The sunrise in the morning was amazing...
This was my first time in the Carribean, so I took tons of pictures. Way too many to post here, so I'll try to just hit the highlights...We arrived in Thursday late morning. After we dropped our stuff of at the hotel we decided to take a walk to check out the local markets. One of the nice things about the Bahamas is that you're never far from a beach, so as we walked along what seemed to be the only main road on the island there were plenty of beaches you could access from the road. We stopped at a public beach called Sandyport.
On Friday we hopped on a ferry to Paradise Island to check out Atlantis, which is an extremely expensive and over-the-top hotel/resort - complete with water park, aquarium and casino. It seemed very family friendly, but a little pricey at $600 per night. Luckily for us you can walk around the property for free!
We payed $35 each to check out the aquarium.
On Saturday we went snorkeling. We boarded a catamaran that took us an hour or so out to a more remote area to do some snorkeling.
As we were sailing to our destination I caught a glimpse of this tiny island. I was convinced that was where we were headed, but it wasn't...Although the captain informed us this was Gilligan's Island - the opening shot of the Gilligan's Island TV show. I've never seen the show, so not sure if it's true, but a beautiful looking island none-the-less.
This was our destination island - Rose Island. This is where we dropped off the non-snorkelers (aka my mom), before we headed back out to the reefs to snorkel. My camera isn't waterproof, so unfortunately no fun pictures of the actual snorkeling. Although I can tell you the water was surprisingly cold. It probably would have been warmer if we were there in the summer months.
After our snorkeling adventure we headed back to Paradise Island. We stopped off for some lunch where we tried the infamous Conch Fritters (pronounced "konk"). Conch is what's inside the ginormous Conch seashells that native Bahamians sell to tourists along the harbor. I'm not a big seafood person, but they were pretty good. And, according to one of our ferry "guides", they're like nature's viagra...
After lunch we headed over to the Versailles Garden and French Cloisters, which are also located on Paradise Island.
We headed back to the Atlantis resort to do some gambling (nothing serious, just the slot machines), and I turned $1 into $51 with one spin at the penny slots! Gambling is always more fun when you win. We celebrated with some Ben & Jerry's ice cream...
On the way back to the main island we took a slightly shadier looking ferry - the New Daisy Star. I'm not sure if the captain of this particular ferry really new how to drive a boat...As we were heading into dock we knocked into a total of 3 out of the 3 surrounding walls. The first 2 hits weren't as bad, since we just grazed the concrete on either side, but the last hit was a head-on collision as you can see in the picture. My favorite is the red streak of paint from the boat that was left on the concrete wall. Although, looking at the surrounding paint on the boat, I'm thinking this might not be the first time our captain had crashed the boat...Added with the fact that the ferry started smoking people were fleeing off the ferry as quickly as possible.
That evening we stayed in the down town area and had dinner at the "Fish Fry", which is a strip of restaurants and bars along the harbor where most of the locals hang out. Since all the restaurants here back into the ocean the fish is pretty much as fresh as it gets. We headed to a place called "Twin Brothers", which came highly recommended.
I don't eat fish, so I can't tell you from first-hand experience how the fish was, but my mom and Mandy seemed to enjoy it. Here is the broiled grouper that they ordered.
We had to head out Sunday afternoon, but we made a stop at the daiquiri stand across the street from the hotel. Nothing like a daiquiri made with fresh fruit to top off a great trip.
Bye bye Bahamas...
Despite the freak ferry boat accident, the trip was amazing. Everybody was so friendly! Things were slightly more expensive in general (about $1 more than what it would be in the States), but I guess that's to be expected considering all of their goods and materials are imported.
Check out more pictures here!
No comments:
Post a Comment