Pictures « Semester at Sea - Spring 2007 (Alex Song)

Archive for the ‘Pictures’ Category

Picture!

Thursday, April 26th, 2007

Jetting out of here now, but heres a picture from a few hours ago:

Posted in Pictures | No Comments »

Pictures - South Africa

Saturday, March 10th, 2007

Okay, here we finally are.

Captain Alex on the bridge!

There were a lot of seals in the harbor just chillin around, the majority of them taking an afternoon nap in the hot sun. It’s also where they slept at night, and as we found out, they are cranky bitches when woken.

Most of us made the 4:30am meet as scheduled…two people were left behind. All of us tired as hell.

Someone is clearly excited to be at the airport. Our flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg was enjoyable - I had more room than on any of my Continental flights from Seattle to Nassau, and our captain was a comedian. His little act during our 2 hour flight highlighted just how crappy it is to be in litigation-happy USA - he would’ve been sued for discrimination or sexual harassment dozens of times.

We landed in Johannesburg without incident, caught our tour bus and set out for our 6 hour ride to Kruger. Within the first hour, one of the tires on the trailer we were towing blew a tire.

Saw us a fun little accident scene on the way there.

Apparently I was the only one too excited to sleep. Six hours later, we finally entered Kruger National Park and immediately spotted our first two animals: a lot of impala, and a giraffe.

This is our campsite. Each tent supported two people and came equipped with a sleeping bag and pad. Mine came with a small hole and two very large ants. We had bathroom facilities about a block away, as well as a small swimming pool which we fully took advantage of during our free time.

All of our food was cooked on grills at our campsite - everything was delicious, even the hardtack we had for breakfast every morning.

This little guy popped out of the trees right in front of us. First he stared us down, then he did a little dance (reminiscent of ‘the robot’), and then he started charging us. We kept backing up to avoid him, and after a minute or so of playing this little game, he crossed to road to go eat. We continued down the road and as we passed him, he started to follow us down for a bit. I named him Stampy.

I was one of the few lucky ones to see a leopard. This guy wasn’t very interested in posing for photographs, and this is the best shot I could get of him.

Again, I was one of the few lucky ones to have seen lions. Not only that, but a whole bunch of them! We spotted over a dozen of them coming down the road during our night drive - they were on the hunt. They passed by our truck and were less than 10 feet away from us, allowing me to get some decent night shots. There was a tense moment when one of the lions stopped next to our truck and stared at us for a bit.

Those are some of the memorable pictures I took. We saw dozens of more animals, including all of the big five.

From reading CNN.com several days prior to our trip, I learned that we were due for a lunar eclipse and invited everyone to check it out. A lot of people gave up precious hours of sleep to check it out.

Best picture of the eclipse I could get with the equipment I had.

I was attacked by monkeys in the camp and retreated fairly quickly. Video to come soon.

There were a lot of bats at the top of this gazebo outside the resort’s restaurant. Bat droppings were a problem for anyone dining underneath it.

I don’t remember the name of this fruit, but it starts with an ‘m’ and is three syllables…if that helps. I know that it was pretty tasty, though.

Pimp. I may just start styling my hair like this in the future.

Conquered!

Our group + guides. I’m really happy I brought my tripod.

On our flight back to Cape Town was through Kulula.com again, but on a British Airways jet. For those of you that don’t know what that means, it means your buddy Alex and his friend Cristie got free, unlimited drinks. And food, too.

Just had to throw this in because it is a damn funny picture.

Camps Bay? Campus Bay? Whatever the place was called, we found an Italian/sushi/seafood place that was just incredible. I believe this was the prawn linguine, and it was exquisite.

I took the revolving cable car upto Table Mountain. Pwned.

My very last day in port was absolutely perfect. Spent the day rafting on the Breede River - it’s an activity I definitely want to take up when I get back home. Spent the evening with my rafting partner Sheryl and Lifelong Learner friend Joyce at a steakhouse next to the waterfront. Amazing wine and a to-die-for tiramisu.

No pictures, but on one of my nights in town I dined with my taxi driver at this Japanese/Chinese/Korean place about 10 minutes away. Surprisingly, it actually was staffed by Japanese, Chinese, and Korean people and patronized by the same. Didn’t know there was much of an asian population in Cape Town.

Anywhos, that’s it.

Posted in Pictures, Port recaps | 7 Comments »

Brazil pictures

Saturday, February 24th, 2007

It was hard enough deciding which pictures to upload, but I believe I chose the best combination for everyone to get a feel for what I did and saw.

Day 1Â

My first glimpse of Salvador from the boat.

This Brazilian woman greeted us with wristband ribbon thingys (sorry, I can’t think of the proper term at the moment…it’s 2AM here) as we disembarked from the ship. There were also drummers and a vendor giving away tapped coconuts.

The homes I saw as we left Salvador….and the good ol American Ford dealership.

I saw a lot of recognizable western names…General Electric, Pirelli, Shell, and even Nestle! Nestle makes a lot of unique products here that you won’t find

in the US…and damn they’re tasty.

We stopped at this buffet-style restaurant about 3 hours into our bus ride to Lencois. It was our first taste of Brazilian cuisine…and my first time seeing flies all over the buffet line, especially on the fruits/veggies. I was sensible and decided to stick with the rice, chicken sticks, and cooked meats (beef and pork, if I’m remembering correctly). One thing I’ve noticed is that the buffets in Brazil charge by the weight of your plate…there’s no such thing as “all you can eat”.

As soon as we sat down to eat, we experienced our first of many surprise Brazilian rainstorms. The sheer downpour, combined with the humidity and thunder/lightning reminded me of the rainstorms I used to experience in Boca Raton.

Random rock formation thingy I saw on the bus ride.

That would be the township/village/whatever of Lencois.

The local hospital. No way in hell were we gonna get sick on this trip…that place is scary looking.

We arrived in Lencois around 5pm or so, dropped off our bags at our hotel, and immediately went to town where this group of people were waiting to welcome us with song and dance. We all had a blast learning their dances and chatting with them afterwards.

We went to dinner afterwards at this little buffet in town…where the mashed potatoes seriously kicked ass. I also had my first taste of goat meat….very similar to beef jerky.

Just chillin with Regina and Callie on the streets of Lencois.

Stereotypical asian tourist and his camera…oh wait..

This alcoholic sugarcane drink…tasted nasty.

Shot of the entire group in Lencois.

Lencois at night.

Day 2

I will forever remember this day asÂ my first “hell day” (the others to follow at the academy or boot camp). We had to trek about 4-5 kilometers up a mountain, and as a cubicle dweller, I ended up quickly falling behind. I decide to let the group go on without me and had an opportunity to converse with the locals, take a nap or two in the sun, and bust out the tripod to get some landscape shots. I did manage to make it up the mountain, and considering my physical state, the fact that this was my first hike, and the fact that this was probably the longest period of strenuous activity that I’ve experienced in my life, I’m pretty happy about making it. I wouldn’t mind doing it again.

View from the top of the mountain. You can see the rain in the distance….it caught up with us real quick. After we descended, we visited a waterfall where we had an opportunity to swim in this stank-ass brown water…ew. No pictures of that, we all left our cameras on the van.

After our return to the hotel, we descended upon Lencois in search of the elusive steakhouse. We found it, ordered up a bunch of meat, and chowed down hard.

We were in amazement at this wonderful food. It was agreed by most that it was the best meal that we’ve all had in a while.

Post-steakhouse and pre-Carnival. After eating, we were transported over to a neighboring city for a smaller-scale Carnival. It was interesting, and a few of the guys in our group had drinks bought for them by other guys…which apparently weirded them out heavily. Also, the Brazilians made out with a few of the chicks in the group. I unfortunately don’t have pictures of this Carnival as we all decided to heed the warnings and not bring our cameras, which we regretted. This was probably one of the safest places in Brazil to experience Carnival. We got back to our hotel around 4am and promptly entered our respective comas.

Day 3

Group shot of us…somewhere. I’m seriously missing a photogenic gene or something.

The next day had us on a short 1 hour hike to a cave…helluva lot more doable than the previous day’s 6 hour mountain hike. We explored inside the cave itself (we turned off the lamps towards the back of the cave…total darkness!), came back out, and proceeded to bungee jump and rappel.

Conquering the cave.

My jump went pretty well….I was extremely tired after yesterday’s hike all day/party all night/get 4 hours of sleep, and being so fatigued most likely wiped out any apprehension I had about jumping. I went into a meditative/zen moment, requested everyone be silent, and hopped off the cliff. Apparently I was too relaxed, cause everyone at the bottom started shouting up, asking if I was alive and awake. As I floated upside down in midair while the recovery guy did his thing, I felt him tugging at one of my ankle harnesses, and a few seconds later felt and saw my left shoe flying down into the forest below me.

Apparently he had issues getting my ankle harness off and decided that removing my shoe was the best way of going about it. No big deal though, the other guy went down into the forest and recovered my shoe.

We got back to the hotel around 5ish, hungry after the day’s activities. We decided to go into town for a quick bite to eat.

This burger rocked my world…it cost about $3 USD and had steak, chicken, fried egg, ham, hamburger patty, lettuce, tomato…damn it was good.

After we got back, the local children came to our hotel and entertained us with song/dance, followed by another Q&A session, and finally we taught them the hokey pokey.

“Why does it smell so bad?” “Well Shelly, it might be because there’s a pile of doggy doodoo right underneath your head.”

Etto was the dog that resided at the hotel with us. He/she liked to take poops outside our rooms.

Day 4

Guys, at this point I’ve spent too much time sorting out pictures and writing all of the above, so I’m gonna wrap this up really quick. The following morning we went into town, did some light shopping, and departed Lencois, with promises to return someday.

We spilled a jug of crappy red wine on the bus ride home..it was everywhere.

We got back to the ship at 6pm, and were told we all had 10 minutes to run in, drop off our shit, and get back before the bus departed for Carnival with or without us. Someone failed to remember that security had to search our bags…45 minutes later, we all got back on the bus and went to Carnival in Salvador.

We were assigned t-shirts to get us into the Crocodilo bloco, which many of us thought was the “gay bloco” with all the guys making out around us. It still amuses me as to how unnerved all the other guys were with all the homosexuals around them. I ended up dancing with a transsexual, which was enough to earn me a mention on Kim’s blog. A few of us finally ditched around 2-3am, not knowing the end was only 20 minutes away.

Carnival ruled.

Day 5

Okay, now I’m tired of writing and have to get back to studying. You now get picture captions.

The traffic lights in Salvador were horizontal and had a display to show the seconds remaining before it cycled.

The Mercado Modelo by itself was amazing…all of these paintings and crafts were out of this world. Several of us did end up purchasing paintings, including myself. I also picked out a beautiful recorder-like instrument.

This is the elevator you had to take to get to/from the lower city to….guess…the upper city! Free for use during Carnival, 5 centavos otherwise. That’s 2 cents USD.

GE…financial services?

One of many beautiful churches we ran into.

We stopped for lunch at another buffet style restaurant in the plaza. The selection here was much better, and as always, the mashed potatoes were fantastic.