Once again at sea!! WE left San Juan, Puerto Rico last night at 2300 hours! It took us 35 minutes just to turn the ship around to head out of the harbor. By that time of night I was exhausted from the day’s adventure.

At 0700 I boarded a van with eight other SAS girls. We had all signed up for this Tanama Cave and River Adventure before we left for Nassau. The adventure was led by Acampa Adventures, a local sporting good store. Our guides, Roqi and Jaime led us into the rainforest. It took us and hour and forty-five minutes to end up in some guy’s driveway in the middle of these lush, green rolling hay stack hills, as they call them. We also stopped at a local bakery where I came across Mallorca (My-york-a), delicious sweet bread that Kristin and I had eaten the previous day at a café in Old San Juan. Once we were stopped, everyone in the group was handed a helmet, harness and a pair of gloves. A random guy from upstate New York, who was visiting San Juan with his wife who was at a conference joined our group, his name was Walter. We headed up this road that shortly became a single track path heading down and then up and then back down. The entire day I don’t think we walked on level ground, maybe except when we were swimming in the river. We saw three amazing caves with humungous stalagmites and stalactites. These caves were covered in bats and guano! You could hear their whistling above your head. The Tanama River is unique in that it disappears into sink holes and caves and then reappears down the valley later. We swam in the river and then headed up another driveway to Jose, Monica and Aliha’s house. There, Monica had made a delicious lunch for us complete with a tasty dessert. Jose is an organic farmer that owns 10 acres in the forest where we were hiking. Him and his wife host tours in the bottom story of their jungle bungalow for a living, besides the once a month trip that Jose makes into the city to sell his produce. Aliha is a three year old boy who constantly entertained us with his dance moves and climbing skills. After lunch we walked in their backyard where we saw a large platform about 10 feet up in the air with a cable. We were to begin zip lining!! I was the second to last to go. There were two 500 foot zip-lines and three smaller ones that went over the river. It was so exhilarating! The last zip-line had a very hard landing with a short platform. One girl actually rica shaded of the mattress that was strapped to the tree where the platform landing was. We slowly and tiredly made our way up-hill back to the van, very muddy and wet. I took a video while I was zip lining and some awesome pictures! I can’t wait to share them, hopefully when I find an internet café while in port.

Today I had three classes; one of them seems pretty hard- Human Effects on Coastal Systems. It will be a very interesting class but a lot of work. My roommate Lauren is in that class and a girl that was my kayaking partner in the Bio Bay named Mason. After classes I caught up on sleep and then we I woke up Lauren, Kristen and I headed to yoga. We were disappointed when the class was full, but ended up doing pilates with a girl on the other deck. Passed St. Lucia and St. Vincent Islands in the Lesser Antilles (I think I got the names wrong in some emails). You could tell the Islands were VERY populated by the numbers of lights visible. The sunset tonight was beautiful with the clouds in the distance. There was actually a cruise ship on the horizon. Its silhouette was visible and made for an awesome picture. Too bad my camera was in my cabin, but as we watched the sunset with the Student Life director, he reminded us that we had over 99 more sunsets! Haha.

I was able to actually study in one of the classrooms tonight. I do have a lot of reading and already a paper due in two days. Its funny, you loose track of the date because all you’re concerned about is in how many days it will take us to get to the next port and if it is either an “A” or a “B” day. It’s difficult to study in the library or in your cabin because the library has limited space and anywhere else on the ship is pretty noisy. Tonight was the activities fair where we were able to sign up for student life organizations like clubs, wellness activities, yearbook etc… I signed up to help the children’s coordinator on board, be part of the Extended family program and Vicarious Voyage. Extended family is coordinated with the lifelong learners, faculty and staff onboard (extended learners: older people that sit in and audit our classes, many have very interesting and intriguing stories to tell) where we have dinner once a week and talk. I’m excited to get into a routine of classes, working out, studying, sleeping and eating. The limited internet access is very frusterating with the expected research we are suppose to conduct with some of our classes. Oh well, back to the books that they used in the olden-days (grandma!). Haha.

It is really early in the morning here. I think I might have to get up this early to just get fast internet on board. At least I only have to wake up and play on the internet for a few minutes and go back to sleep rather than having to swim 1000s of yards. I feel your pain girls!

Love you family and friends! Thanks for all the awesome comments!