Nauti But Nice: Ionna sails the world Episode 1

So it's almost been a year since I embarked on the voyage of a lifetime. I shot a ton of video and am finally getting around to putting some of it together. I decided I'm going to do little episodes or webisodes if you will. Here is Episode 1. On the morning of my 26th birthday I set out for the trip of a lifetime. I feel this really captures the excitement of embarkation day. Enjoy!

I'm no longer in the future, I'm now in the past.

Greetings from the Pacific ocean! We left Yokohama, Japan about 6 days ago and are almost at the halfway point of our 18 day crossing of the Pacific ocean. We will be making a one day stop in Hilo, Hawaii on the 9th day which happens to be Thanksgiving! Woo hoo! We hit rough seas from the moment we left Japan. We set sail around 00:00 Wednesday and at 02:00 I was woken up to my water bottle, alarm clock and other items flying off of my night stand and rolling around my cabin. Scared the shit out of me...couldn't fall back asleep after that.  Its been fun though. It was comical to see everyone (myself included) trying to gain their sea legs. Friday things got really rough. People were walking into things and dropping things left and right. I even caught some sweet air at one point when I was running down the stairs.

I know I'm way behind on my blogs, but at this point I'm making up my entire semester in this 18 day crossing. To say that I'm overloaded with work is an understatement. So be patient. I am however enjoying this time on the ship since the last month was CRAZY to say the least. Between October 10 and November 15 I spent a week in India, a few days in Malaysia, a week in Vietnam, 2 days in Hong Kong, 4 days backpacking through mainland China and then backpacking through Japan. Sometimes we would only have 2 days in between these ports and those 2 days were school days. No time to catch our breath. Not to mention all the time zone changes as well. We just crossed the international date line. It is the only time (probably ever in my life) that I actually got a "do over" on a day. We had two Saturday November 19, 2011. We advanced the clock one hour but are no longer in the future (from eastern standard time) but now in the past. We went from being 16 hours ahead to 7 hrs behind. Weird, but it meant we got the day off! woo hoo! I'm enjoying spending a lot of quality time with my blankets and pillow in my cozy little cabin.

In all the craziness I forgot to mention a bit of news. Somewhere in between Mauritius and Malaysia our staff informed us of some disappointing news. The U.S. Treasury Department has still not issued our travel license for Cuba. Therefore they decided to add the alternate port of Santo Tomas De Castillo, Guatemala. Nothing against Guatemala but it was REALLY disappointing to find out that we were no longer going to Cuba. As an American citizen it is not every day we get offered a chance to visit Cuba, so a little bit of each one of us died in the union that night when we heard the news. Although they kept throwing the word YET in a lot...."The Treasury Department has not issued the travel license...YET." Maybe there's still a last minute chance? Just when we finally accepted the fact that we were going to Guatemala...field plans were made...trips requested....they threw in another curve ball. We just found out that the State Department has warned us against going to Guatemala due to the on going threats of violence and gang related incidents due to drug trafficking plaguing Mexico and most of Central America. Soooo we are no longer going to Guatemala...now we are going to Honduras. I don't know anything about Honduras but I guess I'm about to find out. Well I'm off to class! Talk soon! <3 "I"

Bonzour Mauritius!

**So, Mauritius happened between South Africa and India but I had to post the India video while I was in port so I apologize for the disorder.

Mauritius? “What/where is that?” That is the usual response I got from people when I would ramble off the list of countries I would be visiting during my voyage. Sad part was that I couldn’t really answer their question because I didn’t even know myself. In fact I had been pronouncing the name incorrectly up until the voyage (it is pronounced “Mo-Ri-Shus” by the way). Mauritius, or “I’lle Maurice” is an Island nation in the Indian Ocean just east of Madagascar. The people of Mauritius are predominantly of Indian decent, however the language spoken throughout the island is a French creole. The official language is English however but the lingua franca is Mauritian Creole.  We arrived in Mauritius on a Monday night. We weren’t scheduled to arrive until the next day but due to a medical emergency we had to pick up the speed a day after we left Cape Town in order to get that person med vac to India. Don’t be too alarmed, it wasn’t life or death per say, but the person detached their retina and was in danger of losing their vision if something wasn’t done ASAP. 
That evening a US Navy officer came onboard to give us a diplomatic briefing. Unfortunately for us although all of our passports were stamped that evening we weren’t allowed to leave the ship until the next morning…booooo! Especially since we would only be there for the day. Myself, Lauren and the ship’s photographer found out the hard way that Port Louis, the capital city, does not come alive until way after 9am. Trying to find breakfast in the city was major bust! Most people do not live in Port Louis but rather commute. We, at the point of being HANGRY, luckily found a street vendor who sold some really delicious pastries! My plans for the day were also a major bust.  My friend and I had planned on hiking to the Victoria waterfalls and then vegging out and having drinks on Flic n Flac beach. Much to our disappointment buses did not run out to the area where we were planning to hike and taxis were, excuse my French, expensive as shit!!! $120 was the cheapest we could get. $60 (splitting the cost) was not in my budget for cab fare for one day. I don’t think I even spent that much collectively in my entire week in Cape Town! So future SASers and anyone else traveling to Mauritius beware…cabs are EXPENSIVE. You are better off if you go in a group of 5 and hire the taxi for the day. Otherwise I suggest taking the public bus which is what we did. We spent about $1 each way to Flic n Flac beach. We walked about 2 miles up the beach and had drinks at a random resort. Mauritius is a volcanic island. It is one of the most beautiful and picturesque islands I’ve ever been to. I’ve never been to Hawaii (will be there soon though!) but I imagine that’s what it looks like. It was a little tough communicating with people though. It was kind of weird too. They are Indian but they speak French…kind of. My attempts to speak French to anyone weren’t very successful. They didn’t understand my French and I didn’t understand theirs. They also did not understand my English. But eventually you will run into someone who understands. So no worries. We dipped in the Indian ocean and walked around and before we knew it, it was time to go. We made it back to Port Louis only to realize I still had all of my Mauritian Rupees. Oops. I went on a souvenir shopping spree with little time to spare. I got a ton of leather bracelets for a good price though….woo hoo! And then…the unthinkable happened. We were heading back in the water taxi 30 minutes before the on ship time of 18:00hrs. When we arrived we were surprised to find a 60 person deep line to get on the ship…fuuuuuck!!! 15 minutes to spare. For those who don’t know, if you are late to on ship time you get in big trouble and are punished by what’s called “dock time.” Dock time essentially means you have to stay on the ship for an allotted amount of time (first 15 min= 2 hrs of dock time and increases in 2 hr increments thereafter) at the next port while everyone else is out having fun. It also gives you negative points in the “behavior system” SAS has set up. If you lose enough points you get sent home. I swear the check in line/security has never moved slower. And of course, just our luck…we swiped in at 18:03….soooo guesss who’s getting dock time? This guy right here! Oh well, Mauritius was awesome and well worth it. I guess that’s 2 hrs less in India :/.

Happy Halloween!

India

Desmond Tutu

Special Guest...

Saying goodbye to South Africa was a sad moment but exciting at the same time. We had an incentive to get back on the ship early. We had a VERY special guest speaker that night before we set sail: Nobel Peace Prize winner and Semester at Sea Alumni (he and his wife have sailed on two SAS voyages) Archbishop Desmond Tutu! He walked into the Union to a standing ovation. He provoked laughter as he mentioned that being back on the ship (“not boat” hahaha !inside SAS joke) the M/V Explorer felt  “weird” like “being back home. And you come home and see all these strange people and think…what are you all doing here!? ” Archbishop Tutu is a charismatic man with a contagious laugh and most importantly a contagious heart. He spoke to us for 1/2 an hour and left us with this message: “Go for it. Be as idealistic as you ever can be. Dream that this world CAN actually be a better world. Dream that this world can be one where we are going to say IT IS a total nonsense IT IS actually a sacrilege that we can spend so much on instruments of death and destruction when we could be using it investing it in making this a better world. And so I say go on dream it. Dream. Dream God’s dream. Be as idealistic as you ever could be. Go for it. Go for it. God has no one except you….Didn’t I tell you? You are Aaaawesome!”