we went to a market and mall in Rio and had a scavenger hunt list of things to take pictures of or buy, students who got a certain amount would be excused from one of our papers so my team and I were all business. The market was cool, it reminded me of a more modern version of the market we had been to in Morocco, it also had stores along the outside of it. After our time ran out here we headed to lunch. The lunch place was a Brazilian buffet with tons of meat, rice, fried things, and other stuff that I had no idea what it was but ate it anyways. It was my best meal in a while. When lunch ended we went to the mall, it was a more upscale mall located right between Copacabana and Ipanema beach. It was so nice to be in there, it felt like an American mall, it even had a lot of familiar stores. It also felt really safe which we liked because they scared us senseless about how dangerous Brazil is.
After our field lab we got back on the ship and I ate dinner with Ashley, Taylor, and Ayah, three of my friends from USD. The food on the ship in port is probably 100x better than while at sea so I've tried to eat more meals on the ship towards the end of the voyage to save money. After waking up early and stuff I took a quick nap after dinner then went out with Taylor, Ashley, and a bunch of other people. We went to this area called Lapa where all the bars and clubs in Rio are. When we got there, there were tons of people, we didn't really know where to go. We ended up choosing a random bar, you had to spend a minimum of 30 reals there, that's like $10 but sounds like a lot. It was a cool place, they had a live band playing Brazilian music and all the locals were dancing. We met a local couple, it was the girl's birthday, and they were talking to us and trying to show us how to do the dances. Surprisingly I wasn't good. The big drink in Brazil is called Capirinhas and we were able to get 4 for the 30 real. They're really good, they have sugar, lime, and we think tequila (not 100% sure though). Once we spent our money we went to this club that a lot of SAS kids went to, we didn't end up going in though because we didn't have enough money for the cover and a taxi to get home, so we just headed back to the ship.
The next day I went out to explore Rio with Ayah, Ashley, Taylor, and another USD girl named Emily. We almost paid a tour guide to bring us around to the main spots but found out that they only brought you to the places but you had to pay separate admission fees. We ended up just taking public transportation. We walked with some other girls to the metro where we found another one who told us how to get one of the public buses to the Christ the Redeemer statue. We were able to get their pretty easily, then we paid for a van to bring us up the mountain the statue is on. It brings you about halfway then you have to wait in a line to get tickets, then another line to get another shuttle up to the statue. Once you get there you have to climb a bunch of stairs to actually get to the Christ statue. Luckily it was extremely hot out so all this waiting and climbing was super fun. It was worth all the time for sure because the views at the top of the mountain and the statue itself were amazing. We were so lucky to have such a nice day, it had been scheduled to rain and thunderstorm the whole day. We took a bunch of pictures at the top and then once we were done started making the trek back down, it was mid afternoon by this point and we were all exhausted and hungry. Once we finally got down to the bottom we hopped in a cab and went to a Starbucks (can always count on Starbucks for wifi) it ended up being in another mall which was great. None of us had the energy to do anymore touristy stuff so we lounged around the mall for a while enjoying our first wifi in two weeks. After that we walked around the mall for a bit then went back to the ship. My other friends were still out when I got back and the rest of then wanted to go out to dinner which was not in my budget so I treated myself to a fancy meal at the pool deck snack bar for dinner, chicken sandwich and fries. Once the other Bentley girls got back we all started packing because we were leaving for the Amazon in the morning.
Sydney and I slept in until 4am the next morning and dragged ourselves to the garden lounge (one of our dining rooms) to meet with our Amazon riverboat crew. They served us continental breakfast which was nice. We left at about 5 to head to the airport. The whole morning is pretty hazy for me because it was so early but we got on our plane and landed in Manaus at about 11am. Manaus was one of the sites of the World Cup, the US actually played one of their games there. It was really stormy in Manaus when we got there so we had to sit in the lobby of a hotel for two hours because our riverboats couldn't get close to shore with the waters being so rough. Eventually the storm slowed enough for us to get on so they bussed is to a dock area where we had to take little boats over to our riverboat, home for the next 4 days and 3 nights.
They greeted us on the ship with necklaces made from seeds and berries from the rainforest and luckily had a snack for us cause I was starving. It was still really rainy so they put up tarps around the sides of the boat. It was a two floor boat, the bottom had a table that they set our meals our on which were buffet style, the kitchen, three bathrooms, and a sink. The upstairs was totally open with half covered by a roof, there were a bunch of plastic lawn chairs up there for us to sit on. There were a little over 30 of us who were on our boat, mostly students, and we started off the day by going around and introducing ourselves. There wasn't much we could do with the weather. After we sailed for a while we reached the meeting a the water which is the spot where the Amazon river meets the Negro river. It was so cool, the waters don't mix because of the currents and density of the waters so you can clearly see the brown waters of the Amazon and the black of the Negro and a clear line going right through them. We then continued on, the rain was finally letting up. We eventually got to this stop area that had a restaurant and shop area. They led us on a walk along a very precarious bridge, about wide enough for one person where we finally ended at this pond thing that had water Lillie's. Our guide called an alligator (or crocodile seriously who knows the difference) over we got to watch it swim over, luckily we were up above it on the bridge. After a little while we walked back to our boat and had some time to shop around in a store where we had stopped. It sold a bunch of really interesting stuff like wood sculptures, blow dart guns, and taxidermy.
After looking around a bit we got on smaller motor boats and our guides brought us along the Amazon river where we eventually stopped at a little house. The people had a pet dog, sloth, and anaconda. You know, your typical house pets. They let us hold then and take pictures, a lot of people wouldn't hold the snake but I figured why not, it was scary though I was not a fan at all. Afterwards it was getting really dark so we got back into the boats and zoomed along looking for crocodiles. You can easily see them in the dark because of the way their eyes glow. One of the guides caught a baby one and we passed it around so we all got to hold it. Once we finished all that we headed back to the boat. When we got there, all of our hammocks were set up so we claimed them and put our bags in them, it was pretty right up there. You had to crawl underneath them to move anywhere on 2/3 of the top deck. We had dinner on the boat not too much later, that consisted of a bunch of different foods like rice, pasta, chicken, fish, and vegetables. I was actually surprised by how much I liked the food. After dinner we hung out for a little while on the top deck but barely made it to 9, we were completely dead from the day. We loaded ourselves up with bug spray, climbed into our hammocks, and went to sleep pretty quickly. It was a pretty good sleep for the most part, we had some snorers and sleep talkers. I was woken up a few times by my hammock neighbors who had shifted in theirs and were essentially on top of me.
The next morning we were up by about six, there's not much sleeping in when you're outside with 30 people. We started off the day with breakfast which consisted of eggs, cheese, ham, bread and this awesome coffee cake type of thing. After everyone changed and drowned themselves in sunscreen and bug spray, we all got back into the same smaller motor boats and they brought us to the edge of part of the rainforest, where we were greeted by a nice Amazonian man wielding a machete. He was our guide into the forest. We had our first hike through the Amazon. It was pretty early in the day but it was already so hot and super muggy outside. Luckily, unlike yesterday the weather was nice, we didn't have anymore rain although after some time walking I would've loved a little bit of a rain shower. Our guides walked our group through the forest pointing out interesting plants, insects, and animals. We learned about this type of tree called telephone trees that you can bang on if you ever get lost and the sound travels several kilometers. They also showed us a different tree that you can hit and a sap comes out that he compared to Ensure back in the states, we got to try it, it was like grass flavored milk. Some of the bugs we saw (I hate bugs) were this really beautiful butterfly called an owl butterfly that has a large spot on each wing that each look like owl eyes and this kind of ant called a bullet ant that if they bite you, it feels like you're being poked with a hot needle for 24 hours and there's nothing you can do. Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to see "bird eaters," a type of spider...I think the name is self explanatory. As we were walking one of the girls in our group noticed a snake curled up on a log, it looked pretty small and we told the guide who was up at the front. Turns out, it is the third most poisonous snake in the world. He then proceeds to pick it up and got it to bite his machete (he used a machete to cut a path, this is serious nature shit we went through) It really wasn't huge, it was pretty long but curled up it was tiny because it was so skinny, aka now I'm horrified for the rest of the hike. The hike lasted about 2 hours so it was just after 11 when we got back to our canoes and they brought us back to our boat which was now docked at a little beach. The guides had checked out the water to make sure it was safe for us to swim. It was the most refreshing swim I've ever had after that hike, I was sweating on every single inch of my body. Most of us got our shampoo and used the river to wash our hair, the boat had showers but they were actually just shower heads on the roof of the bathroom that used water from the river, this was more effective.
After some swim time we got back on the boat and took off and ate lunch. Lunch was more or less the same as dinner the night before, pasta, rice, chicken, fish, etc. When we finished eating lunch the boat starting moving again as we traveled to our next destination which was a couple hours away. While we hiked and swam they had tucked our hammocks up into the ceiling of the boat so we had much more room to move and stay out of the sun because it was STRONG. We sat around and talked and played cards for a little while but after about an hour we were all sprawled out around the floor of the boat passed out. When I woke up from my nap we were approaching land again and they dropped us off at a village along the river with our guides. They walked us around the village and gave us a little tour, there wasn't a ton to see. These villages don't usually have many people or much of an economy (they do have television and Coca Cola though). We were scheduled to play soccer against locals in the village, the first game was our guys vs. the local guys in the village. While they played we played with the little kids in the village and handed out little candies and stuff to them which they couldn't have been happier about. The guys game lasted about 15 minutes then the girls got to play. There weren't enough girls (when I say girls I mean females because there were some teenagers, some young adults, and one or two moms in the group) on the Brazilian team so a couple of us traded teams, I was one of them. Our game ended up being a full hour in muggy, sweaty, Amazonian heat. It felt like summer soccer tryouts but possibly even worse. Plus I am not in the best shape of my life currently, so an hour of running was tough I really really felt it the next few days. The game was so fun though, I didn't realize how much I missed playing soccer. After the long game, in which I had two assists and some pretty sick crosses (yup still got it) they finally called the game. Our guide was playing goalie for the American side and I think he stretched it out because he didn't want to win but we on the Brazil side dominated. We all met in the middle and took some group pictures as a team. We then chose the best guy and girl player on their teams and gave them each a soccer ball which they were super excited about. They then hose the best guy and girl player out of the Americans to give a Brazilian soccer jersey to. They ended up choosing me. It was honestly one of the coolest experiences of the whole trip I was really taken aback that they had chosen me. It was so cool, they spoke no English at all and none of is could understand each other but we had kind of come together for a while in soccer. I know that sounds super lame but it was probably the best part of the entire semester for me so far. Everything kind of clicked here. I don't think I'll grasp the meaning of this whole trip fully until home but this was the start.
We said goodbye to the villagers after the game and got back on the motor boats to meet up with the riverboat which had left. As we zoomed along the river the sun started setting, it was so beautiful. The water out there is smooth and looks like glass and the sunsets are incomparable. I couldn't get a picture to even close to match the beauty. Before we even got to our destination the stars came out and even though there were clouds it was more than I had seen in my entire life. Soon, we reached a beach where our boat and the other group of SAS riverboat people was docked. As we approached they set off fireworks welcoming us to a beach barbecue. We were soon met by the other students and combined there were over 100 of us. There was a huge long table of all different food, similar to what we've been eating. Rice, pasta, mashed potatoes which was a nice change, chicken, fish, and skewers of beef. They also had some desserts, one was a mango smoothie/pudding type thing and the other was basically Nutella. Plus they had the watermelon and pineapple. It was all SO GOOD. While everyone ate they were playing Brazilian music and we sat in plastic chairs set up in a massive semicircle. After dinner we started to play games. They had musical chairs, limbo, and tug of war. It was all so much fun and such a cool experience. When the games were over we got back onto our respective boats and a lot of us got ready for bed, exhausted from the long day and early wakeup, it was only like 8 or 9. I took a quick shower in the weird bathroom with an overhead faucet to try to clean off a little from the game. At this point I threw in the towel though and just knew I was going to be filthy until I saw the MV again and there was nothing I could do about it. It was an early night for us and I slept like a baby this time.
It was another early wakeup for us and the same breakfast, minus the coffee cake which was a bummer. Since our flight home had gotten cancelled about a week earlier we had to change around our itinerary a bunch and squeeze a lot in so this day was packed. We all got dressed again all covered up and again drowned ourselves in bugspray and sunscreen, it was another scorcher. As usual, we got on our motor boats and headed off across the river. We eventually stopped and the guides handed out fishing rods made of what seemed like bamboo for piranha fishing. Fishing isn't very fun or exciting, especially when you're in pants on the equator and no fish are biting. After over an hour and a few location changes we gave up, the piranhas just weren't biting that day. They then brought us deeper down the river and to the shore where we had to walk up a pretty steep hill. Yay, another forest hike! A lot of us weren't super into the idea of a hike with how hot it was and how long we had already been cooking in the sun. Plus if you've seen one part of the Amazon jungle, you've seen it all. We went anyways to brave the wilderness. There was really nothing in the hike that stick out or was cool like the first one which sucked. It would've made it a lot more enjoyable being drenched on every inch of my body in sweat if I could've seen like a panther or a wild anaconda or a toucan or something. Alas, no luck. After about two and a half hours of hiking, much more treacherous than the last one with hills and less of a path, we made it back out and went to our motor boats which brought us back to the boat. This time we got on and started driving, as usual everyone fell asleep pretty quickly and before we knew it we were at a different beach than last time.
At this beach, we met up with more SAS kids who were doing an independent riverboat tour. It's super weird to casually run into your friends in the Amazon rainforest. We didn't get very much time there before we had to be back of the boat for lunch. After we ate we left and went a little ways down the river to a little place. All the houses and buildings on the river are just like floating buildings with a dock. This place was where we were going to get to swim with the pink dolphins. We all got out, I was in the first group to get in the water. They had two guys who lured the dolphins over with fish and we got to touch them. It wasn't like sea world or anything where you could ride them but it was still really cool. We were there for a while until everyone had a chance to swim with them. Then we had a little free time to swim in the water by ourselves. After that it was back onto the boat to head to a different village. This one wasn't really as cool as the first, the people weren't as friendly it was more of a rest stop. They did have some absolutely adorable stray puppies though. We were at this village for some time until it started raining so we retreated to our boat. The boat took off again and we stopped at another beach. It was pouring so none of us had any interest in getting off. We just sat around talking. Eventually it slowed and a few kids went to explore, I found this cute little shack where a woman was selling some cool like souvenir things. When we left the island we had a while until dinner so a lot of us napped and hung around. Dinner was again the pasta, rice, meat, fish. Even though the food was repetitive it was really good. We got to watch another gorgeous sunset, and the moon was absolutely massive. Some of us stayed up "late" that night while others weren't feeling well so they went to bed. The whole next day was going to be traveling so we tried to stay awake late to be able to sleep during the day. This lasted until ten when we couldn't keep our eyes open anymore and went to bed.
Our wakeup this time was 5 am. Just after the sunrise. I was bummed out I missed it because I heard it was incredible. We had our same breakfast and gathered all of our stuff and got ready for a long day of flying back to Salvador. We got off the boats at around seven and headed to the airport. We got there early enough that I was able to use wifi for a while and talk to people at home which was nice. Our first flight brought us to Belem. Then we barely made our connecting flight. This flight was really strange, there were about 150+ SAS people on it and it would take off, fly for a while then land and let people off but we stayed on. It was like a bus or a train, but a plane. By the time we got to Salvador it was dark, we were smelly and exhausted and starving because we couldn't eat a meal for the whole day. As shitty as we felt it was the coolest experience and I wouldn't take it back for anything. Seeing the ship was a huge relief though and I took the best shower of my life and got into my bed to finally get a real nights sleep.
We had two days to kill in Salvador. There isn't really much to do there as far as tourism goes. Apparently it's a pretty dangerous place but I didn't ever feel very unsafe. I'm not gonna go into a ton of detail about my time there because it wasn't super exciting but it was a lot better than I expected. Both days we stayed close to the ship, conveniently there was this really cool market right around the corner from it. At the market were tons of stands kind of like Morocco with vendors selling everything from paintings, to wood carvings, to clothes, to jewelry, even hot sauce. We also went up this massive public elevator both days into the old town. The elevator was located right outside the market. The old town had tons of shops and cool stuff. We shopped there too. One of the days we went into a cafe and ordered drinks, I got this really huge and delicious daiquiri. Seriously, side note: it's really messed up that we have to go back to the US and not be legal anymore, there should be some rule against that if you've been accustomed to being legal for like four months. Anyways, we wanted to save money so we ate our meals on the ship and avoided the nightlife because the city was pretty intimidating. I was glad to have seen it though, it's not somewhere I'd go back but it was a really cool place.
Tomorrow morning we will be in Barbados. Sorry for the extreme delay in this blog. You'll notice that I began and ended this blog almost a week apart, woops.Schoolwork has been a killer lately and I didn't want to half ass this one since it was the coolest experience. Stay tuned, I will hopefully be posting very shortly about our Sea Olympics which occurred just two days ago. So much fun. Hopefully I survive Barbados, it'll be a fun little vacation/spring break. Only two countries to go, and 16 days until home now. Where has the semester gone? I'm not ready to leave yet.
See you all soon though! I am excited for that
