Tag Archives: Semester at Sea
Guided by the Best
We need to tell you a little bit more about our fantastic guide, Mohammad, pictured with us and another great guide, Hossein, below. Three guides helped us throughout our trip, but Shannon and I spent the most time hiking with Mohammad (the one with the orange hat). This guy was a walking, talking, joking encyclopedia […]
The Hotel of A Thousand Stars
After our time in Marrakech, we spent the next three days hiking and visiting Berber villages in the High Atlas Mountains. We learned from our guides that the term “Berber” actually comes from the word “barbarian” and was a derogatory term given to all non-Arabs in northern Africa. Most of the villagers themselves don’t know […]
Good Luck, Long Life, Good Baby, Good Sex
The bulk of our time in Morocco was spent on a 4-day Semester at Sea trip to Marrakech and then into the High Atlas mountains, and we loved every second of it. We were a little anxious about the logistics of leading a trip with 60 people on it, but a combination of fantastic Chleh […]
Skype-ing at the Cathedral
One of the students’ favorite things about Spain was the fact that less than a 5 minute walk from the ship, the city of Cadiz offered free high speed wifi in the plaza of the cathedral. During academic voyages, crew and students pay a hefty fee for Internet usage on the ship, so this plaza […]
¿Who’s Watchin’ You, Cádiz?
The laid-back Spanish beach town of Cádiz, Spain is world famous for its watch towers, many of which were built during its heyday of trade-based prosperity in the 1700s. We spent our first day trekking around the Old Town in search of the official watch tower and highest point in Cádiz, the Torre Tavira. Fluent […]
Niceness in the Great White North, eh?
During last winter’s Olympic games we kept hearing coverage about how nice and friendly Canadians are. We’ve met a few over the years and have never been given reason to doubt the stereotype. Visiting a large Canadian port like Halifax, however, gave us the chance to experience Canucks en masse; and they really are nice! […]
Working 9 to 9 (am to am)
We want to devote a blog post to the crew of the MV Explorer, the hardest working crew on the seven seas. First of all, let us clarify–we Bloomquai are not on the ship’s crew. We are staff, so we do not wear uniforms, but we do still answer to Captain Roman–ultimately everyone on board […]
A-B-C…easy as 1-2-3…simple as do-re-me…
Our final three ports of call were the ABC islands in the Dutch Antilles: Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao. We went scuba diving in Bonaire and beached it in Curacao and Aruba. The ABCs all have arid climates which was quite a change from the tropical rainforests to which we’d become accustomed. Curacao was especially beautiful, […]
Flaming Limbo Lower Now!
During our evening in Trinidad, we attended a cultural show that knocked our socks off with national champion calypso singers, steel pan players, talented drummers, and limbo-ologists. Our camera battery died shortly after the show began. Thankfully, my iPhone camera still had some juice. Too bad it isn’t the newly announced iPhone 4 because the […]
Jolly Good Sporting, Old Boy.
We visited Trinidad and Tobago on a national holiday, so most of the shops and restaurants were closed. We had the good fortune, however, of hitting on a day when they were hosting an international cricket match between the local Caribbean West Indies team (wearing maroon) and South Africa (wearing green). Neither Shannon nor I […]