The Bahamas Adventures Part One

The problem with going to the Bahamas is that you then have to leave the Bahamas at some point. I had an amazing trip, and I really need to blog it out. I'm real tired, so I'm gonna start with the first couple days.

First off, I ended up going with a friend of mine who I don't hang out with much anymore. I had been anticipating a trip all on my own so this was a bit different, a bit of a blessing and a bit of the opposite. We'll leave it at that.

Let's go back in time to Monday evening. Our flight leaves at 8, which means flying through the night to Calgary and then Toronto, spending a few hours there and then flying on to Nassau, Bahamas. This is not exactly fun, except the plane going to Nassau is very empty. This means that I get a whole row to myself, enough to stretch out on and watch tv in style. So that's actually quite enjoyable. Then we approach the islands of the Bahamas, collared in sky blue waters. Gorgeous.

The first thing I notice about the Bahamas... everybody is black! I'm not sure what I was expecting, I just hadn't thought about it I guess. Of course there's tons of tourists as well, mostly white. The locals give the flavour for the island though. The customs agent insists on helping me secure a hotel room before he lets me through. All I brought with me was a phone number of a hostel which it turns out doesn't exist anymore.

We hop in a taxi, and the driver's first act in the cab is to honk his horn and pull in front of a bus. We quickly learn that honking the horn in the Bahamas as akin to breathing in North America. You do it partly to confirm your presence to the world, partly just to keep from dying. So the taxi takes us down this sketchy back alley to a narrow stairway that says "Mignon Guest House." We walk up the stairs to a gate and ring the bell. An old man turns up and mutters something about his wife, but he lets us in to this place, which is basically a hallway with a desk and a fridge in it, attached to another hallway with six bedrooms, and two shared bathrooms. There's also a microwave and a water dispenser with a handwritten sign that says "If you want to dring the water, please use only a dringing glass." This exact sign is plastered on the wall on either side of the dispenser, as well as on the machine itself, on either side of the water spout. So four times in total.

The man's wife is a very friendly, very short, and very greek lady who really speaks her mind. 5 minutes after arriving we're already being chastised for foolishness. Shortly after that a european couple walk in from the beach and she's severely scolding them about using the room towels on the beach. They seem to get the point and walk on to their room, while she shakes her head at me and mouths the word "swedish."

"SWEDISH!" she hollers after them. "YOU UNDERSTAND?"

I love the fact that her nickname for them is "swedish."

It's already late afternoon, so we walk down to hit the beach, which is gorgeous of course. Then I go exploring. It doesn't take long to realize that on the streets here everybody yells. There's constant conversation going on, and it's always in yelling form, whether or not the conversations is taking place over several feet or several blocks. It's really hard to know when people are actually talking to you specifically, and not somebody way down the street, especially cause I have a hard time understanding what's being said through those thick Caribbean accents. I may have had a group of angry Bahamians after me, but I'm really not sure.

I walked down to the docks, where there's 3 or 4 gigantic cruise liners and a "straw market." Here there's much more yelling. People are trying to sell you things, and it's crowded. The people here are VERY good at selling things. A gigantic lady calls me over and slips a couple bracelets on my wrist. Some orphans made them or something, and they just ask for a donation in return. I explain that I only have Canadian, I don't have any US or Bahamian cash, which are the accepted currencies here.

"Canadian?" she tries to fit this word into her mouth. I pull out a $5 bill and hand it to her, explaining that it's worth about four bucks. "Canadian," she ponders again while staring at the bill with the kind of pure joy and wonderment that you only expect to see on a 5 year old child at christmastime. And probably only in the movies. She actually says "ooooh" while holding this expression. When she tells me that it looks funny, I tell her our tens are kind of purply red, which she has problems believing.

I get tired of exploring at around seven. Having eaten nothing but carrot sticks, airline cookies, and a crappy airport muffin since leaving BC, I head back to my room in hopes of drumming up some healthy-food-ish prospects. Having slept for only a couple hours, I fall asleep and wake up at four in the morning with nothing to do but read tourism pamphlets, and nothing to eat but carrot sticks.

Tomorrow, swimming with sharks and being the most pathetic tourist ever