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...

Posted by Amanda Back to the ship to get ready for our separate Bioluminescence kayak trips with Semester at Sea.I have no idea how we got on different trips, but we did and we dealt with it.We traveled more than an hour from San Juan to get to the bay.We got in the kayaks as night fell.My partner, Sarah from Duquesne, had her own kayak at home so she steered us along.The Atlantic where we started was warm with almost no surf.We followed our guide through a ca...

Posted by Amanda We finally arrived in our first real port.Somehow Nassau didn't feel real.The customs agent wanted to do a full face-to-face look at everyone before we could get off the ship.I assume that is a post-9/11 practice that we can also expect in Hawaii. All the RDs had to help hand out the passports.I discovered that there are new US Passports that have a microchip in them.The picture is on the first page now, not the inside cover.Anyway, the customs...