We wanted to do something special for celebrating 30 years — but also needed to keep it easy and short-ish as far as vacations go. Jack and MaLeah wanted to explore a fall trip with us, so we wanted to keep some extra time open this year for that potential trip. So, we coordinated with Tara’s Uncle Bill to use their family condo in the Bahamas! We were able to check on a few things for him and get a couple of dive trips in for us — a win/win!
We actually started packing for this trip earlier than we used to. I was worried about taking all the dive gear and making sure we didn’t forget anything important because the daily rental rate for BC and regulators and fins and masks and snorkels for both of us for two days of diving would’ve cost much more than the checked bag! Crazy! So, we decided to bring our own gear — even though we’ve never done that before. After packing and then double checking everything, I still ended up forgetting a dive bag we’d need for the boat. I had everything unpacked and perfectly organized in the suitcase and didn’t even think about how we would transport the dive gear onto the boat.
But first — sunglasses. As I put them on in the car, I realized I was missing a nose pad, so now we had to stop at Costco in Estero before hitting the road the rest of the way — otherwise I’d have a metal poking into my nose the rest of the trip. We decided that since we had plenty of time, we’d solve the problem of the dive bag by getting a couple of those blue plastic IKEA bags once we got to the other coast and it worked out perfectly. We then grabbed some quick Thai takeout from a cute little sushi place nearby and headed to the hotel for the night so we could catch Survivor! Then it was right to bed because we had a 330 wake up call for our early flight to the Bahamas on Thursday.
The morning went smooth — we were up, we had our snack, we got a cup of coffee in the hotel lobby as we checked out, and made it to the airport and everything seemed fine. Our bag for the dive gear was over by a pound or two but the nice guy checking us in shrugged his shoulders and said it was okay. The flight to the Nassau was only 36 minutes according to the schedule, but we ended up taking off late and it seemed as if we might’ve circled a couple times so we ended up arriving after an hour or so. We had arranged to have a driver pick us up and bring us to the teleport resort and that worked out very well because he was familiar with not only the area, but he also remembered Jeff and Bill Speer checking in to our cabin.
Our condo that Bill owns was absolutely spectacular and sort of reminds me of my own cabin in North Carolina. It’s got two bedrooms, a nice kitchen and an amazing patio and a view that seems to stretch from east to west. While we haven’t seen a sunrise yet, the sunset tonight with gorgeous. This first day was actually spent with mostly cloudy/overcast skies with frequent rain showers. We spent our morning unpacking and then went for a walk to try to find the grocery store — which ended up being a further walk than I anticipated but all in all it wasn’t THAT bad and we loaded up with plenty of groceries. As we walked home, we checked out the pool but again we’re scared off by showers and thunder off the distance and then it was time for dinner. The restaurant that’s right near us and almost on property is a restaurant called the Poop Deck where Tara and I had a delicious blackened mahi-mahi with a sampler of Bahamian cocktails with different types of rum, coconut, dark rum, light rum, and amazing fruit juices.
They even made gluten-free conch fritters for Tara, which ended up being delicious although after her fourth one, she got something a little extra chewy and wasn’t interested anymore!
After dinner, we decided to head across the boardwalk onto the beach where the restaurant sits. It was a sweeping half-moon curve with our resort at the far left tip and as it comes around the restaurant on the far right. As soon as we stepped foot on the beach, we saw a spotted ray literally swimming towards the shoreline and as he got closer, he ended up swimming parallel to the shore. We walked with him and headed out to a bit of a pier where we had some great moments with the ray swimming right around. It seemed as if he was there for us!
We came back to the condo just in time to catch one of the most amazing sunsets. The orange ball was dipping through the clouds and created this amazing fireball in the sky that changed the blue sky into super blue and the clouds into orange. We even saw cruise ships off the distance departing from Nassau, heading either back to Florida or to the private beaches of the northern Bahamas and fireworks over the Atlantis resort! Tomorrow morning our catamaran day is starts at 8:45am with a pick-up near our location — so tonight we spent time packing and getting our bags ready and thinking about the food and snacks will bring.
