I'm currently sitting in the Student Life Office after two full days at port. I'm on-duty tonight so I had to be back on the ship by 10pm and I'm trying to take advantage of my time on-board to get some work done and also to catch up on life (paying bills, doing travel research and updated the blog). To my devoted fans (that's you Rico and Ro) who are going through withdrawals, I am back. I hope to be better at staying on top of this thing, but as you know, time flies around here. Unfortunately, I'm not sitting at a desk all day long so before I know it it's midnight and I'm going to bed.
We arrived in Acapulco on Thursday morning. It was a hard morning to get up because we had moved our clocks ahead one hour two nights in a row. That is a killer when you're working all day and night. We also had an impromptu dance party in the Faculty/Staff lounge (from here on out referred to as Staffulty) which went until after 1am. A few of us had gathered to celebrate Mario's upcoming birthday (it is officially today - more on that later) and went up to Staffulty to see if anyone else was still around (the bar up there closes at 11pm and it was about 11:15pm). Sure enough there were a few people left and we all just starting hanging out and chatting. Before we knew it, the music was going, people were dancing and a crowd of students had gathered outside the window. I have determined after 10 years of working with college students that it freaks them out to learn that we administrators/faculty actually like to have fun too. The looks on their faces were priceless. Anyway, that is all just to explain how bad we were all dragging the morning we arrived in Acapulco. There was hardly anyone on the deck as we pulled in, which is totally different than my previous experience on SAS. The decks were packed before the sun came up as we arrived in each port. Maybe we just have a lot less students, but it seemed almost like a ghost town relatively speaking.
We headed off the ship with no particular plans and it seemed most of us were not super excited for Acapulco. Low and behold, Acapulco is great. Luckily, we are docked in a non-tourist part of town so we have quick access to the Mercado Central and other Old Acapulco destinations. Mario (an RD), Doug (another RD), Rasa (Admin Asst) and I took off by foot to explore a bit. We made our way to the Central Market and had a blast. We walked all around and stopped for lunch (5 tacos for $1.50...can't beat that), we then headed to a thatched hut on the beach to enjoy a cold beer (IT WAS HOT) and rest a bit. On our way back we decided to go into the super market and pick up some water and other snacks. I love grocery stores in foreign countries. It was fun just to walk up and down the aisles looking at the local food. We dropped our groceries off at the ship and continued on foot the other direction. We were running into students left and right and learned a little bit about what everyone was up to. Many of them spent the day at a nearby island that you can reach by a ferry. It sounded like a lot of fun but apparently over 100 of our students were there the first day. Yikes. Thursday night we ventured out for dinner with a larger group and sat out under the stars telling stories and laughing a lot. It was a very fun day. We returned to the ship at midnight and decided to go sing Happy Birthday to Mario who had already returned because he was on-duty. After our serenade we all went to bed! I slept like a baby.
This morning we work up and six of us (Mario, Doug, Rasa, Tania and Karen - one of the spanish language teachers) headed out to the nearby island we had heard so much about. I'm sorry, I can't remember the name right now. We hopped on the ferry thinking it would only take us a short trip to get there. Ha, were we wrong. Apparently, the ferry tours you all around and shows you famous people's houses, there's a cliff diving show and lucky us, they stop at vendor boats en route. Oh my god! I thought we were going to die. It was a 90 minute ferry ride, which should have only taken 15 minutes or so. It was so bad that at one point as we sat stopped in the water just off the beach so people could come on board and sell us food and other chachkies Rasa lost all patience with the ferry ride and dove into the water to swim to shore. You had to be there, but it was fantastic. I could not stop laughing. I thought if they waited much longer the rest of us might just follow her lead. Finally, we made it to the island and hung around the beach for a couple of hours.
Upon returning to the ship we showered and headed out for Mario's 29th birthday. We first went to see the famous Acapulco cliff divers. This was amazing. These men climb up the side of a cliff (no joke) and dive off into 12 feet of water. It is so dicey they sometimes have to wait for long periods of time to gauge the tide just right. I thought I was going to throw up the first two dives. My hands stopped sweating finally until the end when the last diver went off from the very top. I can't even imagine. It was sunset so the pictures that were taken were amazing. I don't have any of these pictures to post because my camera broke two days ago. Yep, bad timing, huh? No fear, Nate will be joining me in Panama next Friday and is coming to the rescue with a new camera. Phew.
When the cliff diving show was over 13 of us headed out to dinner for the final birthday celebration (having your b-day take place in a port on SAS is a very fun thing) and it was shaping up to be a great night out. I, unfortunately, can not report the rest of the evening because I hopped in a cab with my boss, Lisa, at 10pm to return to the ship since both of us are on duty tonight. I'm sure the rest of the group (pretty much the attendees at the dance party two nights ago) are having a great time as I type.
We have two more days of exciting adventures in Mexico, however, I have no idea what we'll end up doing for our remaining time. So far, playing it by ear has worked very well. More adventures to come...
(Thanks to Mario for providing a couple of pictures to include in my blog)
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