Day 95 and 96: Salvador, Brazil
The trippiest thing about this day was that I had gotten back from the Amazon early that morning, which already felt like a while ago, and I have never had days in port after an overnight. So it felt like we should be leaving but we weren't.
Molly called me at 10:59. One minute before my alarm was going to go off.
There really wasn’t all that much to do in Salvador. The best plan we had was to go to an elevator that apparently had a great view of the city, and there was supposed to be a market right by it.
We walked to it, it wasn’t all that far, but I did not feel very safe at all. We had been told so many horrible things about Salvador. I mean, it is the murder capital of South America. I didn’t even bring my camera with me.
The market was in a giant building right across from the elevator. It was three stories and was filled with little shops that sold nearly everything. We spent a really long time there. We bought artwork and postcards and jewelry. Molly, Lillian, and Marie bought hammocks. There was just so much to look at, and the people were not too pushy like some other markets we had been to in other countries.
We eventually found our way to the elevator, which cost 0.15 Real to ride. It was literally just an elevator. No windows. And we had been told that it was the place in the city with the most petty crime so we were all hyper vigilant and I was very uncomfortable.
When we got to the top we looked at the view for all of thirty seconds. Then we bought Molly a water and then everyone kind of wanted to walk around because it was supposed to be the historical district and be really pretty but to me it just looked really sketchy. And we were all carrying the things we bought. I was really, really uncomfortable. Probably the most uncomfortable I had been in any port city.
I voiced my concerns and everyone agreed that it probably wasn’t the best idea to walk around. So we hailed a cab and traveled to our next destination: the mall.
What were we going to do there? Go to the movies.
What were we going to see? Catching Fire.
I was so excited. It was the one movie that I was absolutely so sad that I was missing.
The mall was huge. 5 stories with multiple corridors and areas. We got a bit lost trying to find the theatre and had to ask for directions twice. But we finally got there and looked at the movie times to make a plan. We double checked with two people to make sure that the movie was going to be in english. We ended up with tickets to the 6:10 showing. We had a little over an hour to kill. An hour that we filled with food.
We ate an early dinner at the food court. Besides the Subway, McDonalds, and Burger King there were a bunch of different fast food places that I had never heard of. And at all of them you got your plate, filled it with what you wanted and then paid by weight. I went for the chinese food. Which was only ok.
After eating we walked around and found the one thing that Lillian really wanted: knitting needles. Kitting has become a hige trend on the ship. It seems like every other person is walking around with kitting and whips it out all the time. Lillian wanted to be involved and after seeing all of the fun yarn colors Amanda and I decided to participate too. So now I have my own kitting needles and purple yarn.
We were not with Molly and Marie at that point. We left them in the sporting goods store where they had started acting like lunatics and taking weird pictures with everything.
We ran into them again close to the theatre and both decided that they wanted knitting needles too. So we split up again and Lillian took them back to the store while Amanda and I went to go buy treats.
We weren't worried about getting seats, we had to choose them when we bought our tickets. Amanda and I contemplated our snack choices for a while and decided that we wanted to souvenir Catching Fire cup that said the name of the movie in portuguese. But we didn’t need two of the combos because it was a large combo and we could easily share that. So we bought one and then Amanda bought just the cup.
We had ripped the tickets apart incorrectly so we ended up having to wait for the others to come back before we could go in.
Basically the entire theatre was full of SAS kids. There was a least thirty of us, probably more. It was a SAS takeover. We cheered obnoxiously at all the right parts.
The movie was absolutely amazing. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time and I knew what was going to happen! I can't imagine what it was like for Amanda who had only read about 4 chapters of the book.
We left the theatre with so many feelings. So many feelings. We were freaking out in the lobby of the theatre. My heart was racing for so long. We went into the grocery store afterwards and Molly and I could not concentrate on anything. I needed to buy new deodorant and they only had the spray kind. For some reason it was the funniest thing.
We were not productive at all and I wasn’t really calm until we were back at the ship. There we watched Finding Nemo and started our knitting. Finding Nemo was necessary since a line from it was quoted about a million times in the Amazon.
Oh my god! I forgot to tell you about that!! HOW COULD I!
This was the motto of the Amazon. Are you ready? I want you to picture Finding Nemo. Now picture Darla, the evil niece of the dentist….
"I'm a Pir-a-nha. They're in the Am-a-zon."
We said that about a million times. Every two minutes. It was fantastic.
Anyway. Molly and I watched Finding Nemo and then started The Black Cauldron but Molly fell asleep in the middle of it. I knew that she had fallen asleep because she was very vocal through the beginning of the movie and then when the fairies came on the screen she said absolutely nothing.
Guess it was time for bed. In the morning our plan was to go to the zoo.
It was interesting. Everyone told us that there was absolutely nothing to do in Salvador but Molly and Marie had gotten a map that made it look like the most exciting place ever.
That's good advertising for you.
We took a cab to the zoo. The front entrance was very sketchy looking and you didn’t have to pay to go in. Right inside the entrance looked like a garden with a fence around it. There was a path to the right and another to the left. It didn’t looked very open, or very much like a zoo. There weren't any people except for two security guards standing to the left. We didn’t really know what to do. We started walking to the right but all of the stands around the road looked really closed. So we headed back and tried to go to the left. The security guard yelled at us. I guess the right it was.
We passed all of the very closed looking carts and came upon another entrance that looked just as worn down but a little more open.
We still didn’t have to pay when we walked through. This time there were animals. Birds to be exact. And when you walked a little farther down there were monkeys.
And then we came upon the hippo area. There were two hippos. But they were not the most exciting thing. The most exciting thing was the baby ducklings walking perfectly in a row along the side of the pond the hippos were in. They were so cute.
We watched them waddle along until they came to the wall and then didn’t know what to do next and all sat down. Then they would stand up, take two steps, and plop back down again. They were followed by mom so Molly and I started talking in voices for the ducklings.
"Mom, mom, there's a wall!"
"Mom, what do we do now!!?"
"Mom, can we go swimming!?"
"Mom, mom!"
And then we noticed another family of ducklings on the other side of the pool and they decided to get in the water with the hippos. We watched as they swam around and then were scared by the hippo when he yawned. And then they swam to a teeny tiny ramp to get out of the water.
We probably spent about 20 minutes standing and looking at the ducks. Not the hippos. The ducks.
The zoo got more and more depressing as we walked through it. The animals were clearly not well cared for. Molly was trying to decide if it was just a new zoo and wasn’t done being build or if it was old and run down. I definitely think old and run down. It looked like it was falling apart and most of the animals did not look healthy. Especially the camels. They were double humped camels. One was all patchy and didn’t have much fur. The other's humps were collapsed. I don't think that is supposed to happen.
Right before the jaguar area we came upon a security guard who was trying to tell us something. What we gathered via miming was that the zoo was closing and we needed to leave. But no one else seemed to be leaving. We were so incredibly confused.
But the zoo was depressing so we decided that we didn’t mind leaving. It seemed like we had seen everything anyway. There wasn’t all that much there. That was probably the weirdest and most confusing experience of the voyage.
We left the zoo through the sketchy entrance and walked towards the beach to try and find something to eat. Everything just looked really sketchy and run down and unsafe. So we reverted back to the comfortable and took a cab to the mall we had went to the day before. We ate lunch in the same food court and spent almost three hours on the wifi.
We were back to the ship by three thirty.
Early we had seen the crew getting out Christmas decoration. Which is awesome. But I wanted to take pictures of the ship without the decorations. So Molly and I spent the afternoon running around the ship snapping photos. She is doing weird things in a lot of them which, I think, makes them better.
After dinner we ran into Colin in the deck six dining room. He wanted to get pictures and Disney music from me so we told him we would be in my room. Somehow Game of Thrones was brought up, probably because my roommate is currently watching it, and he and Molly got in a heated debate and discussion about various Game of Thrones things.
When he came to my room we were trying to get my VLC player to work on Jessi's computer so that she could watch episode nine of the first season. It is an intense episode and Colin got right to work trying to get it to play. It wouldn’t so he went back to his room to get his episodes of Game of Thrones so that she could watch it. That is how important and crazy episode 9 is. You know what is also awesome? The Game of Thrones theme song. When it came on Molly, Colin and I started dancing and being all weird to it and Jessi video taped it. We are cool.
It took forever to give photos to him. Mostly because there were a lot, he wanted pictures from Morocco, Argentina, and Brazil, and also because my flash drive was being stupid.
Somehow it came up that the blow dart gun I had bought in Brazil didn’t work. He immediately asked me to give it to him. He couldn't get it to work either. I told him it didn’t work. Then he got one of the darts stuck inside of it and attempted to use one of Molly's knitting needles to get it out.
What do you know, he pulled two darts out of the gun. There had already been one in there and that is why it didn’t work. Time to test it out for real. Molly started freaking out and said that it was going to ricochet off the box he had set up and kill us all. She was up in the corner of the room, standing on my bed.
One of the first ones he blew bounced off the box and went straight towards her. It didn’t get very far but we were all dying of laughter. Of course that happened.
He was in my room for a while. When he was gone I got my laundry ready for the next morning and then went to bed. Honestly, I was glad to leave Salvador. I wished we could have spent more time in the Amazon, I had so much fun there, but Salvador was uncomfortable and there wasn’t much to do.
Next we have Cuba. But before that there is an 11 day stretch at sea which includes our first day of finals. After three days in Cuba we have a study day, finals/alumni ball day, packing day, and then disembarkation day.
It is going to go so fast. But I am exhausted and so have very mixed feelings about it. Molly and I talked during one taxi ride about how, at the beginning of the voyage, we were all pumped and full of energy and ready to explore and find things to do. Now we are drained and so do things like sit in a mall and use the wifi. Traveling at this pace is exhausting.
