The Deserted Island in the Bahamas

Mike and I got a chance to fly to Georgetown, Bahamas for a week long vacation.  Welcome to the Exumas!!  This is the view from our hotel room.

Our most recent vacations together have been to San Francisco and New York, which, are by all means, touristy.  And we have thoroughly enjoyed them.  And let me say, this particular island is not very touristy, and we enjoyed it every bit as much.

Santanna's is TripAdvior's #1 Restaurant on the island.  Can you imagine comparing this to Boudin Sourdough Factory in San Fran (another TripAdvior #1)?  It was just an awesome, open air hut that we hit the very first day there.  We tried conch for our very first (and certainly not the last) time.

 And the rental car... I actually never saw a rental car place anywhere on the island, including at the 2-gate airport.  We just showed up at the hotel, asked where we could get a car, and the host said his buddy had one we could use for the week.  It didn't have shocks, and the roads DID have potholes, and the "check engine" light was always on, and for a time there was signs of brake trouble, but we made it up and down the island all week without any problems.

The title of my post says Deserted Island for a very good reason.  Every beach we frequented, was almost always EMPTY.  And if it wasn't, you could walk for 5 minutes to find your very own private beach.  The first beach we found. with very limited directions, was the Tropic of Cancer beach.  It was gorgeous!  I had never seen water so clear, and sand so powdery and white.  I will never get over my fascination!  Ever!

The place was so deserted. we were glad we had brought along some friends.  Morgan and Katie Mackey showed up on our second day and we enjoyed our time with them, as always. 

This picture was obviously taken on our last day, we're all so TAN!

My very favorite activity was snorkeling, because it was part of the "raw" experience of being on a small island, surrounded by coral.  We took one tour on our trip, which included about 20 min. of snorkeling, but every other time, we just jumped in the water with some masks and started discovering.  The beach right outside our hotel was amazing!  We saw some awesome fish, coral, etc.  And on one of our last swims, we were stalked by a barracuda!  It was the craziest!  Once while we were on nearby Stocking Island, I jumped in while Mike was fishing, and found a ginormous starfish.

And on the very same fishing trip, we found Sting Rays, in nature!!  First, we found one on Mike's fishing line.  He sure thought he'd caught a pretty big fish, and he had, but when he started reeling it in, he knew it wasn't going to be a keeper.  It was flailing mad!  And guess who was out in the water swimming?  Morgan and Katie.  We started yelling for them to get out of the water because we'd just made a sting ray very mad!  They came in, and the sting ray was able to escape on his own.  We decided it must of been our squid that attracted it, so we distracted a bunch of sting rays on the side, while Mike stepped a bit away and did his fishing without those pesky rays.  When they aren't caught on a fishing line, they are actually pretty fun, and snuggled up against our legs, and let us pet them, and feed them squid by hand.  I don't know if it's safe, but I've seen them do it on cruise ship videos, so I figured we were good.

And while we played with the puppies of the sea, Mike was able to catch a handful of yellow-finned snapper.  They were gorgeous fish with crazy, sharp fins and teeth!  We took one of them to the local food shack and had them cook it up for us, it was delicious!

Mike's fishing reel.  We went into a fishing shop to buy a pole, and the locals were like... "huh?"  And they showed him this reel with line on it.  Now he is a real Bahamian fisherman!

Other "nature" creatures were shown to us on our tour.  We saw a group of swimming hogs that thrive off these tours, and some Iguanas.  Coco Plum beach, on the northern part of the island, proved to be a hot spot for sand dollars, we found close to 100?  More?  We brought home a huge stash of the whole ones, but the kids broke most of them on accident.

And believe it or not, because I haven't showcased them, there were actually people on the island.  Mostly locals, and a few other tourists.  Most of the locals were more than happy to share the great things about their culture.  We attended their annual Regatta race with sloop racers, which is held on Emancipation Day.  It was beautiful to see the boats out in the water, and when the race started, to see them quickly raise anchor and put up their sails.

It got a little slow for me after that, but they had plenty of entertainment getting started on the beach.  It kind of reminded me of our Iron County Fair.  We ate from food vendors, I played a carnival-type game where you get the hoop around something to win it, and there were a small group of people there selling their wares.

Mike bought a huge stick of raw sugar cane, and the guy let him borrow his machete to peel it.  He offered it to the locals, but no one seemed to want any until the kids came, and they willingly snatched it up.

It was such a great time!  I sought out a pregnancy test once we got back into our own civilization, and the positive result made me very happy we took the trip when we did.  It was awesome timing for an just-the-two-of-us vacation.

 

Swim Team as in ICAT.

Adelyn and Michael joined the swim team this summer.  It was kind of a cop-out on my part, because I wanted to be cheap.  You pay $25 per month for swim team, instead of $35 for just a two-week lesson.  Adelyn has been through several swim lessons, and I thought she'd be good, and Michael didn't know how to swim at all, maybe a little front crawl, but I figured he'd catch on.  And he did, so I think I made the right cop-out this year.

 Adelyn prepping for her backstroke, her 2nd favorite stroke.  Her first is breaststroke, by far.  I told her that swim team was a month-to-month commitment, and she was pretty sure she would just try it for a month, and be done.  But she kept going, and never asked to quit, and rarely complained about every day practices at noon.  I love hearing her talk about swim team next year.  It was so good to watch her, she seemed so comfortable in the water, something I hope for all of my kids.

 Michael was spoken to by several adults about his swimming.  He was accidentally registered as a six-year-old (he is seven), so people were super impressed by his skills.  Even when he told them he was seven, they commented to me what a great swimmer we have.  His P.E. teacher at school calls him Michael Phelps.  He has the perspective of a winner, and gives A LOT to do his best.  I'd say swimming comes pretty natural to him, but his drive to be better is really what makes him good.

And these little tikes made it through an entire summer of long, drawn-out swim meets, without too much grief.  You can tell they have swimming engrained in them because we walked by a high school football game the other day, and they heard the announcer over the loud speaker.  Braden said, "sounds like swimming!" because the only loudspeaker they are used to, is the ones at swim meets.