Semester at Sea – Spring 2007 (Alex Song) On a ship, traveling around the world, at 20 miles an hour

I don’t normally post more than one recap for a port, but a lot has gone on so far. Also, it’s 3:07am here and as my safari group leaves in 90 minutes, it’s best for me to not sleep.

The day started off at 12am, appropriately enough. My attempts at engaging my REM sleep cycle were unsuccessful, and in the events that ensued (pacing around my room, watching TV, reading my textbooks), I noticed that a full moon was out, and noticed it’s reflection on the water, worthy of a picture.

I spent the next hour trying to get some nighttime pictures of the moon, the moon’s reflection on the water, and various sites around the ship. Since I wanted to get pictures of the sunrise and our entry into port, I promised myself to take a small nap and wakeup.

Of course, we all know that my sleep pattern can’t be controlled by mere willpower of mind or an array of cleverly arranged alarms around my room. The Voice ended up waking me up, with a warning to get to the Union in 5 minutes for our briefing by the US consulate officials.

Fast forward through that and the visit from the South African representative that’s equivalent to the governor of a US state, and we end up with me on a van that’s going towards the site of Skydiving Cape Town.

I won’t bore you with the details of waiting around for around 3 hours for my turn, being apprehensive the whole time, and chugging down a beer to calm my nerves. Nor will I discuss our skydiving instructors (tandem partners) that scared us shitless on the 20 minute flight up to 9,000 feet above Cape Town. Let’s dive into the jump itself (no pun intended).

So there’s 3 sets of us (student + instructor) crammed into this tiny Cessna whose interior body panels are falling off. Person one goes with a small scream. My turn already?

As instructed, I swung my legs out, crossed my arms, and tilted my head back. Then, I squeezed my eyes closed until I felt my instructor pushing us out of a perfectly nice (nice as in flyable) aircraft about 3 seconds later. 30 seconds of freefall later, my instructor pulled the ripcord, allowing me to fully enjoy the view. 3 minutes later, my ass landed in the sand and I was up and ready to go again. But not really.

Lunch was at this quick service Chinese/Japanese eatery on front street. Our sushi was made by a guy who didn’t know wtf he was doing (seriously…he was looking at the picture menu to figure out what went in our sushi rolls). There was a small worm or caterpillar in one of our salads, and a hair in one of our sushi rolls. These were discovered after I had devoured my rolls.

Pepto is a wonderful thing.

Dinner was fish and chips. And sushi.

It’s 3:56am now, and my safari group is due to meet in 30 minutes. 3 days of trekking it in the African wilderness with wild animals with only mosquito nets and DEET to protect us. Woo.

And before I go, we had our first official code blue of South Africa around 6 or 7pm today. A crewmember announced “Code blue, stretcher on deck 5 starboard” on the ship’s intercom. Later, a crewmember informed me that the code blue was for someone who had a little too much to drink. Before the sun started to set. Now that’s dedication.

I wonder how much duty I’d have to pay in order to ship home a box of wine?

Breaking news: Scuttlebutt around the computer lab says there’s porn on channel 5.