F***ing Trecking

So like I said in my last entry my trip in Guatemala was going to be a jungle trecking adventure that I signed up for last minute. The trip was going to be cancelled due to a lack of a staff member wanting to go, so I decided that I woud jump aboard and save the trip. This was actually one of the trips that I wanted to do from the beginning but didn’t sign up because of the cost, but since I was sure I would be trip leader I would get the automatic 50% off!

The trecking trip didn’t leave till day two, so on day one I decided to go to Antigua with Anne and Ebonie. The night before I decided to chat with the interport student (a student that arrives prior to a port and talks about there country) and ask about the best way to get to Antigua. While chatting with him he just suggested that we catch a ride with him up to Antigua, which was great considering it was about a $100 cab ride and that we were told that the buses were the most unsafe way to travel (the US diplomat described a normal occurrence where people hijack buses, shot someone and let them bleed to death while they collect money, so needless to say we were going to avoid public buses).

So that morning we waited outside with the interport student Pablo and chatted with him a bit and found out that he owned a Sushi Restaurant in Antigua, so yes, he was definitely well off. This was also confirmed when we asked how his car was getting to the port and his response was that his driver was bringing it….duh…I hate it when I forget to ask my driver to come pick me up!

Antigua is basically a tourist town that has done a great job in keeping the area clean and safe and basically serves as a hub for tourists to get to all the other parts of Guatemala you would want to see. It was a very picturesque town, loved it!

We ended up visiting the market, getting coffee, and then having dinner at Pablos sushi restaurant with some of my favorite students. We had what has to be my favorite sushi roll I have ever had “Mango no come Mango” which was a roll with mango, shrimp, avocado tempura, and macadamia nuts…heavenly! After dinner and a few drinks we headed back to the ship to get ready for the jungle trekking and the rest of the trips Anne and Ebonie were going on.

On day 2 we left bright and early aboard a small plane to the area of Peten and the city of Flores in northern Guatemala. The plane was a 4 prop plane that sat about 50 people, so not that small really…When we arrived in Flores we got on some small vans and headed out to the starting point of our journey, a small town outside of the biological zone known as El Zotz. El Zotz, which means Bat in Maya, is the largest reserve of land in central America and the second largest in all of the Americas. Once in the small town we were given details of what the next 4 days would look like on our way to Tikal. Trekking and roughing it are exactly what we did, we were told this was going to be strenuous but very rewarding. Everything we would eat and sleep in would be on the back of about 7 horses who headed out about 30 minutes in front of us. We were also given the option on day 1 to have the horses carry our backpacks (mine which weighed I would guess 20lbs). Everyone decided we could carry our own stuff that day, I mean we signed up for a hard few days right!

Well Day 1 we come to find out would be a 20K hike along an old access road. The first hour of the hike was horrible as we trekked along a piece of road that was not covered by trees, rather was just HOT and HUMID and extremely muddy. After the first our we finally arrived to the entrance to El Zotz park for the rest of the 4 hours of walking up and down muddy roads and rocks to get to the first camp site. The first day was by far the hardest due to the lack of shade, the heat, and the backpacks we all had. The mud was so mad that for most of the hike we all had about 2 inches of mad on the bottom of our shoes adding another 5 lbs to each step it seemed.

At the first camp site which was composed of a small “kitchen” and an roofed area to hang hammocks we had some time to rest before we were to head off to watch the famous El Zotz bats. Around 6:15 we walked about 5 minutes to a small area near a cliff where at dusk millions of bats would leave from. I personally have a fear of bats and so I was definitely a little on edge when we arrived to a small dip in the path that was known as Bat alley where thousands, and I literally mean thousands of 6-8 inch long bats were flying around looking for insects to eat and we had to walk right smack through the middle of this. My first reaction was “are you fucking kidding me!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Yup...that is my first recreation to the bats...

After some more cursing I made my way into the alley and became one with the bats…probably one of the most incredible experiences of my life as thousands of bats flew within centimeters of my body without ever touching me, for the bats we were just another obstacle to fly around. Many many times a bat would come within inches of my face only to fly directly around me, so freaky!!!

After the alley we made it to the cave and were told to look up and within minutes we would see the mass exodus of bats. At the foot of the cave where we were standing we were literally standing in about ankle deep guano, or Bat shit, and were told that to squint when looking up because the bats as they flew over would be pooping all over us.

For those that have never stood in Bat poop it is basically a smelly really fine black powder. After a few minutes the dusk sky turned black as thousands of bats left the cliffs caves and made there way out for feeding for the night.

On our return to the camp we saw that our tents had been completed with mosquito netting that made each of us have our own little cocoon to sleep in…and so my first night of sleeping in the jungle in a hammock was not to bad. Oh ya…food, well dinner on the first night they prepared a chicken with potatoes and a sauce, it was actually quite tasty, but it could also have been that we were starving! So if you are keeping track I have now gone 24 hrs with no shower (and we sweat for every one of those hours) or pooping (I decided I didn’t want to have to poop in the jungle).

Day 2 we walked about 3 hours to a few un excavated Mayan ruins known as the Zotz and the Diablo temples. These were near the camp, but not in the direction of our final location Tikal, the largest and most spectacular of all Mayan Ruins. While on this small excursion we saw some creatures including 3 snakes and some scorpions…tasty. After we returned to the camp we packed everything up had some lunch (soup…very fitting for the cool afternoon in the Guatemalan jungle….not). And so we were off for our day 2 15K hike. This hike was down a smaller path that the horses could still travel on so I decided for Day 2 I would let them carry my pack. For the last hour of our 3.5 hour hike they skies exploded and we had to pull out our ponchos for the downpour that stuck around all night. Night 2 in the jungle was amazing as our camp was under the canopy which was home to a ton of howler monkeys who were kind enough to serve as our 5am wake up call to start our last and final 20K hike. So for your score keeping, 48 hours no shower or bowl movement (you would be surprised what you can do when you don’t want to poop). I was pretty grossed out by my own smell, it was repulsive.

Day 3 we started at 6am to walk 5 hours into the Tikal ruins along the final part of the Mayan trail. This part of the trail was to technical for the horses so we had to carry everything on our backs. While yes, this part of the hike got long, it was truly amazing as we weaved our way through the jungle following our machete wielding guide over and under logs and trees. After about 5 hours we left the jungle and had our first glimpse of temple 4 of Tikal and were told we had about 5 minutes. At this point I had been about 60 hours without pooping (and so had about 5 of my students, it was a great challenge for all of us) so as we saw Tikal we RAN to the bathroom and well I guess you can imagine the next ten minutes. It was about 11:30am and so of course we had been walking for 5 hours so we had some lunch, a can of black beans on white bread…yes…this may have been the most tasty bit of food I have ever had.

We spent the rest of the afternoon visiting all the ruins of Tikal where the Mayans once lived many years ago. I am not going to go into to much detail about Tikal, but here are some pictures. A lot of people have asked which I found more impressive, Tikal or Machu Picchu, and I would have to Say Tikal hands down…it was breathtaking. But I also think the arrival to Tikal was much more rewarding…. That is me right after arriving in Tikal

My reaction to seeing the first coke stand in Tikal...DIET COKE!!!!

so…a little summary of my trip to Tikal:

- 40 miles of hiking in Hot, sweaty, humid Guatemalan jungles for 3 days

- No showering for 72 hours

- No pooping for 60 hours

- The trek we went on is only done by about 350 people a year

- A ton of moneys, koatamundies, snakes, lizards, birds, and other scary things.

Our last day we spent the night in a cute little hotel where we got cleaned up and celebrated our true accomplishment of the Mayan empire.

After the hotel our flight home was on the smallest plane I have ever been on...I definitly held tight and hoped for the best!

I would have to say without a doubt that this was the best trip I had while on SAS, truly an amazing way to end my time at in port!

Just so everyone knows, we were not effected by the earthquake in Peru and the tsunami warnings and watches…but damn that was a close call, we were there less then a month ago!
Getting on the ship for the last time was definitely bitter sweet as I have been saying for a while, knowing that I get to see everyone again, but known that this adventure is coming to an end way to soon.

The next few days should be fun on the ship…I have my captains dinner tonight, Rasa’s b-day is tonight as well, the ambassadors ball in a few nights, and some going away parties…good times!

I will try and post a couple times before I get back in a few days, but if I don’t…see ya soon!

Love ya

So we just got back on the ship from our stop in Nicaragua…wow…what a country! Another one day crossing, so we will be in Guatemala tomorrow morning!

The one day crossing to Nicaragua was actually quite eventful! I am not sure if I had mentioned it yet on my blog, but I had since that day gone the entire voyage without seeing one bit of sea life…and well today made up for the whole trip! While we were at lunch I was sitting where I could see out te window when all of a sudden I see dolphins jumping like CRAZY…backflips, twists, front flips…it was SO cool…all I could do was slightly squeal a little till people figured out what I was pointing at! I have never seen dolphins that playful in the wild…it was so cool! SO I spent the afternoon on the top deck waiting for more dolphins, and I got them! I was even able to take a couple pictures…


OK…so we made it to Nicaragua…even before we got here we knew that this was going to be one of the poorest countries on our itinerary, but I had no idea how bad it would be till we got there. We docked in Corinto, Nicaragua which is nothing but a couple of little streets and a lot of run down and old buildings. When we exited the port we were accosted by bicycle taxis wanting to take us where we wanted. If you remember from the end of my last blog I had managed to rent a house in Las Penitas Nicaragua, so we needed to arrange a form of transportation that city which was about 1.5 hours away. Rasa worked on the transport while I worked on changing over some money at a local bank.

We got in a van that looked like it was held together with duct tape and was being driven by a really creepy driver, but alas that is all we could find to make the trip…there were 11 of us in the van, so obviously it was going to be safe. After asking directions a couple times we made it out to the house. Pedro and Carmen were the caretakers of the house and were very welcoming to our large group (we had about 12 people at the house at any given time, some people left while others joined during the 4 days we were there). The town, tiny, I mean tiny…of course we didn’t see much of it, we really did just stay at the house for 4 whole days! Mom, it was smaller then Boca de Uchire in Venezuela! Pedro took us that first night to the grocery store so we bought almost $300 in food and beer…that was a show of course, 5 Americans in a small grocery store in Leon with 3 overflowing carts full of food (we had each signed up to cook a meal or two). The grocery store was about 25 minutes from the house and we made it there and back by riding in the back of a pick-up truck J Love you Mom J

So the house was beautiful, it opened right onto the ocean…maybe 15 ft to where the waves were breaking, literally I could crawl from my bedroom to the beach and never walk. The house had 12 beds, a kitchen, dining room, outdoor living room, small pool, elevated palm covered hut, and an amazing few with a private beach…oh…ya…and at only $125 a night divided by 10 people…extremely CHEAP…

So the only complain I have about the house was the first morning I woke up sweating wondering what happen to the fan and the air conditioning that were on all night? Well turns out that there are rolling power outages every day in Nicaragua! So Las Penitas didn’t have power EVERY day from 7am-2pm…YIKES…luckily we only lost a little bit of meat, but for the most part everything was ok…it just meant we were up early cause the rooms got hot REAL quick.

So since everyday at the house was pretty much the same I am gonna note some highlights:

- Cooking empanadas and arepas for everyone and teaching Tania and Lisa to make them
- Boogie Boarding in the most amazing waves
- The Hut that became Ray’s house (he stayed there most of the time due to his broken foot)
- Playing cards – Progressive rummy is a bit addictive….get ready OSU!
- The pool where I was able to sit in water and read Harry Potter which was sitting on a floating boogie board
- Just a much needed relaxing time!

So we left around 11am on the last day and arranged a boat ride back from the house to the ship. We decided on this because it was much closer this way due to the lack of a direct route between Las Penitas and Corinto! While most of thought that the route would be a quick and easy way along the beaches we were surprised to learn that we would actually be navigating through a huge Nicaraguan Mangrove! It was AMAZING and one of my favorite parts of the weekend….at this point there were 8 of us and we managed to fit in a small boat and trusted that our driver knew his way through small mangroves. At time we had to duck and move out of the way of branches and at one point we all had to climb into the boat and lay down because a tree had fallen the night before and got in the way of the boat. Finally we made it out and could see the MV Explorer in the distance and we made the most amazing return to the ship I have ever heard of…we even got to pull up along side of the ship as we got to a smaller docking area.

All in all Nicaragua was an amazing time with my new friends and I loved it dearly! I would recommend this house and this country to anyone that just wants to get away and enjoy a relaxing beach!

Costa Rica – Pura Vida!

So the days leading up to Costa Rica were filled with activities on the ship including the Students of Service auction and the Talent show. The students of service (SOS) is a group of students that try and raise money for non-profit organizations in the countries that we have visited, Ebonie, one of the other RDs is in charge of this group. Students, faculty and staff donated items ranging from expensive baseball cards, breakfast served in bed and chance to steer the ship to a weekend in someone’s home in Puerto Rico. I think this was the first time I truly saw how privlidged (how much some of these kids have) some are on the ship, considering they raised almost $10,000!!! Lets just say I didn’t bid for anything in the auction…

The talent show was fun, yes, there were some awkward moments (OTL auditions anyone?) but my friend Tania who is famous on board for rewriting lyrics to songs wrote the following lyrics to Seasons of Love and called it Summer at Sea. Myself and 6 other people sang/acted it out…it was cute!

Summer of Love
(sung to the tune of Seasons of Love)

Ninety three thousand six hundred minutes
Ninety three thousand moments at sea
Ninety three thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure, a summer at sea?

In life vests, in lectures, in dolphins in Sea Olympics
In Preports, knots, in adopted families.

In Ninety three thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure a summer at sea

How about, Friends
How about, Friends
How about, Friends; measure in friends

Summer at sea, Summer at sea
Ninety three thousand six hundred minutes
Ninety three thousand, journeys to plan

Ninety three thousand six hundred minutes
How do you tell the tale when your back on land

In the language she learned
In the new foods he tried
In the credits she earned
Even through Co-lab died (colab is a paper submitting program on the ship that broke 2 weeks ago)

Its time now, to sing out
Before the Voyage ends.
Lets Celebrate the bonds we’ve made with our new friends
Feel the, Love
Feel the, Love
Feel the, Love
Summer at sea

Summer at sea
Summer at sea.

So the song was cute, and yes, now it is stuck in my head again!

So Costa Rica! Well 4 days in this beautiful country is definitely not enough to truly enjoy it. A little over all reaction before I really start to get into the trip is that in my opinion Costa Rica really lacked a sense of nationalism from what I experienced. Maybe it was the experiences that I did have, but mostly all I did was see touristy spots that didn’t really give me a sense for what Costa Ricans really are as a people. In all the other countries that I visited I got a sense of what Panamanians cared about, or Chilean people, etc. The only thing that Costa Rica seemed to have was the huge love of Eco-tourism and a laid back attitude that fit their “Pura Vida” or “Pure Life” a saying which I love and am going to try to bring back.

Puntarenas was the port where we docked which was literally a small fishing town that may have at one point been a cruise terminal, but is now just a long pier that probably had not seen a ship in a while. It was very cool pulling up though because we literally pulled up to a beach, we were so close I almost felt that I could jump off and swim to shore to a beach…very cool! OH YA! I saw my first bit of sea life…a sting ray!

Our first day we had planned on meeting up with some students to try and find a way to do some sort of adventure sport on the first day. The 5 students we met up with very quickly turned into 25 students, to many for a relaxing afternoon on Isla Tortuga. At this point we had hired a boat to take us over to the island and at the grocery store were we were going to purchase water and snacks, students started to purchase large amounts of alcohol…and of course it was some students that I am not all that found of that were purchasing large amounts of rum and coke. Yup. That was enough for Doug and I to bal out of the trip. Doug and I headed back to the ship with our purchase of water and hot sauce (I have been buying hot sauces in every country).

When we got back we met up with Nicole and Ray who had plans to head out to a resort. Nicole works in the field office who works with the tour agents in every country setting up the semester at sea sponsored trips, so the tour guide in this Costa Rica gave us a free ride and a free pass to lay at the pool of a 6 star resort on the top of a huge cliff over looking the pacific coast. Breathtaking. So the four of us spent the afternoon laying out at the infinity pool (which is basically a pool that looks as though it has no end) and had a couple of fruity drinks (I had a tasty passion fruit margarita…mmmmm).

We ended up heading back into town for dinner and meeting up with Aaron, the video guy on the ship. We tried to find a small restaurant we read about which led us on a long walk through what we found out was deserted Puntarenas…we found it and had a decent meal at a little hole in the wall restaurant.

The second to third day I was trip leading a trip to Manuel Antonio beach which is a national park in Costa Rica famous for the jungle coming right down to the beaches. The drive was about 3 hours, we made a couple of stops. This picture is of Jaco, a small town famous for its surfing.

Manuel Antonio is the national park, but has a ton of hotels outside that are really close to the entrance and located up on a cliff above the park. The cool thing is that along the rode you notice a lot of electrical and telephone cables and then a lot of bright blue ropes tied across the street as well. We found out that in the past the park was finding a lot of dead squirrel monkeys fried by the wires so they installed ropes which they quickly learned to be safe. As we were driving we say 3 little squirrel monkeys crossing the ropes, it was so cute, little bright orange guys.

We were staying at a hotel right near the entrance to the park and got there just in time to eat lunch and then have the afternoon free. One thing that we learned about Costa Rica is that sun and weather play a huge role in what you can enjoy. Costa Rica is located just south of Tampa, Florida but has the same time zone as Salt Lake City, translate that to a 5AM sunrise and a 5:30pm Sunset. Costa Rica being a highly agricultural country has not changed there time zone and likes this early sunrise and sunset. The other thing is that we are in the rainy season, so every day by 4:30pm expect rainfall…and that exact thing happened. Doug and I went to the beach around 1pm and had to go back around 4 because the sun was gone and DARK clouds were moving in.

We spent the evening in the hotel room watching TV in English (we randomly had 3 channels from Denver) and got caught up on US news (scary stuff about the bridge!). Dinner at the hotel and then some drinks in the pool with some of the students and we called it a night!

We were up early and headed out for a day in the actual national park and some more beach time! The park was truly breathtaking seeing the jungle come to the beach front and enjoying the large amount of wildlife. One thing that I have learned on this trip is that I am not a huge of large tour groups that ask a lot of redundant questions (or that spend ten minutes pointing out the obviously HUGE sloth that everyone else in the group has already seen in the tree). So after about 30 minutes, most of the students and myself decided to split from our tour guide and enjoy the park on our own. We grabbed a beach spot and enjoyed the quite time. We saw some wildlife including howler monkeys, lizards, iguanas, birds, long nose koatamundies (SP?), and my favorite, the white face capuccine monkeys. These little guys came right to the trees were people were sitting and started interacting with everyone (we had already been given a warning to watch our belongings as these little guys were famous for stealing snacks, clothes and cameras! I was literally less then a foot from them…so fun!

We headed back to the ship around 3:30pm and got back around 6:30pm and ran into Anne and Rasa who informed us that Ray had broken his foot playing volleyball the previous day and that they were going to try and get him off the ship for dinner. Poor ray was on crutches and a bandaged foot. After a long treck down the pier and a good dinner close by we headed back to the ship for an early night. We had planned on getting a ab to drive Ray down the LONG pier, but as I mentioned earlier Puntarenas is DEAD at night and not a single cab was coming by, so after about 15 minutes of waiting I got Ray on my back and carried him about halfway down the pier till Doug was able to get a wheel chair off the ship. I am sure he will kill me for putting this picture online…

Our last day in port was pretty chill and a good day of just relaxing with friends that sadly I will not see after another 17 days L it can be summed up pretty quickly by saying Ray is in a cast and mostly likely needs surgery, lunch was whole fish, laid out on the pool deck on the ship, dinner was the best Costa Rican Chinese Food I have ever had J

So we are on our first one day crossing right now, which means that scary but true, we will be in Nicaragua tomorrow morning already! We rented a house on the beach, so this should be a fun relaxing time! Love ya all!