Puerto Rico

The first day we disembarked the ship Andrew and a couple of guys and I decided to take a bus tour which took us around New and Old San Juan, as well as one of the castles on the island. The sights were beautiful, and even made more so by the awesome weather we had the entire time. We ate at a small cafeteria recommended by our tour guide for lunch, and I had one of the best 7 dollar steaks you can buy. We then walked around Old San Juan and made our way to El Moro, which is the other fortress on the tip of the city. After a couple of hours of walking we decided that we needed to take a taxi to Ala Vista to go check out the cock fights that day. From the outside of the cockfighting arena it looked sketchy, but once we got inside and saw about 30 other SAS students I felt much more comfortable. The cockfighting was all I expected and more (hopefully I’ll get some pictures of it posted up). I bought an awesome t-shirt from the arena which I’m wearing today, and I’ve already gotten 3 compliments on it just walking to and from my first class. After watching about 8 rounds of fights, most of which resulted in a deceased rooster, we made our way back to the ship to make the bus to our Bioluminescent Bay trip. The bus ride ended up being 2 hours, but once we got there it was worth it. We kayaked about a mile through a canal almost completely enclosed by a canopy of trees, guided only buy small amounts of moon light that shone through and the blinking light on the back of the kayak in front of us. Once we made it to the bay the actual bioluminescence wasn’t as good as I expected it to be, just a few green sparkles when you splashed the water, but it was still cool to see.
The next morning we woke up and boarded our bus to go on our Seven Seas kayaking trip. The bus ride was just as long as the night before and it turned out our tour guy was the same funny Puerto Rican. We kayaked about 30 minutes through the ocean waves to a beach where we swam around and explored, which was a lot of fun. When we got back in our kayaks I realized that my waterproof pouch containing my shipboard ID card and $77 was missing from my pocket – a major bummer but at least I didn’t have anything else in there. When we got back from our trip it was around 7, so we met up with some friends and ate dinner at a good Latin Asian restaurant. We spent the remainder of our evening exploring the night life of Old San Juan before heading back to the ship.
On our last day in Puerto Rico some of us decided that we needed to run errands to get things that we forgot to bring. The only things on my list were walkie talkies and wrinkle releaser of which I could only find the former. We ate lunch at the oldest bakery in Old San Juan that our friend Andrew from KU had seen on the travel channel. I ordered some sort of fried egg and ham sandwich covered in powdered sugar, and it was delicious. Hilton and I ran into some girls after lunch and we decided to take a ferry across the bay with them to check out the Bacardi factory. It wasn’t anything special. When we got back to Old San Juan we ate at a place called Mojito’s and I ordered the Mojito Chicken, which was the best meal I had in Puerto Rico by far. After dinner we took a cab back to the ship and hour early so that we could get a table on the top deck outside to play cards and watch the ship depart.
So far this trip has exceeded my expectations and we have only been to one port. My classes that I’m taking seem very interesting and I have no doubts that I will make all A’s on this ship. Every day we meet more and more great people, the shipboard community is really awesome. Last night some of us attended a photography class which is held by the photographer for the voyage, and I picked up on some really great ideas on what and how to shoot once we get to Brazil. Tonight I plan to go to a Portuguese class to learn some of the basics of the language of Brazil. They try to keep us busy with activities and clubs so that we don’t get cabin fever on the ship. The ship seems to get smaller and smaller every day and I’m sure no matter how busy I get the 10 days from Brazil to South Africa will seem like 10 weeks.