Our first Christmas vacation we went to Bahamas Islands. From our childhood we heard about Islands of New Providence as fantastic place million miles away where you would never be. But short three hours flight from New York brought us to the blue waves of the Caribbean sea.
We stood in cozy, empty, quiet hotel on the Nassau Island far from other tourist places. The food was extremely distasteful - we ate only ones a day - could not have more of it.
For our short stay in Bahamas we went under water surface in submarine (nothing exiting); snorkeled for hours (despite Jane's flu); played tennis every morning (not really successfully); got some sun tan (very slight one); saw the Boxing Day Parade (actually it was at 2 o'clock at night - very noisy, very colorful, a lot of dancing and drunk fights); visited the Coral Island park (went into underwater view-house, filmed sharks and one half-frozen pink flamingo).
Spotlight of the journey was visit of the Rose Island. There we felt like a Robinson Cruse on the deserted island. I was that close to the Mother-Nature (take a look at the picture). The underwater world of the island was outrageous, the palm trees were singing their endless wispering song, the sand was white, soft and warm. We decided that some day we will buy a sail boat and spend one winter visiting the Caribbean sea islands.
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Another our Bahamas adventure was SCUBA diving to the sunk ship "Bahama - Mama" (also the name of the domestic cocktail). We went through short classes of SCUBA diving and went into the sea.
That firm is also doing shark feeding at that place and few always hungry sharks met us at the first moment under the water. But very soon they disappeared - we did not have any bait for them. Jane though was very scared of them and wanted immediately return back to the motor-boat. I look at them like at the streets dogs - as soon as you come closer - they run away.The sunk ship was like a junk-yard between beautiful corals. The guides video-taped us there and we now have a nice video. We spend only 20 minutes in the world of silence and returned back to the base. There at the piers lives a talking parrot. He could say "Hello", "Bye" and crawl on you. He has surpassingly soft palms. Jane had so much fun (look at the picture) but when parrot climbed on my shoulder, he bit my ear.
Leaving Bahamas was sad - we fell in love with Caribbean sea, soft warm climate, palm trees... New York met us with heavy snow storm and gusting winds. The next day we had to dig out our car from snow to go skiing. We spend the New Year eve in snowy ski resort Windham, Upstate New York. That was some difference!
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Story by Stas Yurkevich
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