mauritius yesterday, more indian ocean today...

Doesn't it look like the ocean is on fire? We had a beautiful sunset tonight. The sea has been very calm. It is currently 2245 ship time, and we are at 13 degrees 46.68' S Latitude and 63 degrees 33.85' E Longitude. I expect we will cross the equator again sometime late tomorrow. We advanced our clocks again last night, but only 30 minutes this time. Today was Sea Olympics day, with lots of competitions between student groups as well as Life Long Learners and some faculty and staff, so there were no classes. John worked on marking the exam he gave Thursday and I did a lot of reading. On the ship during some times of the day there are DVD's that loop on the closed circuit tv, and today one of them was "Slumdog Millionaire". I enjoyed watching that since I had not had an opportunity to see it before leaving home in January.

Yesterday we visited Port Louis, Mauritius http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauritius (Latitude: 20 degrees 9.19' S, Longitude: 57 degrees 29.7' E). We arrived at about 7:00am, had a diplomatic briefing from US Consulate staff in which students were warned that if they got arrested in Mauritius they could be held for 6 months without being charged (and that there is therefore no bail), and that if they were caught with drugs, whether one joint or several kilos of cocaine, they would be in prison for 40 years. This place is serious about drug control. We were able to leave the ship by 9:00am for a city orientation which included a visit to the Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam Botanical Garden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Seewoosagur_Ramgoolam_Botanical_Garden in nearby Pamplemousses. We had a wonderful guide who spoke excellent English. Although English is the official language of Mauritius, many people speak French or Creole. The island has quite a mixture of cultures, with Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and people of Chinese faiths living in harmony over many years. This island is most famous for the now extinct dodo bird http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo. We had a very entertaining lesson on that in Global Studies on Thursday.

We were happy to leave the ship for awhile -- John has been trying to recover from his respiratory ailment, and I'd had the worst seasickness yet the evening before we arrived. It was good to be on solid ground. The weather was warm and humid, but very shady in the garden with some lovely bird sounds. We came back to the ship around 1:00pm, but many of the students and others had taken beach trips and didn't come back until quite a bit later. We left Mauritius around 9:00pm and have had very smooth sailing since.

from the atlantic to the indian ocean, and dinner with officers...

As mentioned in the last post, we left Cape Town (Latitude: 33 degrees 54.20' S; Longitude: 18 degrees 25.38' E) on Monday morning (Sunday night for most of you). It didn't take long to get to Cape Point, and this is a photograph there from the ship. I have gone back to the February 20th post and added some photos, including one of Cape Point from land. As we approached Cape Point, seas became somewhat rougher, but we are all pretty good sailors now, and few people are experiencing the same discomfort we had at first.

I monitored our progress when we got near Cape Agulhas since I wanted to record our southernmost latitude and note the place where we entered the Indian Ocean. We were not near land at that point, but our latitude was 35 degrees 9.4' S and longitude was 20 degrees 53.6' E mid afternoon on February 23. From there we moved closer to the coast and although we did not see land again during daylight, John did not sleep very well and said the next morning that he had seen lots of lights during the night (our cabin is port side). And there were lots of lights to see from the port cities and towns along the southern coast, especially Port Elizabeth and Port Alfred. The continental shelf drops off dramatically from Africa which allowed us to stay very close to shore most of the day yesterday as we sailed up the east coast. We could see East London very well with binoculars and a number of other smaller towns and villages. The shoreline is very beautiful, the sea was calm, the weather was warm and sunny.

John and I went to lunch after his class and while we were sitting in the cafeteria, we looked out and saw very muddy water in the ocean -- something we have never seen before. There was a huge amount of it, and a buzz began as others saw it too. I told John it had to be where a river spills into the ocean, and indeed that's what it turned out to be. It is hard to describe the contrast between extremely muddy river water and the deep blue of the ocean, and I didn't get very good photos of it since I had to run for the camera and by that time much of it was beyond the capability of our camera to capture. We believe the river was the Mtamvuna River near Port Edward http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mtamvuna_River given the latitude at the time of 31 degrees 5' S. Many people reported seeing lots of dolphins along the coast, particularly near the point that the river spilled into the ocean. I expect dolphins would have been easier to see in the muddy water.

We continued along the coast, changing course away from the continent at 3:45pm yesterday, latitude 31 degrees 13' S, longitude 30 degrees 23' E as we move closer to Mauritius.

On Monday we had received an invitation to dinner with the captain and his officers, along with several other people. The dinner was last night and all of us met in the Faculty/Staff lounge at 7:30pm for drinks and hors d'oeuvres. Around 8:00 the captain and officers joined us, and a few minutes later we made our way to the dining room. Tables were set for a formal meal with 3 of everything -- forks, knives, spoons and glasses. Information about the two crews who work for Semester at Sea can be found at http://www.semesteratsea.org/our-ship/ship-management/. The captain on our voyage is Jeremy Kingston, Staff Captain is Mats Nelson, Hotel Director is Stephan Heuser, and Chief Purser is Angelito Untivero. We were seated last night with Mats Nelson, along with 5 other faculty and staff. Although we were all a bit daunted by the table setting, it was a very nice 5 course meal with lovely food and lively conversation. Mats is from Sweden, now married to a woman from Thailand and awaiting the birth of his first child. We had some questions about the operation of the ship, and he was happy to enlighten us on issues of taking on fuel, disposing of gray water, and the relationship of those two things (believe it or not!). He says this is the best group of students they have seen on Semester at Sea (and emphasizes they do not say this about every group), but that this group uses more water on board than any other group they have seen. It was a every enjoyable evening, although difficult for the people who are not night owls since it went on until 11:00pm. Since some people teach at 8:00am, and since we were losing an hour last night, this was a long evening.

Today seas have been a bit rough, but we are currently just south of Madagascar and making good time, having averaged about 27 knots all day. We will only be in Mauritius a day, arriving in the morning and leaving in the evening, and we need to re-fuel while there before the last leg to India.

Current time: 2312 Feb25 (but advancing another hour tonight)

Latitude: 27 degrees 21.86' S

Longitude: 45 degrees 31.77' E

Course: 73 degrees

more in cape town

I must apologize to those of you that have been reading that several days have gone by. Internet is challenging in this part of the southern hemisphere, and the number of activities in Cape Town and time changes since returning to sea have also been factors. Our current time is 9:15pm, 9 hours ahead of EST, 10 ahead of CST, 11 ahead of MST and 12 ahead of PST. And we will be advancing clocks an hour again tonight, so will be even further ahead of all of you.

On February 20 in Cape Town, our friends Maggie and George, who have spent quite a bit of time in Cape Town (Maggie went to school here as a child), rented a car and invited us along to see parts of the city. John was still feeling under the weather so he stayed back and I went with them. We started with a visit to the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens http://www.sanbi.org/gardens/kirstenbosch on the eastern slopes of Table Mountain. It is rather late in the season here, so many of the blooming plants are past their prime, but the gardens are quite beautiful nonetheless. The photo at the top is one I took that day of a protea. There are several varieties, but most bloom in winter or spring rather than summer. This is such a quiet, peaceful place to walk or sit, and the sounds of the song birds are lovely.

From Kirstenbosch we had planned to visit Constantia, home of Groot Constantia, the oldest grape growing estate in South Africa. However, the road was closed and we were unable to get there. We also found the Chapman's Peak drive closed and were only able to see the beautiful views from partway up. There is a lot of contruction going on in Cape Town right now, including a new stadium, in preparation for World Cup 2010 http://www.worldcup2010southafrica.com/.

We had a long drive through several areas in and around the city, including Camps Bay and the top of Signal Hill. It was a beautiful day and the views were fantastic. We had good views of Lion's Head, although I never could see the lion's head until the following day from a different angle.

The following day John was feeling a little bit better, so we caught the Hop On Hop Off bus near the port so that he would not have to do much walking. We viewed other parts of the city and we had hoped to do the Table Mountain gondola to the top, but the day was cloudy and we knew the views would be obscured. We were able to get some lovely views from the lower gondola station, and I was finally able to see the lion in Lion's Head.

Our last day in Cape Town dawned sunny and bright, but very windy. We decided to go to the Table Bay Hotel, next to where the ship was docked, for brunch. We soon learned that Robben Island http://www.freedom.co.za/ trips were being cancelled due to wind and strong currents. We knew that the gondola on Table Mountain would also be shut down because of the wind, so we never did make that trip, unfortunately. We will have to do it the next time around!

We were scheduled to leave Cape Town at 8:00pm on Sunday evening, however the opening to the port is quite narrow and winds continued to be very strong. We were told we would be leaving sometime after 11:00pm. We did not actually depart until 8:00am on Monday and the water was very calm as we left.