The Bahamas Adventures Part Two

The next day it was decided that we would go on a snorkelling boat tour thing. I had booked it the day before, and they told me a bus would pick us up at the nearby Hilton at 12:15. So we walked down to the Hilton just before noon. Early, right? Except a hotel guy told us that the bus had already left, and we were supposed to take a taxi instead. He assured us that the company would pay for the taxi. I wanted to go back to the room to get the pamphlet for this snorkelling thing, maybe give them a call to confirm this, but before i knew it hotel guy had hustled us into a taxi and told the driver where to go. He seemed to know what he was doing.

We drove over a bridge that goes to Paradise Island, a really ritzy place. The driver asked us for a dollar to pay the toll for this bridge. Well as I mentioned already, I didn't have US or Bahamian money with me, I was covering credit card purchases while my friend was covering payments that required cash. Except on this particular day she had left the cash at home. Now I had been a little worried about this business with having to get this company to pay for a taxi, but this is the point where I got really worried. Same with the taxi driver. He did not like this business at all. But he paid the toll and drove us the rest of the way. That drive was pretty tense for me as I contemplated how we didn't have any cash on us, we didn't know where we were going, we couldn't remember the name of the company that we were snorkelling with, and were just blindly trusting that we could find them and make them pay for this taxi.

We pulled up at the entrance to some ritzy place, and it became immediately apparent that we were in the wrong place. Luckily the people there wanted to help us out, but I felt like a useless idiot trying to explain to them that we didn't know where we should be or the name of anything. They called a few snorkelling places for us and NOBODY had my name on their files. Finally the lady had the idea to let me look through some brochures. I found the one that i had booked with, but they called there, and again they said there was no record of us. The guy at the hotel desk who made that call for me was really pushing this other company on me the whole time, kept on telling me how it was their preferred diving company. I asked to make the call myself and this time they knew who I was, thankfully. The lady I talked to was suitably shocked about where I was, especially since our destination was on the other side of the island. I actually really enjoyed her reaction. She told me to hurry on down there, so I fled with the pamphlet in hand. Hotel desk guy looked a little hurt.

Well we didn't miss our boat, and the whole thing was worth it. We snorkelled out at a reef and were given some fish food to draw the fishes to us. I was surrounded by swarms of tropical fishes. I had to make sure the black and blue ones got some food, cause the white and yellow ones were way more aggressive. We went to another spot where I guess a plane had crashed in the water; it was pretty cool to see the ruins or whatever you call it. I couldn't get down to it cause the pressure hurt my ears too much, but one girl did. I was jealous. Then we went out to a reef ledge where sharks hang out. Apparently the reef sharks there don't really attack humans cause there's enough food to keep them full. So we went swimming with them. One swam within arms reach of my friend. I was jealous.