WE ARE HERE IN ATLANTIS

a foursome

James and Les, buddies

We have had a great time with Matthew, Les, James and Matt, ages 19-21 … we are now sitting in Atlantis in Nassau. The boys leave tomorrow morning around 10:30am to the airport. It is worth to stay here at the marina as all passengers on board get a day pass bracelet. This bracelet alone is worth $120.00 each. And to stay at this marina for us is about $250-300 a night. The boys are having a blast. The aquarium here is worth it alone! Magnificent.

We traveled from the Exuma Land and Sea Park to Norman's Cay where there is a sunken airplane and there is Norman's Beach Bar. The boys went there for a lunch and got to know the manager Stefan there. They snorkeled, swam, dinghyed everywhere and had a few laughs. Saw a HUGE stingray jump out of the water, amazing sight. I learned that these creatures have a white belly, I thought a small whale was jumping out of the water, I asked Matt Wubs to get out of the water until I knew what that was. They are beautiful to watch swim/glide through the water.

Norman's Cay, where I got sand dollars

Paul and I went to three nearby beaches by ourselves and sure enjoyed the white sand! I collected more sand dollars and am sending the boys home with some.

Paul and white sand

Norman's Cay only 2 feet deep, had to walk ashore

 

Matt and Matthew, best buds

Lots of conch

We travelled from Norman's Cay to Rose Island, outside of Nassau on Friday and it was a little rough but boys enjoyed the seas. They caught a fish on the way, but after much deliberation and analyzing the fishing books, decided to let it go... we think it was a “Lesser Amber Jack”. Later that night, Rose Island became calm calm calm.... see down 15 feet. The boys again, snorkeled, and went pole spear fishing. Matt caught a fish but small, then caught a much bigger one.... a Red Hind. We barbequed it and had very little eating from it but all sampled it. Then the 4 boys came along with about 20 conch shells, after about 1 hour of work to get 3 out of the shell (after I boiled it briefly to kill them), we breaded the meat and fried them in oil. These turned out much better... Matthew cleaned them after James used the ax to cut the shell off to get the conch meat out. I pounded the meat with my wooded rolling pin, all this is from instructions that we got to novices like us. Lots of meat inside these creatures. Everyone had a sample of the conch meat, the other conch shells were released as too much work to do to get the meat out. These conch are so slimy! Cleaning up after this was exhausting even getting the slime off your hands, I used comet!

A speared fish, the hunter Matthew

enjoying the open seas

At Rose Island, coming back from the beach where they were "fishing"

When Ben and Sam and guests were here there was a day when it rose to 45 degrees, and this happened to us on Saturday.. hot and sunny, no wind! This must have been the calm before the wind, as it is super windy right now! We have Lyne and Jack coming tomorrow afternoon, friends from our hometown Metcalfe. We sure hope the wind dies down so we can travel back to the Exumas, keep our fingers crossed. We are hostages to the weather down here. We are learning all about this, Windfinder is the weather site we go to to get the wind directions and mph etc.

I will go and provision again tomorrow morning, take a taxi to the store across the Paradise Island bridge and then visit this fabulous Atlantis again. You could stay here one week and not see everything. The people here are super friendly, we love the Bahamanian people! The boys are getting all “dressed up” for the night out so I will take a picture and add to the blog.

A night out at Atlantis Resort, all dressed up and lots of hair gel

We have internet for tomorrow too and again sporadically throughout the next week. We blog when we can.

Atlantis Marina's largest yacht here is 240ft long with 16 crew members, we are a 45ft catamaran. We are our own Captain and “cook” !