Where Oh Where Have The Tourists Gone?

Here's some more about my vacation to the Bahamas. In this post, I'll be talking about Day Three at Nassau!





Day Three



After eating breakfast at one of the two buffets onboard, my family and I decided to head out to Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas. Our ship wasn't going to leave until 11:30 that night, so we had the whole day there if we wanted. We gathered everyone up and headed out down the long (EXTREMELY LONG) gangway to the island. Upon stepping on the actual Bahama dirt, we were attacked by vendors and taxi drivers. The Bahamian culture is funny to me, a girl having been brought up in the midwest. In the Bahamas, everyone yells. And I don't mean shouts of joy or thanksgiving, I mean really pissed off-sounding yells. They all yell at each other like they're about to kill someone, but nobody seems to notice. One woman would yell at another for stealing her customers and the other woman would just smile and that would be that. They'd be fine again. Now, obviously used to tourists, the Bahamians didn't yell like that at us. They yelled in a different way. The kind of way that makes you feel like if you don't do what they tell you to, you're going to get a time-out. They never seemed angry to the tourists, just bossy. But watching them yell in their own language or cuss out other locals and then have the locals not react (or react in the same way, and when you thought there was a fight coming, you were wrong) was quite hilarious.


After we managed to escape the taxi driver that pulled us off of the beaten path to sell his taxi service to us, we made our way through the "welcome" building, or, as I like to call it, the tourist trap. It was a building with dozens of doors and only one entrance/exit. Every other door either said "no entrance" or "no exit". And there were police there to make sure you didn't go through the precious doors, although they all lead to the same place. Trying to find the right door to go through was hard enough. But trying to find the right door to go through as you weave around booths and avoid shouting vendors was even harder. When we finally made it to the right exit out of the building, we were pounced on by the hair braiders, specifically a woman named "Speedy Margaret". She was the most... erm... outgoing of the vendors I had seen thus far and I quickly avoided her nagging, leaving my mom to deal with her. Aren't I such a nice daughter? Anyway, as soon as we were free of Speedy Margaret, it was time to figure out where the hell we were. Luckily, my father was the only one using his brain that day and had brought a map from the welcome center. However, reading the map was going to be the difficult part. I'm not sure who the Bahamian cartographer is, but the next time they make a map, they need to put in more street names and take out more pub names. As soon as we figured out which way we were supposed to hold the map, we just sort of started walking. Apparently everyone figured that as long as we could see our ship, we'd be fine. I did not agree with this philosophy. As a person with no sense of direction and who easily gets lost in Wal-Mart, it is pertinent for me to be able to know where I am... and just wandering the streets of Nassau without so much as a clue to which direction is North is not my cup of tea, if I may use an expression Stefan had used before.


Again, depending where you are from, Reader, you may or may not know that the Bahamas (or Nassau, at least) are not the beautiful, tropical paradise shown on TV or imagined in people's minds. Nassau is a very poor city. Many of the buildings were run-down, trash littered the streets, and people were wearing less-than-okay clothing. Although this seemed to bother none of the locals, it was a bit strange for me. My mom had grown up on the south side of one of the cities of Indiana, where she was used to the tenements and the shady characters lining the streets and the smell of marijuana in the air (yes, the smell was very strong on the streets), but I never lived in an area like that, so to say the least, it was strange for me.


We made our way to the market on whatever-street-this-is and looked around at all the trinkets and souvenirs. It was at this time that my grandma's flip-flops had broken, so we were wandering around, looking for new ones to buy. There's one rule about buying something in the Bahamas though, that I think I should tell you in case you ever go: do not accept their prices. They are very used to haggling with locals, but they know that people from America don't haggle, so they jack up their prices, hoping you'll fall for it. My family, being the cheapskates they are, already knew this. So you can imagine what kind of deals we were getting by haggling. My mom got a twenty dollar beach bag for ten, my dad got a fifteen dollar cross necklace for eight. I got a twenty-five dollar Bob Marley-esque hat-with-dreads for fifteen. It's quite normal for those vendors to lower their prices, too. Being from the USA, if you ever tried to do that at a store, they'd probably get mad. But in the Bahamas, the vendors don't really care. They just care about making a sale, as one woman put it, and outselling their competitors.


Although it was a poor area, it was fun. Everyone was very happy, whether they were screaming at someone or not. The culture is very colorful and loud. Colorful, not only because there is a mixture of ethnicities and cultural backgrounds, but also because of the actual colors. Everything is painted in bright colors and all the clothes are never boring or Earth-toned. The culture is loud, not only because of the actual volume of the people, but also because every item, every article of clothing is loud. Nothing in the Bahamas is boring or restful, it's all very exciting and chaotic.


It was interesting to see how they spelled what they thought were English words as well. Instead of "favorite", things were "favor", instead of "things", they were "tings". There was even a bar we found called "Senor Frog's Bar, Restaurant, and Clothesline". We never figured out what the "clothesline" part of that meant....


Lost as ever but too stubborn to admit it, we tredged on through the crowded streets and skinny corridors lodged between tall, pastel-colored buildings, avoiding the shady characters sitting in alleys that would stare at us as we passed by. We eventually found a "general store" where my grandmother was able to find some flip-flops. After that, we made our way down another unknown street (we could still see the ship, though!) to a beach that had been on our map. When we got there, we realized why it was just a speck on the map. It was a very small beach with plastic lawn chairs and wooden picnic tables strewn throughout. There were a few small shacks near the front of the beach, away from the water, where vendors were playing Caribbean music and selling tee shirts, alcohol, ice cream, and other things. The only other beach-dwellers besides my family were two girls suntanning. Other than them, we were completely alone with no one but a few of the shady characters down the street that we had avoided earlier. While this creeped me out just a little (we had wandered into a more run-down area that resembled the south side of my former home city, plus we were lost, plus we were alone in this strange place), my mom was perfectly comfortable. She said it felt like home. She got changed into her swim suit (the only one bold enough to brave the freezing ocean waters) and we found a picnic table to sit at.


Soon enough, another vendor came along. I will probably never forget this lady. She was the cutest person I saw in Nassau. She had the sweetest personality, was so laid-back and helpful, and she dressed super cute for her looks. She had a bucket hat that she had cut the top out of to fit her dreads through, and a recognizably Bahama shirt on. She was selling jewelry, of course. Most of it was shells and such. My mom and I ended up buying anklets for five dollars each before admitting how horribly lost we were. The lady just laughed with us and explained where exactly we were. My dad said that we were trying to find a beach (the beach we were at probably shouldn't have been a beach at all...), and the lady responded with, "You're at a beach! Look at that beautiful water. Mmm mmm. You can lay out your towel and soak up the sun for free, and they rent out lawn chairs for five dollars a person. 'Dis beach is Junkanoo Beach, and it is soooo pretty!" Literally, those are the words from her mouth.


After lounging at the beach for a while, and avoiding stepping on the broken glass from beer bottles that littered the ground, my grandparents decided that they were too tired to keep walking and they were going back to the ship. So, we walked back to the ship, dropped them off along with my brother, and we were off again. This time, it was me, my dad, my mom, and my other grandma that had come with us on the trip. We decided that we wanted to head to Paradise Island, which was across the bay from Nassau. Taking a taxi there would have been four dollars, but Mom had seen a sign for a ferry for three dollars. Again, being the penny pinchers we are, we decided to take the ferry.


Now, when I say "ferry", I use the term loosely. It mainly means something with a motor that can float, because that's all that we were on. The "ferry" was more like a tuna can with a lawn mower engine and life jackets. It was a tiny tugboat that almost tipped over because of the waves (waves that weren't that big, either). And to make this trip even more interesting, our "captain" was drunk. That's right, beer-in-hand, wobbling (although, that may have been because of the waves...), drunk. But, he did manage to get us to Paradise Island intact. Of course, on the way back, we saw a tugboat that was sinking into the bay, which didn't help our confidence in our tuna can.


Paradise Island was beautiful- or, at least, what I saw of it. There were so many trees, it was hard to see over them or past them. We made our way to the Atlantis Resort, where my parents wanted to go to the casino. Normally, this would have been a problem for me considering my age, but in the Bahamas, you only have to be 18 to gamble. So we got to the Atlantis Casino, and my goodness! That place is immense! It was huge and beautiful with Greek and Roman-esque paintings covering the ceilings and statues of dragons and giant crystaline structures, and elaborate artwork, and... slot machines. But the slot machines were pretty too....


Once we had lost our money at the casino (well, Dad did. I came out seven bucks ahead!), we decided to take a taxi back to the cruise ships instead of our tuna can. One thing about the Bahamas that still wigs me out is that they all drive on the left side of the road. I may not be a good driver, but I'm pretty sure that here in America, we all drive on the right side of the road. I kept forgetting that it was different in the Bahamas. So, when our driver would turn right and go across traffic to get to the opposite lane, I was having a minor panic attack.


By the time we got back to the ship, it was too late for dinner. So we pretty much went straight to the nightly show at the Sound of Music Theater. This time it was a magician/comedian by the name of Carl Andrews. He was pretty good, and did a lot of neat slight-of-hand tricks, but he wasn't my favorite. Oh, and did I forget to mention the notice I saw in our day planner once we were back from Nassau? Yeah, there was a warning at the bottom of the page that told us there had been a rise in crime in Nassau and that no passengers should go off by themselves, leave the populated areas, or be without an escort. Yeah. That was after we came back from the island. And did anyone bother to tell us this? No, they just figured they'd stick the warning in the fine print at the bottom. Ugh.


The last event of the night was a "Dancing Under the Stars" Poolside Dance Party as we sailed away from Nassau and back out to sea. It was pretty fun... if you could ignore all the drunk people on the dance floor.... Ahem. Anyway, Stefan, Christy, and another entertainment staff member, Susan, were leading the dances that night and we even did a conga line around the decks. My mom got videos of it. The dance party was soon over at midnight and we stayed up a little bit longer to celebrate my grampa's birthday with him before we all hit the sack.


And next time, I'll write about Day Four. ;)