PURA VIDA COSTA RICA!!

            After finishing finals, every student on the ship was ready to get to Costa Rica. It was a long stretch between Hawaii and Costa Rica, and a somewhat stressful one at that. Finals were fine- I didn’t have the pressure of getting A’s on everything since I was doing well in my classes, so it wasn’t a huge deal. I wound up doing well on them all, and getting credit for all of my classes on Semester at Sea! A lot of people bitch and complain about finals, but it’s part of school, so we just went along with it. Plus, a few nights before finals began, my group of friends signed up for Fine Dining, which is a fancy dinner that you can sign up for on the ship. It is $25 and a 4 course meal, which was delicious. It was definitely a nice break from dining hall food, and it was fun to get dressed up.

            The night before getting to Costa Rica they showed Elf in the Union on the big screen, which got us all really in the mood for Christmas. After that we stayed up for about 3 hours singing Christmas carols…it was lovely. How weird that the next morning we would be in sunny, 80 degree weather where it would feel so far from Christmas..

Anyway, we anchored around 8am and the tendering process began around 9. During tendering, there is no dock that is big enough for our ship to port, so we have to take the 100 passenger tender boats to shore. It is a hassle, but it sent rather smoothly this time, and I was on the 4^th tender. We were scheduled to meet the rafting company at the pier and there were 29 of us. Once we were all together, we piled into two different vans with our guides Kristen, Matt & Scott. They were all from the States…Kristen and Matt had lived down there for 3 years and Scott had just moved down there three weeks ago! We had about an hour ride to the place where we went zip lining! We did a total of 10 lines I think, and they were all tons of fun. I had been zip lining in France several years ago, but these were higher and longer lines so it was fun. Each time it felt like I was going to smack into the platform on the landing, but the guides stopped us every time! It was really fun and took probably about an hour and a half to get through the first section. Then we all climbed up a tower to do the Superman line, which was by far the coolest one. We had to wear full body harnesses, and we were attached to the zip line while laying on our stomachs. Difficult to explain, but just think of it as us being in the superman position. The line was probably a minute long and we reached speeds up to 70 mph!! At the end of the line we had to put our arms out beside us to build up some resistance to slow us down, but I came BOOKING in and was really nervous, but they stopped me! All it all it was a great afternoon. We had lunch there – chicken and rice and fried plantanes…delicious.

We got back in the buses for another three hours before reaching our hotel. Basically we drove from the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica all the way to the Caribbean Coast. We weren’t exactly on the coast, but we went pretty far. The countryside was BEAUTIFUL and the ride was so pretty. We got to the hotel for a fabulous meal of Garlic Bread, rice, chicken, potatoes – it was really delicious. The owners of the bar were from the States and they were a blast. We all hung out for awhile that night- there was a pool and a sauna – it was a good, relaxing time. Cindy, the owner, had all of these silly games planned that reminded me of the Feredjian’s Halloween parties (shout out to Honeysuckle). The next morning we woke up and had yet another delicious Costa Rican meal of eggs and rice and some other stuff…then loaded up the vans to head to the river!
            We broke down into our raft groups…6 people plus one guide. My raft was Steph, Lacey, Daneka, Brittany, Paul and myself. Our guides name was Danny and right from the beginning we knew he would give us a good time. The last time I went white water rafting was back in 7^th grade when I used to go to camp in Oregon and we would spend a day going down Hood River. I loved it back then, so I was really excited to be doing this again! The water was pleasantly refreshing – not too cold and the weather was beautiful. We saw lots of different wildlife – mostly birds as we made our way down the river. I think the biggest rapids were Class 3 or 4…they were fun. No one ever unintentionally fell out of our raft, but we would jump out every so often and ride the rapid down. For one of them we intentionally flipped the raft which was quite the adrenaline rush with everyone out of the raft and having to flip it over – that was probably my favorite part! There was one section where we pulled the rafts on to the shore and climbed up a little ways and were able to jump in and ride the “human rapids” down. I think we were out on the river for about 3 or 4 hours so it was a solid day. At one point Danny asked us what we were doing with the rest of our time in Costa Rica and we said we were headed to the city of Jaco that night. He gave us a look, and we asked him what Jaco was like. He said three words: Drugs, prostitutes and theft. We knew we’d be in for a treat later on…

After we got out of the river and got changed into dry clothes we loaded back on the buses for a little while and stopped at a really good restaurant for lunch. We sat out on the porch and the view overlooking the river was beautiful. And surprise, surprise…the food was delicious.

We had about a 3 or 4 hour ride to Jaco from there…some of us slept, I played travel battleship for a lot of the time, and I got to know Scott, one of the guides pretty well. He had quite the story of traveling around from place to place – usually on a whim. He had never been to Costa Rica before, but knew about the rivers and the guide industry. So he looked around online for a little while, shot an email to Matt & Kristen at Pacuare River Tours and they said come on down. So he did, and he sublets a room from them and so far he loves it down there.

Half of our group actually went back to Puntarenas while the rest of us headed to Jaco. We got there around 8pm or so, and had plans of meeting up with our friends at Hotel Tangerie at 930pm. Scott decided to stay and hang out with us for the night since he didn’t want to ride the bus all the way back to San Jose and figured he would just take one the next day. So a group of about 8 of us went to grab a quick bite at Subway before meeting Sam, Stacey, Peter & Erica at the hotel. We had a villa reserved there, and we actually wound up getting another one since there were 12 of us total.

The night was eventful – we ran into all three of the incidents that Danny said we would…numerous times. It was an interesting city and was much more unsafe than we had anticipated. Throughout the night there were several incidents involving SAS students…I had money stolen. Scott had his money, watch & camera stolen. One of my friends got mugged and literally dragged to the ground. Almost everyone got offered drugs at one point or another…it was quite eventful. But despite all of that we had a really good time and it was our last night in port together. Dani (roommate) and I ran into each other, which was fun because that never happens, so we got to hang out for awhile. The night ended late…or early….however you want to look at it, with watching the sunrise over the beach. No one wanted to go to sleep since it was our last night out together. We slept for about 2 or 3 hours before waking up to go grab a delicious breakfast right down the street at Coffee Zone. We were going to catch the bus back to Puntarenas at 130pm so for that morning/afternoon we just laid out by the pool…the boys went surfing in the ocean..or at least attempted to. It was really relaxing and a beautiful day that we didn’t want to end because we didn’t want to get back on the ship. Scott caught an early afternoon bus back to San Jose and thanked us for a good couple of days. We thanked him also and we all wished each other the best of luck. It is strange to look back on all of the people like Scott that we had met during the way. All of our tour guides and homestay hosts…people who we only spent a day or two with but had such a blast and such a big impact on our adventures. We’ve made a lot of friends outside SAS on this journey and I am forever thankful for that because they have enriched my experiences so much. Well back in Puntarenas we grabbed a quick lunch (I had a delicious salad) before doing some souvenir shopping and boarding the ship around 4pm. I showered and unpacked and Lacey and I watched a few episodes of Grey’s…right after the 8pm presentation about the Panama Canal, I had to call it a night. I was exhausted. I slept right through until breakfast the next morning…went up to the deck to lay out right after breakfast and fell asleep out there until noon. I clearly had some catching up to do.

The Ambassador’s Bal was that evening, which is more or less like a prom. I was sitting at a table of 4 with Ben, Mitch and Lacey and the rest of the crew was right next to us at a table of 6. The dining room was decorated beautifully and transformed in a way that made it look nothing like our dining hall. The meal was awesome…I actually had filet mingon- what is the world coming to? Haha. There was a good soup and tasty spring roll appetizer. Of course all of the boys complained that it wasn’t enough food, but it was delicious. They had a dance afterwards and a slide show that was playing in the Piano Bar…it was a really nice night. I wore the dress that I had tailored in Vietnam and although it was a little big and I had to safety pin it in order to keep it on, I got lots of compliments and was happy with it. I’ll take it to the tailor to get altered when I get home- but it’s a keeper! Everyone looked good because a lot of girls got dresses in Vietnam, and a lot of guys had suits made so everyone was decked out. It was lovely! Some boys had ridiculous suits on…like leopard print or bright orange….it was fun!

Time is coming to an end…only a few more days left aboard the MV Explorer…how weird!

Thanksgiving in Hawaii!

Aloha! Thanksgiving in Hawaii was one that I will never forget because it barely felt like Thanksgiving at all! A group of ten of us attempted to sleep out on the deck the night before pulling into Honolulu so we would wake up to the sunrise…but it wasn’t quite that successful. I think we tried going to bed around midnight, and it was WINDY. I could not fall asleep for the life of me…and I was awake as I slowly but surely watched the flies drop. First Chad, then Steph…awhile passed before Greg, then Peter…a little while longer and Mitch and Shannon went in. Around 330am I called it quits. I still wasn’t really tired, but I wanted to sleep, and it wasn’t going to happen out there. So I went down to my cabin and got my find and started walking around the ship seeing if we could pick up land signals yet. No dice. But I was extremely surprised at the number of people who were up and about at 4am. The computer lab was almost full…and people were in the dining halls hanging out, playing games. I was shocked. Well I crawled into bed a little after 4am and woke up at 620 to see the sunrise over Honolulu. Turned out that Ben, Erica and Lacey lasted sleeping out. Ben and Erica had sleeping bags so they weren’t cold…and Lacey had a fleece blanket that she just buried herself under. We all watched the sunrise together and it was beautiful. We grabbed a quick breakfast before all showering and running down to start making phone calls!! For those of you who know me…you could only imagine how exciting this was for me. I sat up on deck 7 with just about everyone else on the ship with my phone glued to my ear until the ship was cleared, which in total gave me about 2 hours. IT WAS AWESOME to talk to my family and a couple of my friends before I even got off of the ship. I knew that this would result in my phone being dead probably by the end of the morning, haha.   

I had signed up for the Salvation Army Thanksgiving Dinner through SAS, and that was from 10-2 so I would have a solid break (probably while most people at home were eating dinner since I was still 5 hours behind) so that worked out well. We got on a bus and our driver, James, gave us a little city tour of Honolulu. It did not feel like Thanksgiving at all. The weather was sunny and in the high 80s and everyone was wearing bathing suits. The dinner (or lunch in my mind) was being held at an arena in Waikiki, and we got there around 1030am. There were only 20 of us from SAS, and we were designated as Beverage Servers. I would say that there were probably around 500 people who came to get meals that day, and we were in charge of a specific section of the arena. I have no idea how many volunteers there were, but everyone was in such a great mood and the volunteers and the people eating- everyone was so nice. They had some fun Hawaiian entertainment going on up on the stage- some dancing, singing, etc. that was fun to watch. I more or less walked around with pots of coffee for two hours just chatting with people and making sure they had all the hot coffee they wanted! Almost everyone was finished eating by about 130pm, it was a quick process with so many volunteers helping. After cleaning up, we were offered our very own Thanksgiving meal to eat! This we were not expecting, so we were extremely happy that we would get to eat some turkey on Thanksgiving! The food was really good (much better than the Thanksgiving meal that the shipped served to us a few days later) and it definitely made my day! I’m really glad I did the service project- it made the day actually feel like Thanksgiving and I knew I would still have time to go to the beach. It was a rewarding experience to help give a Thanksgiving meal to those that didn’t have somewhere to go on Thanksgiving.

            From there James brought us to a Safeway because he heard us all talk about how excited we were to buy American snacks to bring back on the ship for the rest of the trip. Since we were in Waikiki and that’s where most of our friends were (I was with Lacey) we told our trip coordinator that we were just going to find where they were and not head back to the ship with them. Steph said that they were at the beach by the Hilton so I asked a man if he was familiar with the area and could point us in the direction of the hotel. He said that in about 3 minutes him and his wife would be driving right by the Hilton and they would be happy to give us a ride. They were a nice older couple from San Jose on vacation for Thanksgiving and it was very nice of them to give us a ride to somewhere that was about ten minutes away, so it saved us a cab ride! We just keep running into these nice people everywhere we go who are willing to help us out- it makes me think that there is some hope in this world…

Well we called Steph and she said that they were actually at the Hyatt…which was quite a ways down the beach. We weren’t in any rush so we both just pulled our phones out and walked along the water and made some phone calls. We finally found them and immediately we dropped our stuff and ran into the ocean. (SO unlike me..I never go in the ocean) but it was SO calm and not that warm, but warm enough. It was really nice and relaxing and felt so good to be swimming in the ocean in Hawaii on Thanksgiving Day! After a little while they all decided to leave and go to dinner somewhere and go to Wal-Mart to get groceries, but Lacey and I just stayed at the beach and enjoyed the day. She bought her first legal drink in the US, since she turned 21 while we were in Brazil, which was pretty exciting and we hung out with other SASers on the beach and watched the sunset…it was beautiful. Obviously, my phone battery died- what a surprise. But I got to talk to a lot of people and told others I would call them later once I was able to get on the ship to charge my phone. We just hung out for awhile..on ship time as 9pm, but they were as always, encouraging us to get on early…to the point that they were giving out free internet minutes if you boarded before a certain time. We figured that would get a lot of people back early so the line wouldn’t be too long by the time we got there. We caught a cab around 730 and were easily on the ship by 745pm no problem. I plugged my phone in and jumped in the shower while it charged- then made my way up to the 7^th deck to once again talk until it died. However, by the end it was almost 2am at home…but my friends (and brother) were so wonderful that most of them answered anyway. It was a nice, short visit and nice to get off of the ship…

Well, now that I am posting this mid-December…and ready to get off the ship the timing isn’t quite accurate, but that was my Thanksgiving in Hawaii!!!

Japan PART 2!!!

For the next three days in Japan, we moved fast. There was a lot that we wanted to do and see in a very short period of time. So the second night in Japan when Ben, Lacey and I were all back at the terminal after our home stays, Ben’s host family was SO helpful with helping us buy tickets and find the bus that would take us to Hiroshima. We were going to take the train, but the bus was half the price and we would still get in before midnight, so we opted for that. They spent probably an hour total helping us find the ticket counter, and helping us find an ATM machine that worked with our cards, which was quite the challenge. Then they showed us to a grocery store so we could get some food for the bus ride. They were SO helpful and honestly I don’t think we would have successfully gotten on that bus. Once we got on they told us that there was a lady on the bus who spoke English who would help us find a hostel in Hiroshima. We had no plan set up for that, we were just going to find one using the guide book once we got to Hiroshima. But about half way through the ride the girl came to the back of the bus and said she had called a youth hostel for us and they had vacancy in a dorm room for I think $20 a person. So we thanked her endlessly and she called the hostel back and made the reservation for us since the front desk closes at 10pm and we would be getting there closer to midnight. She wrote the name of the hostel down in Japanese characters and once we got off the bus we were able to catch a cab and find it relatively easily. We were so thankful to get help from these wonderfully generous people…we almost couldn’t believe how much they went out of their ways to help us, it was really awesome.

            We had a good nights sleep at K’s Hostel which is run by young Japanese girls and we had two roommates from England who seemed very nice. We called it a night once we settled down there for a little while and go up rather early to set out for the day. We walked to the train station to go buy bullet train tickets for that evening to go up to Tokyo. The bullet train is the quickest means of transportation in Japan and is extremely efficient and rather reasonable. From the station we took a street tram over to Peace Memorial Park. There we saw all that there is to see. First the A-bomb dome which is a building that is still standing in Hiroshima as a reminder of the power that nuclear weapons have. The structure has been maintained to look as it did after the bombing and is now a World Heritage Site. We walked around the Peace Memorial Park and saw the Peace Clock Tower, the Children’s Peace Monument, the Atomic Bomb Memorial Mound, the Peace Bell, the Monument Dedicated to Korean Victims and Survivors, the Peace Fountain, the Friendship Monument, the Flame of Peace, Memorial Hall for the A-Bomb Victims and lastly the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. It was a beautiful autumn day and the park itself was gorgeous with the changing leaves and monuments everywhere. It was emotional and trying seeing all of the monuments and memorials. To read about the horrible reality and aftermath of the A-bomb was difficult and brought me back to 8^th grade when I read the book, Hiroshima. All of the accounts told by the author came rushing back to my memory, and I could not believe that I was standing in the very place that the first nuclear weapon in world history was dropped over 50 years ago.

            The Memorial Museum was quite the experience. I think it took us a little over two hours to complete the whole thing. There was just SO much information and so much to see and read about. It took us from the leading events to the dreadful day of August 6, 1945 to all the way through to the effects that residents of Hiroshima still live with today. I learned about the A-bomb from the Japanese point of view and saw material evidence that I never could have imagined. Everything from the morphing of cement form buildings to recovered articles of clothing that school children wore on that day. I saw video clips and photographs of the devastated city of Hiroshima and I can’t believe that it now looks like what it does compared to what it did in the late 1940s. I could have spent more time going through the exhibits and rooms, but my brain was fried from all that I had seen and taken in throughout the day. Even if it was only for a short visit, I am SO glad that I made it down to Hiroshima because it was definitely a place that I wanted to see for myself, and to appreciate. The city may take the cake for the friendliest and welcoming city that I have traveled to during this entire journey. The amount of peace and happiness flowing through the streets and everywhere I went was overwhelming and almost unbelievable after they suffered such a tragic and devastating day in history decades ago. There are shirts sold everywhere saying slogans such as “Nuke Free Hiroshima” or “Peace, Love, Hiroshima”. There were people standing on the bridge over the river with Free Hugs signs and giving everyone who wanted one a Free Hug. I just found the city to be extremely welcoming and gracious towards each other and towards Americans in particular. I was predicting hostility and resentment, but received the exact opposite- it was quite refreshing. We took our time enjoying the rest of the afternoon, then went to the bus station and got a quick dinner before getting on our train to head to Tokyo. It was a four hour train ride and we slept for a little while, but enjoyed most of the ride just talking and playing some games. We finally got to the Tokyo Station around 11pm and were planning on meeting three other friends at the New City Hotel which was apparently rather close by. We followed a map, and walked through a park and magically stumbled upon it! They said they would get there around 1130pm, but that was three days ago, so who knew if they were really going to be there…

            We did run into some other SAS friends that we didn’t know where staying there, and eventually Antoinette, Matt & Chris showed up! The rooms were only “for two people” so Ben and Chris checked in and the rest of us staggered up throughout the next ten minutes. We all showered and got ready to go out in Tokyo – starting at 1230am about, haha. We took a cab to an area that we were planning to meet up with more friends in and wound up going to Freshness Burger, a “fast food” place to get some food since we hadn’t eaten since lunch and we just walked around and went to a few bars in the area, and wound up coming home around 3am I think. We pushed the two beds together so four people were able to sleep on the beds, and two of us slept on the floor. We would only be sleeping for a few hours so we knew it was no big deal. Matt, Antoinette and Chris had slept in a bar the night before….aka they didn’t sleep, so when Lacey, Ben and I woke up around 6am to go to the Tsukiji Fish Market, they decided to sleep in. We caught the train and made it to the market a little late, the prime time is between 5-6am and we got there a little after 7am. But it was pretty neat to see all of the fresh catches of the morning. It is basically where all sushi restaurants come to buy the fresh fish for the day. We got to try some pretty interesting food, half of which I had no idea what it was, and I ate some REALLY good raw fish. What could be better at 730am?? That was fun to walk around for about an hour or so seeing all of the interesting food they had out. We stopped at a little store to get some snacks for the day, because the night before we had decided that we were going to go to Tokyo Disney!! First we stopped at the Imperial Palace, Gokokuji Temple and the Tokyo Castle. The Temple was neat, we walked around it for awhile. The Palace and Castle we couldn’t get really close or go into, but they were neat to see. There was some sort of horse brigade coming through that no one would explain to us, but it was cool to see. Then we hopped back on the train (subway and train are the same thing in Tokyo…and we had gotten frighteningly good at figuring out all of the lines). Originally we had no intention of going to Tokyo Disney, but after seeing all of the advertisements, and that the park was revamped into CHRISTMAS, I was sold. When we were looking at a map in the station to figure out the best line to get on, we met a Japanese student who spoke very good English and helped us find lockers to drop our packs at for the day so we didn’t have to carry them around Disney for a few hours. He was extremely helpful and was getting on the same line that we were so we had the chance to talk with him for a few minutes. He recommended that we go to DisneySEA instead of DisneyLAND. We had no idea what the difference was so we took his word for it! As soon as we saw the Christmas trees and lights and heard the music, we knew it would be a good afternoon in Disney. We walked around, shopped, people watched and went on a couple of rides. We all developed this love for children while we were traveling through Asia because they are so absolutely adorable. There were a few weird things about Disney Tokyo…like the lack of Mickey, and the overwhelming presence of Duffy, a character that I have never seen or heard of before. We went to “Western Land” instead of “Frontier Land”, which was funny. It was a good afternoon and once the sun set and the park was lit up with Christmas lights it was magnificent. It probably was not as elaborate as Disney in the States, but it still put us in quite the Christmas spirit. We couldn’t stay for the light show unfortunately because we had to get to Yokohama by 9pm to go to the Ramen Noodles Museum because Lacey had to visit there as a class assignment. We caught a crowded train to Yokohama which took only about 45 minutes and after some confusion, final made it to the Ramen Museum. It was the weirdest place I have visited on this trip. First of all, not a single person there spoke English. Lacey’s assignment was to try all of the different Ramen noodles they had, but each one cost about $5 and was a huge bowl! It was this poorly lit building that was supposed to look like a city inside? And there were all these different little “stores” that had the different noodle dishes. It was very bizarre, I still don’t really understand it. But there were some other SASers there since the ship had just gotten to Yokohama that day and a number of students stayed on the ship between Kobe & Yokohama.

            We finally made it to the port around 11pm after making friends with this very interesting man on the train. He spoke very little English, but explained that he was also a backpacker and insisted on helping us find our way to the ship (since we didn’t exactly know where the port was). He also wanted to take us out to drinks and back to his house for dinner (which we obviously declined) but he did catch us a cab and took us to the port which was very nice. We probably could have walked, but when we told him that he basically started to tear up, so we let him catch us a cab. I know as soon as my head hit the pillow in my cabin I was out.

            The next morning we debated taking the train to Mt Fuji, which wasn’t very far away, but at this point we were running low on money and just wanted to stick around Yokohama. So we walked around the pier, where many other ships and cruises were parked and enjoyed the beautiful weather just walking along the water. We did a little shopping at a nearby mall and then found a Round Sushi restaurant which was exactly what we wanted! We call them Conveyer Sushi in the States…where you sit at a big counter and the sushi chefs make two pieces of sushi and put them on color coded dishes that cycle around the conveyor belt and you just grab what you want! The plates have different price values, and then you pay at the end depending on how many plates you have…I had been to one in London before, but not in the States. The sushi here is really different than at home, and not exactly what I expected. They don’t really make rolls unless you request it, and they use a lot of mayo which is interesting. The best one that I had was avocado & tuna with mayo. They also have crab, tuna and shrimp salad pieces which were interesting. Overall, fantastic lunch and just what we wanted as our last meal before getting back on the ship for the long haul to Hawaii. After lunch we walked around the park for awhile – climbed trees, watched families fish from a river and then we went on the World’s Biggest Ferris Wheel! It gave us a beautiful view of the city, and apparently on a clear day you can see Mt Fuji, but it was definitely not that clear that day. It took about 20 minutes to go all the way around and was pretty fun. We bought some groceries after that (half of which I had no idea what it was…) and then we went back to the ship to get on a little early. We were pretty exhausted and my feet were actually in pain from all of the walking that I did the past two days through Hiroshima and Tokyo.

            Throughout most of Japan there was Christmas music and Christmas decorations and it was fall weather, so it actually got me in the mindset for the holiday season. Japan was one of my favorite countries of the journey, and once again a lot of it had to do with the home stay that I did while in Kobe. I found the Japanese to be extremely kind and helpful and although I did hear other students talk a lot about racism throughout the country, I never once encountered it. Lots of people were rejected from bars or clubs for being American and received dirty looks from the locals. Although it wasn’t the cheapest place we had visited, I enjoyed my stay there and was very glad that I did not get back on the ship between Kobe & Yokohama. As the last major part of the journey, I was glad I traveled with Ben & Lacey – it really put a nice end to the travel through Asia. Although it was stressful at times trying to read train maps and figure out the schedules, overall it was a pretty stress-free port and we met some really friendly people who helped us along the way. Japan is definitely a country that I would like to visit again one day (It seems like this is a trend after most of the countries that I have visited….)