Semester at Sea

Our Semester at Sea was a life-altering learning adventure.

Itinerary - 1996Nassau, Bahamas

La Guairá, Venezuela

Salvador, Brazil

Cape Town, South Africa

Mombasa, Kenya

Madras, India

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Manila, Philippines

Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Kobe, Japan

Seattle, WA USA

SS Universe Explorer

Nassau, Bahamas

The Bahama Islands are the result of coral reefs which become dry land when the sea level dropped hundreds of centuries ago. The islands are mostly flat with miles of white and pink sandy beaches.

La Guairá, Venezuela

The Port of La Guairá lies on Venezuela's coastal zone at the foot of its central highlands about 30 kilometers by highway northwest of the country's capital, Caracas.

Salvador, Brazil

Salvador's Street Carnival is the biggest in the world.

Historic Center of the Town of Goiás

Candomblé is Brazil's most influential Afro-Brazilian syncretic religion. Practiced mainly in Bahia, it mixes Catholicism and Yoruba (an African religion).

Cape Town, South Africa

GEOLOGY OF THE CAPE PENINSULA

nonconformity

Precambrian

Ordovician

Cape Point

Yellow line marks nonconformity between the Cape Granite and the overlying Graafwater Formation

Boulders Beach penguin colony

Mombasa, Kenya

The Ngorongoro Conservation Area became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979.

The main feature of the NCA is the Ngorongoro Crater, a large, unbroken, unflooded volcanic caldera. The crater, which formed when a giant volcano exploded and collapsed on itself some two to three million years ago, is 610 m (2,000 ft) deep and its floor covers 260 km2 (100 sq mi).[5] Estimates of the height of the original volcano range from fifteen to nineteen thousand feet (4500 to 5800 metres) high.

Lake Manyara National Park, Tanzania

Lake Manyara National Park, founded in 1960, covers 320 square km and contains five distinct vegetation zones. Wildlife of the area includes buffalo, elephant, lion, leopard, rhinoceros, and many water birds, especially flamingos.

Kilimanjaro is an inactive stratovolcano in north-eastern Tanzania and the highest

mountain in Africa at 19,341 ft above sea level.

Madras, India

Madras is now Chennai. This the Central Railway Station. We took an overnight train to the state of Kerala. Cochin is a major city and seaport located on the south-west coast of India by the Arabian Sea.

Periyar is a protected area, and a nature reserve in the South Indian

State of Kerala, set high in the mountains of the Western Ghats at

the border of Tamil Nadu.

Madurai is among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the Indian peninsula. It is an ancient and prestigious city in the Indian State of Tamil Nadu, situated on the banks of the River Vaigai in the Madurai District.

Madurai Meenakshi Hindu Temple

Gandhi Museum

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Tran-Hung-Da Temple

Cho Ben Chanh Market

Manila, Philippines

Rizal Park is the site of Philippine hero Jose Rizal's execution.

Manila skyline with Rizal Park and Intramuros

Jeepneys

Jeepneys are the most common form of public transport throughout the many islands of the Philippines. In Manila they are so numerous, that there is almost constantly traffic congestion. The jeepneys don't have air-conditioning. They have open windows. Most of the time the jeepneys are constantly-packed with many passengers. Jeepneys offer one of the cheapest ways of getting somewhere. They seldom have a special place to stop. The drivers will slow down enough to enable the passengers to jump on or out.

Taal Volcano is located about 60 km SSE of Metro Manila, the capital of the Philippines. It is a complex volcanic system composed of a small volcanic island (Volcano Island), which has been the site of almost all historic activity, located within a 20x30 km lake-filled complex caldera, one of the great volcano-tectonic depressions of the world.

Hong Kong The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is a city of 7 million located on the South China Sea. Once a quiet fishing village, the city became a British crown colony in 1841 following the first Opium War, when China went to war with England trying to stop the flow of drugs into the country. A second annexation took place following the next Opium War in 1860, and in 1898, the New Territories countryside was leased for 99 years. On July 1, 1997, Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule under the 'One Country, Two Systems' ideology.

Kobe, Japan

Museum commemorating the 1995 earthquake

Mount Rokko provides the pleasant green backdrop to the city of Kobe.

Kyoto

Ryoanji Temple is the site of Japan's most famous rock garden, which attracts hundreds of visitors every day. Originally an aristocrat's villa during the Heian Period. The site was converted into a Zen temple in 1450 and belongs to the Myoshinji school of the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism.

Shimogamo Shrine, is an important Shinto sanctuary in Kyoto.

Seattle, WA USA