Author Archives: sam
Come On Ride the Train…and Ride It
The island of St. Kitts is a wonder to behold. Sugar plantation subsidies from Britain and the rest of Europe have dried up, so the country is in the process of switching primary industries from sugar production to tourism. Because the island remains largely undeveloped, its natural beauty and beautiful coastline is unmarred by highrise […]
Forts, Food, and Pigeons
We spent May 29 walking around the old part of San Juan, Puerto Rico. We explored old forts, ate good food, and sweated out all of the water we drank in the heat and humidity. We started with a hike up the hill to one of the two main forts in the city, Castillo San […]
Whales Chasing Tail
I had a little bit of free time from the lab yesterday and got to sit in on a lecture Dr. Allen Schoenherr gave about whales and other marine mammals. It was a fun and fascinating talk, and it gave me some things to look for on the rest of the voyage. As luck would […]
If you’re going to sin, sin boldly.
We’re back on board the MV Explorer for a couple weeks of fun visiting many different Caribbean islands. We plan to blog as much as we can about our various ports of call, but we’re likely to fall behind at some point because we’re a little busier than we were the last time we set […]
Posted in Travel
Tagged MV Explorer, SaS, Semester at Sea
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Open Source JSON Can’t Compare to Three-legged Belizean Monkeys
Poor, neglected blog. Normal life as an Indianapolis software developer just isn’t as exciting to write or read about as three-legged dog-riding monkeys in Belize. Be that as it may, I do have a little something to share with the world today…and hopefully we’ll have more entertaining travel stories in the near future. Geek Post […]
Posted in Software Development
Tagged Belize, java, json, opensource, programming, software, webdev
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Totally Tubular
Back in Belize for a second visit, we hired a cab to travel up into the jungle and go cave tubing (floating down a jungle stream and through a number of large caves on inner tubes). The trek through the jungle to get to the start point for the tubing inspired us to make an […]
Posted in Travel
Tagged animals, Belize, cave tubing, monkey, SaS, Semester at Sea
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Dolphin Smooches
Eeeeeaaaaheeeeee-e-e-e—eee–eeee-ahEEEE-EE-EE!!! That’s dolphin for “I like fish. I want some more! I will kiss your sweaty face if you’ll give me some FIIIISH!!!” And on our second visit to the island of Roatán in Honduras, we learned a little bit of dolphin from our new water-bound mammalian pal, Anthony. Anthony is a 3-year-old male dolphin […]
How d’ya like them (pine)apples?
Remember that episode of Sesame Street where they show a trip to the crayon factory? That was always one of Shannon’s and my favorites. On our final visit to Costa Rica (back on the Caribbean side again), we toured a pineapple plantation and put together our own clip to show how pineapples are processed and […]
Spanglish
A trip like this inevitably sets off life changes in a person. It’s too early to tell what the full extent of those changes will be and whether they will be major course-alterers or just subtle shifts. Even so, already I sense that we are not the same people on the way back that we […]
Across the agua to Nicaragua, olé!
Managua, Nicaragua, what a wonderful spot There’s coffee and bananas and a temperature hot So take a trip and on a ship go sailing away Across the agua to Managua, Nicaragua, olé We visited Corinto and León rather than Managua, but our tour guide Henry did perform a nice rendition of this little ditty as […]
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