Acapulco Continued!

Acapulco Day 2

Well if you are keeping track, day 2 in Acapulco was my birthday and I must say was probably one of the most fun bdays I have had. We spent the day at Isla Roqueta which is a small island off of the main drag in Acapulco, recommended to us by both the tour books we read and by the students that had gone the day previous. Our students commented on the fun ride over on the tour boat and the cute little island. So we met up early, myself, Doug, Anne, Rasa, Tania and Karen and we headed over to were we could get a ferry. As we boarded the ferry near the Zocalo (the town square in Acapulco full of fun little shops and a main church) we got a chance to see just how massive our ship is in this tiny little port.

After looking through the books we thought the ride to the island would last at most 20 minutes, in a very slow boat. However, our tour guide had a different idea as this boat was not only a $3 ride to the island, but also a tour and show of all the local sights on the 1 mile ride to the island. We were shown the houses of Mexican politicians, actors and actresses highlighted by the hous of Ricardo Montalban…yup…thrilling. The little boat then stopped near a rock were our guides jumped off and climed a rock and gave us our own little cliff diving show. As we rounded the bend and could see the island we had a few more stops at the Virgen de Guadalupe and at a place were we could see some fish through our glass bottom boat. Finally, and 1 hour and 15 minutes later we pulled up about 200 meters from the island were a smaller boat selling tacky shell ornaments and conch shells (the tackiest being a jesus on the cross surrounded by shells). Then our boat was boarded by some locals selling shrimp and sodas. At this point, we could see the island, we were hot, and just upset that we were not informed that we were going to be given a tour rather then just driven to the island that Rasa decided she was going to jump off and swim to shore. So with in seconds Rasa had jumped off of the ship and was swimming her way to the shore while the rest of us sat in the boat waiting for the painful ferry ride to end. An hour and half total we sat on the little boat for a ride that could have taken 10 minutes tops.

La Isla was way cute, but very much a local Mexican tourist spot, no white people in sight which was great! We made our way to the quietest part of the beach and realized that like usual in Acapulco it was a million degrees outside so we rented some umbrellas and chairs and just began a day of relaxation. Well, relaxation apart from the 2340832048 people trying to sell you there crap, anything from braids and massages to necklaces and water floatees. All I know is the last thing I would want in that heat was for someone to touch me. Rasa put it best, “I don’t understand how there could ever be a population issue in Mexico, I don’t know how anyone would want to have sex in this heat”.

After the Island we made it back to the ship for a quick nap and shower and then we headed off to the Cliff Divers at the Quebrada. This was one of the highlights I wanted to check out in Mexico. We made it there in time for the 7:30pm show which cost us $3.50 to get down close were we could see them jump and land in the water. I got some amazing photos, I hope that you all can see them!

From there we took a cab to El Cabrito a cool little restaurant snuggled in the most authentic part of Acapulco…basically next door to the Hard Rock Café and Planet Hollywood J So Yes, it was it was in a touristy spot, but is known for its amazing Mole. So of course, I had the Mole! Mole is combination of like 400 ingredients that make this brown pasty sauce that is an awakening to anyone’s palette. After ordering about 8 more people showed up to help celebrate my birthday! It was so much fun, I enjoyed some Sangria, a few shots of Don Julio tequila and well just basically an amazing time with new friends. After dinner we ended up in a Mexican karaoke bar next to some great loud boisterous women who were a hoot and how recommended that we hit a bar called Salon Q. This place reminded me of the Havana club in I Love Lucy. Basically a bunch of tables in a large semi circle elevated in tiers around a dance floor and a large stage with live music. After some dancing we were removed from the dance floor for a show with some club dancers in banana and Cuban outfits. The dancers were followed by 3 female impersonators…yes…drag queens…at this random bar in Acapulco…funny to say the least. The night ended around 3AM and trust, I crashed!

Day 3 Acapulco

Today was my first SAS sponsored trip. SAS offers trips that they plan and we pay for, the only real beneft of doing trips through them is that you don’t have to do any of the planning or worrying about transportation to these sites. So my first trip was out to the local aquarium to swim with dolphins! Yup…I got to swim with dolphins, definitely something I have always wanted to do. The water park were the dolphin aquarium was located at was actually very nice, go figure it was in the touristy area of Acapulco. When we got to the park we had some free time before our swim time. The park had 4 dolphins, all looking great and totally healthy. It was so cool to be sitting in a pool with dolphins…my dolphin, whose name was Maite loved me…I was the only one that was able to get there dolphin to turn on its belly and let me pet its stomach, just call me the Dolphin Whisperer. Favorite part is when they had the dolphins pick us up with there noses and push us out of the water! I think the craziest part of this is that about 20 students did not make it to the swim because they were to hung over to get up…yup…that means they just wasted a $125 trip…

The afternoon/night of day 3 was pretty tame we headed to the mall and then to another out door market to check out the goods. I tried to get myself a Mariachi Sombrero, but I as I was looking I was reminded that I would probably have to wear the hat home on the plane, and while that may seem like a good idea, a red eye flight while wearing a huge hat is not really going to be fun. Dinner was seafood on the ocean again, I think that is something I will greatly miss from this trip, the amount of amazing seafood I have been eating!

Day 4 Acapulco

Today we spent the day at a beach called Pie de la Cuesta which was located about 45 minutes north of Acapulco. The time we spent here was amazing, it was a long white sand beach with HUGE waves that knocked me around, but the most amazing part was how empty the beach was! It was pretty much our private little beach. We ate lunch at this little place on the beach which ended up paying for our rent of some hammocks and chairs…so yes, we took advantage of those. Today was also the final game in the Copa De Oro Futbol tournament…and who was playing? Mexico and the US of course! I believe the US won 2-1, so the rest of the day we were definitely Canadian J On the way back to the ship our van driver we rented took us by the local Diego Rivera mosaic (Diego was the husband of Frida Calo). Diego had one of his mistresses living here in Acapulco, what is more fitting then building one of his last works of art in front of her house!

So now we are back on the ship and back to ship life…I Am very glad that I did not get sea sick and that I was able to ease right back into the flow of life in the MV. What does a day look like for me? Well I have been getting up in the morning around 7am to work out and eat breakfast. At 9:20 is Latin America today which is a class that we all need (should) attend. From there we have a student life meeting at 11am and then lunch. The afternoon I work at the student life desk or have the time to enjoy the ship or get some work done! The night time is usually reserved for programming efforts or being on call at one of the alcohol nights. Alcohol has been pretty tame so far on the ship. In Acapulco, not gonna lie the students went a little crazy, well some of them did…most actually were totally fine!

Apart from that all is well! I hope to call people when I get to Panama on Friday! Much love…

Acapulco and more...

The last few days at sea seem to be a blure at this point. The students had there first 2 days of classes, and let me tell you they are going to be over worked! I am scared for some of these guys, the amount of reading is grad level in most classes…and lets not forget that all in all we only have 28 days at sea! So needless to say students are truly freaking out. The last couple of nights we had our first “pre-ports” which are were we have different people from the community brief us on the country and city we are about to port in. two nights before a port is a “cultural pre-port” and the night before a port is the “logistical pre-port.” The cultural pre-port was fun, a long time semester at sea professor had the whole community singing Mexican Mariachi music while our IT lady (who is from Vera Cruz, Mexico) told us all about things we should try and eat in Mexico. The logistical preport was on the other hand a little dry and ran WAY past the hour allotted for it to be complete. I am hoping that we can convince the deans that run these that we need to add a little energy to the presentation!

We also had our first “AFTer hours” which is basically the alcohol service night on the ship where student can drink from 2100-2300 hours. On some of these nights we get to semi-police them and make sure they are not breaking any policies! This first night was pretty much a success I would say. No students got into trouble and all went fairly well. If you are curious, the name AFTer hours comes from the aft of the ship, which is the back. Since our pool deck and alcohol service occurs there, we call it afterhours…genius…

Like I think I mentioned I was in charge of the Sea Olympics on the ship, and so we had our first meeting. I thought the meeting was going to be a bust because of how late the logistical preport had run…but alas I had about 25 students come and seem to be interested in making the sea Olympics an awesome and amazing day! Nothing planned as of yet…but if you have any ideas for competitions we can play on a ship? Let me know! The RDs got me a cake to celebrate my birthday a little early, so we had some wine and got to hang out. We then headed upstairs to deck 7 were the stafulty lounge is located were we found a good number of the other younger professionals on the ship. We then gave them some cake, turned up the music, and started a little birthday dance party! So much fun.

Acapulco Day 1

So we arrived in Acapulco and Doug and I made sure we were up to watch the ship arrive in port. We woke up about 30 minutes to EARLY at 6am (trust me I would have preferred the sleep!) But we did get to see an amazing sun rise as we sailed very slowly into the Acapulco bay. I will try and load some pictures of this. The ship was cleared by customs around 10AM and Doug, Anne and Rasa went off to explore the city on foot. The first thing I should note is that while I did not get the least bit sea sick, I could NOT believe how hard it was to walk on land. I honestly almost got sick from land sickness after 3 days of sailing! What I am going to do after 6 full days before Chile is beyond me! We mad our way to an ATM to get some Pesos and then found a sign pointing to the Mercado Central. After about 10 minutes of walking we found the central market which was jam packed with people an booths selling every and anything you can imagine from Queso Fresco (mmmmmm) to dead hanging chickens to piñatas and herbal medicine. My favorite part had to be the flower section were they were selling fresh flowers and arrangements. The interesting thing was to see how symmetrical the Mexican flower arrangements were…it wasn’t pretty…but interesting non the less. We found a place for lunch, a little taco stand and had 5 tacos for 15 pesos…so if you are doing the math in your head, we had lunch for $1.50…Barbacoa tacos, cilantro, hot sauce, lime, and onions…I hope your mouth is watering!

The heat in Acapulco is crazy! After walking around the city for a while we were able to sweat enough to fully drench everything we were wearing. After lunch, a beer on the beach, and a visit to the grocery store we made it back to the ship to shower, rest and change for dinner. We spent dinner with Aaron (the video guy), Nicole (the field office person), and a couple of ISE folks that were just on the trip through Acapulco. Dinner was everything I could want…a full fish, head and all, cooked a la plancha with a garlic and chili crust…amazing…I only hope the rest of the meals on this trip can be this delicious.

Tomorrow we are heading to an island…and I hope to buy a phone card to give everyone a call!

Love ya!

Lat 22º 9.98 N
Long 109º 43.64W
Speed 19.2 knots
Course 125º

Some where off the coast of Mexico just south of the Baja Peninsula

So the students got here a few days ago, the ship is divided into “seas” which are floors/areas and each RD is in charge of a Sea. I am in charge of the Caribbean Sea, so it was great telling people on move-in day “Welcome to the Caribbean Sea” and watching them look at me like I was crazy cause we are in the Pacific Ocean…oh well…they figured it out!

We had our lifeboat drill, which was entertaining! Who knew that I would be in charge of calling out names at the muster station. That’s right, 113 people at my muster station and I get to make sure they are all there during the drill. Lets just say that after standing at attention wearing bright orange life vests and crammed up against each other these folks weren’t all that happy!

We spent 2 days pretty much doing orientation meetings after meeting after meeting….thrilling! But that is over and now our regular days are finally starting! Tonight is the activities fair where I get to sign people up for the recreation and Sea Olympics committees. Sounds as though I will have a lot of interest and that students are pretty excited about the opportunity to get involved. I am going to try and upload some pics…www.flickr.com/photos/marioperaza

At sea

The flight out…

8 hours later we finally made it out of Columbus and back to the great state of California! I really did not remember hoew much I love this place, just the smell alone of eucalyptus and the smog brought back great memories J The flight over was not bad, from Columbus to Denver I initially thought I was sitting next to a small girl (read: more leg room), but then the nice guy in front of us (read: Large…large man) asked if the girl wanted to move up a seat and sit with her family. I suppose that was nice of him, but that took away my ability to move my legs what so ever!. The large man consumed the following on hour 3 hour trip to Denver:

- 1 large bag of Garlic Chex Mix
- 2 bags of pretels
- 1 bag of steak-ums (those smelled delightful…)
- 1 bag of cheez-its
- 1 bag of nuts
- 1 bag of trailmix
- 1 brownie type item
- 4 glasses of red wine

The rest of the flight was uneventful…but I did get to watch the Office from Denver to San Diego!

In San Diego my cousin Jeremy was able to pick us up at the airport and had us stay at his place on the couch…minor detail he forgot to share before he picked us was that his roommate would be hosting an 8 person card party till 3am (read: 7am our time) so we were a little tired getting to the ship!

The ship = AMAZING…I am not gonna lie, I feel a little guilty traveling the world in a first class ship, while yes, there is no casino, we do have a full spa and gym. The room I am in, while might be small for 2 people, is perfect for one. This year the RDs lucked out and were able to get rooms with windows! Honestly I don’t know if I could have handled not having natural light in my living space for 2.5 months! I have so much storage space I could have brought more clothes if I wanted to (the only thing I am afraid I might not have enough of is socks, the ship is SO cold I can’t wear flip flops around!) I literally have to have a sweatshirt on at all times! At one point I had to sit on both my feet in a meeting I was so uncomfortable!

The first few days have been pretty much filled with training, and training and a little more training! Basically we have gotten a chance to learn about all the different functions of the ships and how they can help us do our jobs! So my job, you think I would have figured that out by now J kidding, I am the recreation RD, so apart from the typical RD stuff I will be in charge of pulling together the Sea Olympics…a chance for each “sea” (what we call or floors) to battle it out for the opportunity to be the first floor to exit the ship once we dock back in San Diego in 65 days…I’ll let you know how that goes…any ideas for some fun events we can play on a ship?
The morning of our second day we pulled into Ensenada, Mexico where we will be picking up the students on the 17th. We got a chance to head into town that night for our first taste of another country (while really only really within spitting distance of San Diego!). We pulled into port and the first sight we are welcomed by is literally the largest flag I have ever seen…this Mexican flag is GINORMOUS! The people standing at the bottom of the bowl looked like ants in comparison! We left the ship and headed out to wander the town and somehow ended up in the touristy part of town (of course what part of ensenada isn’t a tourist spot?). Grabbed some dinner at what we thought maybe not a touristy spot, but we found out that yes, the menus we received where in English (booo). I had some tasty Tamales, something I had not had in Columbus yet!

We didn’t really walk around much since all of us were pretty exhausted! We headed back to the ship and I definitely fell asleep by 9:30pm, of course I was planning on getting up at 5:45 to go do Yoga with some folks that were gathering in the ships Union.
Not much to report from the last few nights…tomorrow the students arrive and the real work begins!

getting ready to go!

So the time has come and its less then 48 hours till I leave Columbus for 70 days! I would be lying if I didn't say that I am excited more then you can imagine (the thoughts of waking every morning to the smell of salty sea water, the sights of deep blue sea, the sway of the ship...it will be blissful).
A small going away party is being thrown by some close friends tomorrow, a sea send off like no other I am sure! nothing but trouble comes from a party that asks for campy sailor attire if ya got it! This is what I will miss from Columbus, the time with friends that I cherish so greatly in the summer, but I am so excited for all the new friendships that have yet to be made (I mean lets face it, a small ship with 500 odd people should about a few good friends.
Tuesday I will be taking off to San Diego with Doug where we will get a chance to hang out with my cousin Jeremy (who is a senior at SDSU). Wednesday will be all about the target runs to get snacks, shampoo and wrinkle releaser spray (lets be honest I am not gonna iron on the ship, but I will try to be as wrinkle free as possible!).
My plan for his blog is to try and update it every few days and to give a few fun stories from the different ports we will be visiting...all I ask is that you say hi every now and then so I know you haven't forgotten me :-)
Much love to family and friends!