Ghana, Overview

I know you all have been waiting a long time to find out the past month of the trip. It's crazy to think it's been a month since I was in South Africa, but it has! I've been quite busy and now the trip is coming to a close. We have just 3 days left on the MV Explorer before we arrive in Barcelona, Spain. As I prepare to post this, we are sailing through the Strait of Gibraltar. My apologies for the delay on posts, but to give you just a quick snapshot of South Africa, Ghana and Morocco, I'm going to post one about the time in each country. I have enjoyed all three of these destinations immensely and I'm excited to come back to them one day!

Ghana, April 6-10

After leaving South Africa, our next stop was Ghana. I had been so eager for Cape Town that everything after that seemed like an after thought, so I was totally unprepared with a list of things to do and see while in Ghana. We had 2 ports of call in this country, first Tema and then Takoradi. Both were commercial ports, although Tema was much more rural than Takoradi.

During my time in Ghana, I had the chance to experience culture, history and provide much needed service to a non-profit organization.

The first day included a trip to the castles and slave dungeons in the Cape Coast area. This was about 2 hours away from Tema, and had been used from the late 1600s until the 1800s as the last stop for slaves being sent to North America from West Africa. The slaves were horribly mistreated here, put into caves with no light, given almost no food and were provided no place to sleep or use the bathroom. It was not uncommon to cram 200 men or women into one of the dungeon rooms, while upstairs, above the ground the militia lived a life of relative luxury running the castle and making lots of money off of the slave trade.

It was gut wrenching to see where slaves were kept and how they were treated. Being from the south in the United States, we have taken field trips to plantations and learned about the use of slaves for labor, but being inside the dungeons demonstrated to me just how awful the lives of these people were. Life in the US (and other nations where slaves were used, including parts of Europe) was very different for these people, but I’m honestly grateful that the plantation owners, despite their cruel treatment and disrespect towards slaves didn’t force them to live in dungeons, chained at the ankles, standing while awake and asleep because there were too many bodies to lie down (and the ground was covered in bodily fluids because there were no toilets or buckets) and providing them no food or clean water.

Because the town of Tema was a commercial port and fishing village, and the temperatures were topping the 90 degree mark, I decided on the second day that I would hang out on the ship and take care of a pile of school work. It can be very difficult while in port to stay focused on academics, because it’s so enticing to explore. However, the heat was overwhelming and the work needed to get done before we left Ghana, so I was able to do two things at once- stay cool and finish my to-do list by remaining on the ship. I don’t regret the decision, because it allowed me to have less work when everyone else returned!

Day 3 brought our ship to Takoradi, a city more centrally located to the capital of Ghana, Accra (A-krah). The voyage provided shuttle buses for us into the city, so that we wouldn’t have to find taxis to take us the 1.5 hours. I traveled with the Allred family around the city, visiting the local craft market, eating traditional Ghanaian foods and visiting Independence Square. At the local market, we put our haggling skills to the test, trying to reach the best price for the item we wanted with the vendor selling. Out of all the markets I have been to in many different countries on this voyage, the people in Ghana were the most aggressive, grabbing your arms and trying to pull you into their stalls, or attempting to keep you from walking away. I had the most success in staying away from them by walking down the middle of the aisles and simply asking them to let go if they pulled on me. It’s amazing how if you use your words in a kind manner, people will listen. After several hours of bargaining, we were ready for lunch. The locals recommended a “café” in the corner of the market. We decided to check it out, and it ended up serving delicious foods, despite taking over an hour to receive our food (Ghana is a country that runs on it’s own time).

I even got to taste one of the local dishes, fufu, which consists of a dough ball, meat (we had chicken, although goat is also common) and a spicy, thin broth.

After lunch, we walked down to Black Star Circle, the location of a very large stage and square for political events, concerts and temporary markets. I’m not sure how many people could fit in there, but there was a lot of space! This is the site of all of Ghana’s inauguration ceremonies.

On Day 4, I went about 2 hours outside of the city to City of Refuge School and orphanage. The founders are from the United States and Kenya, and their mission is to remove children from human trafficking near the eastern shores of Lake Volta. Many children in Ghana are sold into human trafficking at a young age, with their parents believing the children will have a better life, while at the same time, the parents receive a monthly sum for their child’s labor.

The kids lead really terrible, hard lives being forced to work for other families, often in dangerous conditions. The mission of City of Refuge is to provide an education for children in the community, and also to take in the orphans they are able to remove from human trafficking. At the present, they have 35 children (18 boys and 17 girls) living on the property in separate houses, one for boys and one for girls. Plus, 100 children come from the nearby villages for school each day.

SAS had three days of service visits to the center, where we helped to repaint the lines on their basketball court, cleaned the exterior of the dorm buildings by hosing them down, painted the dining pavilion and helped teach school for the day. I opted to be in the 7^th grade classroom (sorry, JSGS, another girl beat me for 6^th grade!). Like Singapore and other eastern countries, the teachers rotate between rooms and the students remain. The whole school is "open air", meaning instead of windows, there are just slats in the walls of the building to let a breeze blow through. This made the building louder than most US schools.

Because Ghana requires all classes to be taught in English, I was able to communicate just fine with the 15 students enrolled in 7^th grade. They spend time in class from 7:45 AM-3:30 PM and then head back to their villages in the bus that City of Refuge uses (I wouldn’t call it a bus, it’s really more of an open-air flatbed truck). Almost all of the curriculum they use is from the US, because their principal is from California. Also, the Ghanaian government has really low standards of learning, so the US material allows the kids to learn a lot more, even though they sometimes don’t know what things are…. Like snow.

When I was in the room and they were waiting to go to lunch, I told them they could ask me any questions about sailing around the world or life in the US. They wanted to know about snow, so I spent some time detailing the awesomeness of the fluffy white stuff, explaining how when it snows a lot of noise is muffled and when it sticks to your face, it’s not wet like rain drops, but just cold with an occasional sting as it lands. It was really interesting to describe this to them, because they have never seen real snow, only black and white pictures in their textbooks. I think the next time it snows, I will take a video and send it via email to the school so the kids can see.

Basically, it was an awesome day and I’m so glad I was able to contribute to the learning of some Ghanaian children. I know that over the 3 days SAS visited City of Refuge, there were about 20 people who expressed interest in returning at some point in the near future to volunteer with the organization. It’s astounding the connections we all felt after just a day there!

On Day 5, I had another trip planned, this time to a traditional bead “factory”, where Ghanaians make cedi beads. In my head, I imagined this would be a standard factory, where items are more or less mass-produced, except I pictured that here it would be done by hand.

Indeed everything was handmade, but “mass produced” actually meant about 300 beads at a time. In keeping with the weather (hot, hot, hot), the factory was more a series of open-air pavilions, not a big air-conditioned warehouse.

We were shown how to actually make beads before we made our own. When you actually make the beads they are made in small clay firing pots, but for the purposes of demonstration, he made his in a small, clear glass. Using glass from any kind of recycled bottle, you can use smashed pieces or ground glass powder to form the bead. The most elegant of beads are made with designs during this process, and then layered 4 or more times to create what is known as a “Queen Mother” bead, because it is worn by the female leaders in traditional Ghanaian tribes and villages.

All of us on the trip got to make our own beads after the demonstration, and they fired them for us to take home (soooo cool!). Since the pots were caked with a fine powder, by the time I finished making my beads in the molds, my fingers were coated! While we ate lunch, they fired our beads in this natural oven. One oven can fit about 50 clay pots, and each pot can hold anywhere from 1 to 13 beads, depending on the size of the bead.

We also visited a local bead market, which unknowingly, was housed in the very back corner of an actually functioning market for every product you can imagine—canned food, raw foods, plastic flip-flops, clothes, fabric, hair products—you name it, this market had it somewhere. However, since the beads were at the very back, we had to wind our way through the whole thing. Everywhere you looked, there were people, women carrying large baskets of goods on their heads and children on their backs, motorbikes moving through the crowds and plenty of children trying to play in the “streets” between the stalls. Since the whole market was outside, we were walking under the blazing sun in the middle of the day. It was hot, hot, hot!

While Ghana wasn’t one of my most favorite countries on the voyage, there were most definitely lots of highlights, and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to aid an organization in need, as well as see some of the authentic culture by visiting the different markets!

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Cape Town, Overview

I know you all have been waiting a long time to find out about the past month of the trip. It's crazy to think it's been a month since I was in South Africa, but it has! I've been quite busy and now the trip is coming to a close. We have just 3 days left on the MV Explorer before we arrive in Barcelona, Spain. As I prepare to post this, we are sailing through the Strait of Gibraltar. My apologies for the delay on posts, but to give you just a quick snapshot of South Africa, Ghana and Morocco, I'm going to post one about the time in each country. I have enjoyed all three of these destinations immensely and I'm excited to come back to them one day!

CAPE TOWN, MARCH 25-30:

I loved, loved, loved Cape Town! I was most excited for this port out of the entire journey and I had a long list of things I was hoping to see and do while in town. At the end of the week, the only one still on my list was a visit to the top of Table Mountain (which was closed all but 1 day due to poor weather at the top). I maximized my time by staying within the city and sleeping on the ship each night. Usually I would be off the gangway (the term for the entry/exit location on the ship) by 8 AM and back somewhere around 11:30 PM. I’d write, sleep, eat and be off again!

Some of the highlights from my trip included:

Attending a cricket match! Never thought I would be able to go to one, because I couldn’t figure out if any matches were being held. But at breakfast I mentioned it to my British friend (who loves the sport) and turns out there was not only a match, but he had tickets and was willing to explain the whole thing. I’m not sure who was more excited- him, that people from the ship were interested in the sport, or me, because I got to cross something off my list.

The game was at night and during the middle of the week, so it wasn’t very crowded. I don’t know who the two teams were (sorry cricket fans!), but I learned a lot more about the sport. After watching, I would say the game is more like baseball than field hockey, but the innings move much faster. It was a rainy night, so the game stopped and started a few times, but it didn’t have to be shortened and only took about 2 hours of playing time for the match to start and finish.

The highlight had to be the snacks they served at the match. Instead of in the US, where we hand out popcorn, peanuts and hotdogs, they were selling doughnuts and coffee. YUM! Men would walk around carrying backpacks designed to dispense hot coffee and in their hands, boxes of doughnuts with different flavors of icing. They walked by so many times I finally broke down and bought a doughnut for 10 rand (the local currency; conversion is $1 USD).

Another adventure was hiking to the top of Lions Head on the first day. Our goal was to hike up and watch the sunset, and then go eat dinner. We made it almost the whole way to the top, except when we reached what we thought was the top we found there was still a whole other section to hike! Since the sun was already sinking over the ocean, we decided to turn back so we would be out of the hands-free hiking zone and on ground flat enough that we could walk in the dark back to the base. We got really lucky and the sunset was extravagant, plus the clouds started rolling over the edge of Table Mountain at the same time. To top it all off, the almost full moon was rising over the illuminated city of Cape Town!    

During the middle of the week, I had a homestay in the Thambo township, which is located on the outskirts of Cape Town. I went with Semester at Sea, and we all stayed with different single mothers living in the township. I was with Mama Mavis, and she had 2 adult children and 4 younger grandchildren living with her. Add in 2 visitors from Semester at Sea and it was a full house! It was a wonderful experience to talk with Mama Mavis and her family and find out what life is like in Cape Town and in the townships. Often, townships are plagued by violence, and this one was no different. It isn’t uncommon for teenagers to enter gangs and have rivalries with other neighboring townships, but it leads to many preventable deaths. In South Africa, the townships grew in size during the apartheid movement, as blacks and coloreds were forced from the whites only areas of the cities. Many of them were already poor, and this only hurt them further. Before the end of apartheid, most people were living in shacks within the townships, made of any materials they can find.

The government of South Africa has tried to move these 10 million people from shacks into permanent dwellings, but this is a long, slow process. Mama Mavis has lived in her house for the past 10 years and has been fortunate enough to expand the house beyond just the original one room. You can tell as you drive around who has enough money and who doesn’t based on the size of the house and how many additions it has to the original structure.

I also went to Robben Island, a former political and criminal prison during the apartheid era. It takes about 30 minutes on the ferry to reach the island, and then you are guided around in buses and some walking to see the different parts. Some of you may know that Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black president and first president following apartheid, was jailed here for 18 years. All of the prisoners were treated poorly, having to complete manual labor in the limestone mines all day, receiving very little food and having little protection from the heat or the cold. The cells were quite small, and until the mid-70s prisoners were not provided with beds or pillows to sleep on, just thin mats for the floor. Our guide on the prison tour was an ex-political prisoner, who was there from the mid-60s until 1988. It was a moving experience to see where the South African government sent men for simply having “dangerous” ideas, that blacks and whites should be treated equally and allowed to live and work side by side.

Towards the end of the week, I visited Simon’s Town, Duiker Island and Cape of Good Hope. All of these locations are found along the coast of South Africa as you head to the southwestern most point of the African continent. Simon’s Town is home to Boulder Beach, home of a penguin colony; Duiker Island is just a series of rock outcroppings in the ocean, but home to hundreds of seals and Cape of Good Hope is widely considered the southern most point on the African Continent (although there is actually one spot in a different area that extends further south).     

At the Cape of Good Hope, we got to hike down to the point, following the cliffs at the edge of the ocean. Although the weather was insanely windy—my eyelashes were blowing so much that my vision was fuzzy—it was awesome to reach the point!

     

On the last day, I got to pet a cheetah! Yes, that’s not a joke, I really did get to pet a cheetah, when we visited an animal research center outside of Cape Town. (The guy in the picture with me was part of our group to the cheetah center, we had to take pictures in pairs, so the cheetah wouldn't think we were food or there to attack it.)  There, they study cheetah behavior, along with the behaviors of other native animals. We all got to take turns petting the cheetah and having our pictures taken. Although many of the mannerisms and appearance of a cheetah resemble that of a dog, it is still considered to be part of the cat family—it’s just a really big cat.

Hands down, Cape Town was my favorite port and I am so excited that I got to do so many things on my “dream” list. I cannot wait to come back to South Africa and explore more of the country!

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Cape Town, Day 1

For the entire trip, I was most looking forward to our stop in Cape Town, and it ended up being the best port of call I have been to thus far. Originally I was considering spending 4 months abroad at Stellenbosch University, which is located about 40 minutes outside of the city, but then I picked Semester at Sea for it’s many countries of call.

I don’t regret the decision to go with SAS, and stopping in Cape Town for 6 days enabled me to cross many things off of my list of things to see and do! As I post this, we are docking in Ghana, so I'm only about 10 days behind on my posts from Cape Town. I hope to have the rest of them up very shortly for you all to read. For the videos, I'm running low on internet, so I'll post short clips if I can, but you'll just have to rely on my writing, instead of the funny videos!

The view from Table Bay as we pulled into the waterfront area; Table Mountain is on the left, Lions Head is on the right.

We ate lunch on the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront (V&A), at a restaurant known for its gourmet hamburgers. The weather was about 65 and pure sun, with a light breeze, so we sat outside with the hundreds of other people. I was with my friends Ethan, Rachel and Alyssa, and we had a blast. They are incredibly funny people, and it was so relaxing to be off the ship!

 Live bands were playing jazz music almost every day in the waterfront area—people would sit and listen for hours!

We made our way to Greenmarket Square, located farther into the city, where a large local craft market was permanently set up. The crafts were very nice, but many of the stall owners were selling the same things—wooden sculptures, necklaces, tie-dye items, small drums and trinkets. I was more fascinated with the stories of the different stall owners than I was with the wares. About 60% of the stall owners in this particular market were not from South Africa, or Cape Town, but other African nations such as Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Kenya. Some of them only had been living in South Africa for a few years, having moved there for the better opportunities. Talking with them reminded me a lot of the US, where many immigrants are refugees seeking better opportunities and escaping their oppressive countries.

We ran into other SAS participants at the market, who told us they had visited Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s church, which was just a few blocks away. After we finished our shopping, we made our way to the church, which is home to the presiding archbishop (no longer Desmond Tutu, as he is retired). A fun fact: many people incorrectly believe that ‘Arch’ (as we have referred to him on the ship) is part of the Catholic faith. Indeed the main sect of Christianity in South Africa is Anglicanism—the religious term for the “Church of England”. I won’t go into the details about the differences between the Anglican Church and the Catholic Church, but there are many. Look them up if you have a chance.       The interior of the church was decorated for Palm Sunday, which in Christian faith occurs the Sunday before Easter. We arrived to Cape Town on Monday, the day after, but the church was still decorated with palm branches.

By the time we finished our visit to the church, we were in need of an afternoon snack. We made our way down a strip of shops and cafes, stopping at a fresh foods grocery store, which only sold fresh foods in small portions. I think it was designed more for people who work in the surrounding business district to come for lunch or an early dinner, because at both entrances were large areas with tables and made-to-order stations. You could take the fresh food you bought inside—fruits, vegetables, meats, cheeses, a salad bar and pasta station—and have it prepared in the MTO areas by the employees. There was a delicious array of sliced fresh fruits kept in a cold case, and you could have a smoothie made, or just buy a bowl of the fruit and put whatever you wanted in it. One of the things I miss most about home is the lack of healthy, tasty, fresh fruit, so I decided to get pomegranates, mangos and kiwi in my bowl and top it with fresh plain frozen yogurt. All of this only cost me about $2.50—and it was waayyyy more fruit and fro-yo than you can get for that price at a chain in the US! Since we weren’t in a hurry, I paid and we sat at the tables while I ate. My friend Ethan was so tempted by it, that he went back in and got his own serving. This was definitely a food highlight for Cape Town!

At 5 PM, 90 minutes before the sunset, we started hiking Lions Head, which is a section to the right of Table Mountain that sticks out further into Table Bay, and creates the first of many smaller bays. The hike is a spiral, so as you climb upwards, you walk around the landmass about 3 times to reach the top.

The view of Cape Town on the backside of Lions Head was fantastic, especially the shadow that the mountain cast over the city!

Table Mountain, looking less like a table from this vantage point.

 From the “fake” top of Lions Head; we didn’t have time to climb the last bit, because we needed to make it down before dark. This view over looks what are known as the “Twelve Apostles”, because of the ridges carved into Table Mountain, as well as Camps Bay.

We didn’t technically make it all the way to the absolute top, because to reach that was a lot of actual rock climbing.

But we went as high as we could, took pictures, turned around and started the hike back down. The taxi driver who brought us up agreed to come back for us at 7:15, so we had to make it back to the bottom by then, plus we only had one flashlight and it was going to get dark fairly quickly once the sun set.

It ended up being the most spectacular sunset over the ocean, which we watched from the backside of Lions Head.         At the same time, the top of Table Mountain began to disappear into the clouds that rolled along the edge and spilled over the sides. AND if those two things weren’t enough, the moon (2 days before the full moon) was rising over the city of Cape Town, which was now fully illuminated in the dark.  It was truly majestic!

The taxi driver took us back to the V&A, where we had a dinner of traditional South African foods at a restaurant called Karibu. In Afrikaans, this means “welcome”, and indeed we were! We sat outside along the harbor, and the temperature was rather cold when the wind blew.

Cape Town is perfectly positioned on the tip of South Africa, and although being in the southern hemisphere its seasons are reversed, they are so far beneath the equator that they have four seasons just like in the mid-east states in the US. For them, we were visiting in their season of fall, and the temperatures during the day usually didn’t top 70 degrees. But since Cape Town is right on the coast, various bays surrounding the city push a great deal of wind through, making the temperatures feel like 60 during the day, and about 50 at night. The staff at the restaurant turned on the heat lamps and brought us blankets to keep warm. My newly shorn head gets cold easily, but I’ve been keeping a fuzzy hat with me so the hot air doesn’t escape too quickly.

We were starved from all of our hiking, and that was good because the portions were HUGE! I ordered a traditional lamb dish served with rice, and it came out as a bowl full of lamb, coated in a thick soup-like sauce. It was so rich, that at one point, I said I couldn’t eat any more because my whole mouth just tasted like meat. In Africa, it’s not customary for restaurants to bring you bread or any kind of “free” item while you wait for your meal, so I had nothing to mix in with the meat flavor. Finally, I decided that if I ate any more, I simply wouldn’t have room for dessert, so I called it quits on the main course, and ordered a traditional African dessert. I wish I remembered the names of the foods, because they were listed on the menu in Afrikaans, and then explained in a glossary at the back of the menu. The long and short of it was that it was delicious—it tasted almost like the honey puff desserts that Gianno’s (a restaurant in High Point) serves on its lunch buffet, except here it included vanilla ice cream.

Because time is not of the essence for most South Africans, by the time we finished our meal, it was almost 11 PM, and we were exhausted from our day in port. We walked through the waterfront to reach the bus area, rode back to the ship and called it a day. Cape Town was already better than I imagined and it was only the end of day 1!

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Mauritius

Mauritius was amazing! I had the best time at the beach—the sand, the sun, the clear waters, and the coral on the sea bottom—just being. I didn’t go snorkeling or surfing or tubing and it was spectacular just to enjoy being on land. I got up extra early to watch the ship pull into the island, and it was worth it. Although it was a cool morning and looked like rain, it only sprinkled a little bit during the day. 

I would have loved to spend the entire day just being lazy on the beach, but it wasn’t meant to be. Originally I had planned to just go it alone and find a beach for the day, but after listening to the pre-port last night, I decided it was a mistake to try and go anywhere by myself. I realize that it’s always better to travel in groups, especially in foreign countries, but when we are there for such a short amount of time I have difficulty justifying doing anything that isn’t on my list.

But planning to go alone meant that I was scrambling at the last minute to try and find people to go around with—most people had field labs or signed up for field programs.

I was able to find a group of girls to go with during breakfast the morning we arrived, but the group grew from just 4 people to being 10 people, which was a disaster ready to happen. And basically it did. Once we were cleared to get off the ship, it took us almost 40 minutes for everyone in the group to meet outside, and then another 10 minutes to go back and forth debating whether to take a land taxi or a water taxi. When the water taxi finally pushed off, we (the 30 SAS people on the boat with us) ended up breaking down in the middle of the harbor and had to wait for another boat to rescue us and tow us into the dock. Our driver tried to fix the problem, but his only solution was to pour more oil into the motor and hope for the best. The attempt failed.

Then there was the issue of changing money. Half the people failed to realize there was a money exchange next to the ship. 2 people had no cash to exchange and needed to find an ATM for withdrawals. ¾ of the group wanted to stay in Port Louis to shop and go to a pool that was supposedly open to the public. ¼ of the group wanted to go to the beach and limit the market time. It was chaos. When two of us tried to break off from the group, another was hesitant that we were going just the two of us, so we waited for others to catch up. Then, when we had ½ the group together, we started off and 1 person freaked out that the other ½ the group wasn’t ready yet, when we had already stated they could catch up or do their own thing. It was chaos. These are the kinds of un-fun traveling experiences you have to get used to, so you can figure out what your “style” is for going around somewhere. It can be very hard to find someone who has a similar style to you!

The market was housed in an old open air building on a random side street in the middle of town. It was surprisingly organized, with sections for each kind of produce all on the first floor, crafters and independent booths on the second floor and the third floor was a department store for clothing. To see all of this in the same building was quite eclectic, but fascinating. It was really clean compared to some of the markets I have seen, and this one had no meat in it, just produce and spices. It also didn’t serve any dishes, just the raw ingredients.

After walking all three floors, rather quickly we moved back out onto the street and into the stalls on the main level across from the market. They just had trinkets and clothes and jewelry.

Around 11:30, 4 of us went back to the taxi area to find a ride to the beach up north. All of the drivers wanted to take us to Grand Baie, but I had read that this was an uber touristy area of the island, so I picked a different beach I had read about being a wonderful spot during the weekday: trou aux biches. So we went there, 4 of us in a cab.

The cab scene was nuts- first this man offered to drive us, but when he came back with his “cab” it didn’t have a yellow and white magnetic sign or the taxi light on top. The ambassador’s assistant had told us only to use taxis that had both of these things, otherwise they weren’t legitimate. So we turned him down, which made him mad. Then another man came up and offered to give us a ride. He wanted us to follow him, but we refused so he came back with his car. It had a taxi light, but no yellow and white sign. Plus, a man driving a legitimate taxi had just pulled up to drop off passengers, so we wanted to ride with him. The second taxi man was irate, and started yelling at the third taxi man in the local language- Creole. It was a sight. We were already buckled up and in the car, and insistent that we were going with this taxi, and the other guy was just out of luck. Our driver even asked us if we were sure we didn’t commit to the other man. Which, in his mind, we probably did, but we said he should go pull his car around so we could see it and make sure it was legitimate, which it wasn’t. So there was that.

At last, we were off and moving towards the beach, only 2 hours after I had hoped to arrive at the beach. But at least I had good company and was staying safe. In reality, I really think I would have been fine to go on my own, particularly because when we arrived at this beach, there were 20 other SAS students already there.

The first thing we did was get food, because it was already 12:45 PM. There was a food truck back from the beach underneath the shade of the tall trees, so I ordered a coke and chips (aka French fries). They cooked my fries fresh on the spot, so it took a few minutes, but I ended up with a big dish of delicious fries with ketchup. The best part was since it was so hot the ketchup was sticky over the fries, making them taste even better. They were also “fat” fries, so they had honest to goodness potato in them. That was my lunch, and it was just like summers at the pool back home.

We went down the beach and found that one of the SAS kids had rented two of the beach chairs and umbrellas from the locals, so everyone had piled their stuff up and was taking turns watching it to keep anything from being stolen. One of the guys in one of the other groups was my ship neighbor Max. We weren’t about to turn down free space, so we stuffed everything into my backpack and tossed it onto the chair, spreading our towels out on the sand.

I finished my fries and coated myself in plentiful amounts of sunscreen, then took the first watch of the stuff while the other 3 girls went into the water. It looked beautiful, but I needed my sunscreen to soak in, so I was fine to just sit.

While I was sitting, Doc Micah and his family came down the beach. I felt instantly better about my decision, knowing a “real” adult picked the same beach. They walked up the beach a ways, but then came back when they didn’t find another SAS people. Since Doc was on call from the ship, he needed to make sure he stayed close to other people so they could watch the bags and listen for the phone. They added their stuff to the pile in the shade, and their three boys went for the water. I really like their family, because they remind me so much of my own—functionally dysfunctional.

We all took turns watching the stuff and swimming in the ocean. Parts of the beach had been buoyed off, so the boats didn’t park everywhere, leaving no room for visitors and swimming. This beach was a “coral beach”, meaning instead of sand from ground up seashells, it was sand from ground up coral. Back from the water’s edge, the sand was finely ground, but at the water’s edge, the sand was very coarse. Instead of seashells along the beach, there were pieces of coral. Because the coral was dead, and not connected to the reefs, it was just a dull brownish-white color, but it was still pretty cool. This area of the beach was very shallow, and you could walk out incredibly far.

Also, for the first time in my life, I encountered a beach where the waves didn’t break along the shore. Instead, about ¼ mile from the shore, you could see the break in the waves. It was possible to swim out that far, but it took about 10 minutes to get there. The ocean still had a light current, just no waves. And even out where there were waves, they were incredibly small and not very violent.

This made the beach area even nicer, because it was possible just to float in the crystal clear waters, without the waves crashing over you. For most of the afternoon, this is what I did!

Float in the water, stare at the sky, and lay out on the sand. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. It was heavenly! At one point, I opened my eyes and just stared at the sky; my arms were out from my body and my head was half submerged. I had the sound of the ocean in my ears, and the heartbeat from my chest and the world was silent as I stared at the sky. It was a real moment of peace, and it was a much-needed time of personal space in the journey.

Aside from floating in the ocean, it was wonderful just to sit on the beach and look out at the world. There wasn’t too much activity for much of the day, since the other SAS students were paying to take tube rides and snorkeling trips out away from the shore. It was possible just to sit in silence and take in the surround.

Around 2:30, a man came up to us and said we were 30 minutes over our use of the chairs and umbrellas and that we would need to either move our belongings or pay more money. We were going just to move everyone’s things out onto the sand, but this seemed like a lot of work, and it was only going to cost $2.50 to keep the chairs for another hour. Since we needed to leave at 3:30 anyway, if other people were still there, they could deal with the chair rental man.

The taxi driver that had brought us out to Trou Aux Biches, had waited for us to take us back into the city because we had asked him to. When we found out that the city bus only cost $1 to ride, we decided it was more economical to take the bus than ride back with him. Knowing that we would need to pay him some money for his time, we said we would pay him $10 for waiting, because that would still be less than us paying to ride back in with him. He was really angry and didn’t want us to ride the bus, and so we started yet another argument with a taxi driver. Luckily, Doc’s family came out of the beach looking for a taxi, so we gave them our taxi, and our driver still got his money. We walked out to the bus stop, and one of the ladies there said it would be about 10 minutes until the next bus arrived. We started calculating the time we would need to get back to the ship: 10 minutes to wait for the bus, 30 minutes on the bus, 5 minute walk to the water taxis, 10 minute ride back to the ship….

Knowing that the line to get back on the ship would be quite long, we were trying to arrive back to the ship for the line by 4:30. There was no way this was going to happen, since it was almost 4 PM, and we were still at the beach. If we pushed our luck too far, then we would not only have a long line to wait in, but also we might not make it onto the ship by 6 PM. Even worse, we had been planning our arrival on the anticipation of having hamburgers for dinner, which the ship was providing as an incentive for returning early.

As it turns out the bus ride was 40 minutes into Port Louis, because we went through many little towns and stopped every 2 minutes for people to get on or off. We did get to see more of the island this way, but most of it was the same—small towns with a grocery store and hair salon and some run down buildings painted in bright colors to look less run down. We were the only white people riding the bus, and the only Americans. I was surprised that no one tried to engage us in conversation—the bus was crowded when we got on, and we rode to the end of the line (the bus depot) and not once did a local speak to me. I found this surprising, because in every other destination, when we have ridden public transportation people always want to know who we are, where we are going, why we are here. This was the complete opposite. Also, since many of the locals in Mauritius have dark skin, I got a feeling for what it was like during the Civil Rights movement- how conscious blacks were about the color of their skin.

When we landed at the bus depot, we started speed walking for the water taxi terminal. It was the middle of rush hour in Port Louis, with cars and people and lots of honking horns. If it hadn’t been for the small size of the buildings, I would have thought we were in Shanghai. One of the main features of Port Louis in terms of infrastructure is the under the road pedestrian tunnel linking the market area to the waterfront area. It crosses beneath six lanes of traffic. We were almost sprinting by the time we reached this tunnel, because we were worried about making the next water taxi and getting to the ship as quickly as possible. Luckily, we made it on with only a few minutes to spare. The water taxis only leave the dock if the entire thing is full, so it can take a little while, especially if people are trickling on.

This time, it only took us 5 minutes to cross from the waterfront to the pier where our ship was docked. No breakdowns or towing! Yay! But when we pulled up, reality smacked us in the face. The line ran all the way from the ship out to the parking lot and was starting to snake around the side of the parking lot. This was not good. Many of the field labs and field programs were in front of us in the line, along with independent travelers. The line ended up only taking 25 minutes to go through, which was good. We got on the ship at 5:40, and raced upstairs for dinner, only to find that hamburgers were still available, and that they were also serving hotdogs!!

I love, love, love hotdogs and unlike the hamburgers, you cannot purchase hotdogs from the grill upstairs. Since I had already had one hamburger that week (I celebrated having one last day of hair with my first meal from the grill on deck 7—cheeseburger, fries and a Coke), I opted to start with two hotdogs. The hotdog buns were massive, because they were from homemade ship bread, but I just ripped off the extra bread to eat them.

After I finished my first round of food, I went back for seconds, and they still had hamburgers, so I switched it up and had a deliciously, juicy hamburger with all the fixings (minus pickles, because they don’t have any on the ship).

Hands down, Mauritius was the best one-day stop I could have had. I got to go to a beautiful beach, meet new travel companions AND have real American food for dinner! Best of all, my newly shaved head didn’t get sunburned at all!

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