Posted by Amanda A very early start to our day as we met our Iguacu Falls group at 4:45am. I am the trip leader for this outing which I'm not totally enjoying. Bascially, I have to make sure everyone's together and on time. Of course everyone on the trip thinks I know how long it will take to get from the airport to the hotel and what time dinner will be, etc. I don't know any of that stuff. Since everyone was out with Carnaval last night the 4:45 start was real...

Lost inside myself and my own mind by Noah I'm writing this in an airport in Sao Paulo. We got up at 4:45 this morning to catch a flight here from Salvador. We have a five hour layover now, followed by a flight to Iguaçu Falls. This is the waterfall that made Eleanor Roosevelt say she felt sorry for Niagra. Should be pretty awesome. We got into Brazil only yesterday. As always, it took an eternity to get off the ship. When we did, Amanda and I and one of...

Today was terrific. We had a no class day so we all had some time off. That is really why the blog got updated. It was great to have time to myself without having to work or go to Global Studies (the class everyone on the ship attends). Plus I got to sleep in a bit. The big news is that we crossed the equator around 2:45pm ship time (we're two hours ahead of Eastern time). According to maritime tradition this now makes us shellbacks. Before you cross the equator...

Posted by Amanda Today was our last day in San Juan. We started by walking to the Fort of San Cristobel. This was the fort built to protect Old San Juan from land attacks. Puerto Rico was a valuable port--hence the name--for the Spanish because it was essentially the gateway to the southern part of the New World. The trade winds would bring ships by Puerto Rico and the Spanish could decide to let them into the New World or not. From San Cristobel there is ...

Posted by Amanda Another great day in Puerto Rico, but first, something funny from last night. Both of us had wet clothing from the Biobay trip. We had a small clothesline in the tiny shower but it wasn't long enough to handle all of our wet clothes. We took our own suction cup line and stretched it over my bed filling it with items. At some point in the middle of the night, they all fell on me. I hardly noticed because I'm in the Sleep Marines. I did not...