My Bahama Mama experience

At least that is what the locals called me...."Hey pretty Bahama Mama, how you doin' today?"

I am back. Safe and Sound.

And after two weeks of being back I thought that hey, maybe I should post about my trip. Can you say lazy much? It just takes a lot to get back into the swing of things after being gone for two weeks...and one day.

So where to even being...ohhhh boy.

Well, we flew for 14 hours from Edmonton, to Toronto, then to Nassau Bahamas. When we got to Nassau we took a taxi to the marina that pops was mooring the boat at.

A funny side note - for those of you who don't boat, all boats have names for safety purposes - the name of my Dad's new boat is El Presidente (Spanish for 'The President") - so the Bahamian people started called him the President. For instance, he got his laundry back from the laundry place in a bag labeled "Mr. President" - if you know my dad, I thought that was pretty hilarious.

Anyway, when we arrived at the Marina, the four of us (myself, Dylan, sister, and mother) were less than impressed. This place was not fit for a 'vacation' - there wasn't even water in the pool! Now don't get me wrong folks, this chica can slum it - afterall, I did live in a third world country for two years and didn't have a real shower or toilet (like we are talking POVERTY) - but I was not up for that on this trip - this was supposed to somewhat resemble a vacation.

So, on the very first day we made the consecutive decision that we would be paying more and switching marinas - to where you might ask - have you ever heard of a place called the Atlantis?? If not, check this out. Yeah, we stayed there for 1 week.

No joke, the first person we meet upon arrival was a NFL pro-bowler (don't remember his name but it was a really big deal to Dylan). A NBA superstar was docked just down the way from us (again, don't ask me his name), and we heard of plenty of stars being there but never saw them because they have a private pool. Get this, the most expensive public room (there are private rooms that go for more) goes for $25,000 a night!!! Nuts!

So have I set the stage for how amazing this place was? Like nothing I have ever seen before. And we have stayed at some pretty nice places.

Here we are upon pulling into the marina:

Very excited!


No, that is not me, that is my sister.

The myriad of things to do might take me a week to explain, so I will go with the highlights.

There were these C-R-A-Z-Y waterslides everywhere. On this one you actually go through a tank of sharks:

To get to the tank of sharks you either went down a twisty slide or this drop of doom:

You can't really tell, but West Ed has nothing on this bad boy - seriously, STRAIGHT DOWN!

Now, I will intermission you with a brief tour of the hotel:

Here is a shot of one of like 15 glorious pools:


This was the one we went to everyday - it was so hard to choose - so many choices!

The famous archway which is a room - that's the one that costs $25,000 per night:

The architecture:

The lobby ceiling (thought it was cool):

The Atlantis chair:

Okay, continuing on. One of the other very neat things about this resort is that there are aquariums EVERYWHERE - and I seriously do mean everywhere. They were floor to ceiling so as if to include you in the underwater world.

This guy was seriously like 4 times my size!

Other happenings included the fact that we missed the Justin Beber concert by two days!

Yup, the Atlantis flies in superstars for its guests private viewing pleasure!

We went to the 'straw market' - lots of local arts and crafts for cheap:

And just enjoyed being by the pool and beach!

And one of us even jumped in the water by the boat - grungy if you ask me!

And we saw a new release movie every night at the free movie theatre - yeah a movie theatre in a resort!

A week later it came time to say goodbye to the Atlantis and to momma-bear (she did not want to sail from the Bahamas to Florida with us so opted to ply home from the Bahamas a week earlier than us).

Our first stop was Chub Cay - and it only took us about 8 hours to get there - can you sense my sarcasm? Short for sailing but a freakin' century for normal travel (ie. by car).

It truly was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been with water sooooooo clear - like clearer than a pool - no joke.

Funny story - we were snorkelling and swimming in the late afternoon/early evening and these jet-skiers were kind of circling us. And they would stop every now and then and watch us. We were getting kind of annoyed until they came up to our boat and told us that no one swims here after dusk. Why? Cause the tide goes out, and the gish go out, which means the sharks come in. Bad situation to be swimming in. Needless to say, we high-tailed our butts out of the water!

The we were off to our last stop before Florida - Bimini Island. We had to travel for about 17 hours to get to Bimini so after a long and pretty rough trip (8 foot seas) we decided that we wanted to go to a marina for the night as opposed to an anchorage as we needed our rest and the rocky sleep that an anchorage would provide us with would not suffice. So at 10pm in pitch black we tried to navigate our way through this channel which lead to the Marina. The navigation in the Bahamas leaves something to be desired however, and the channel was not properly marked so we ended up running aground! Bad news. Thank goodness it was only sand because if it had of been rock or coral we would have been in BIG trouble. We booked it out of that channel so fast. I was stearing and was so scared that I was shaking like a leaf. And because we could not safely make it into a bay or marina we had to anchor in unprotected water - it was a horrible night. So we were up early the next morning and off to Florida. Again, in pretty rough water.

My Captain husband steering us through a thunderstorm (note the calm water - before it got rough):

When we finally reached Florida we were SO happy. I didn't end up taking a lot of pics in Florida because we spent the majority of our time shopping and eating and who wants to see pics of that?

We had fun though and got a lot og GREAT deals!

Eating a slice of dollar pizza at the Miami Bayside market:

And outside of the famous Bubba Gump's!

Whew, I don't know if I can write anymore. So, that was my trip! All in all, fun. Really, really hot, but a great get-away. Glad to be home to my pooches and house though!

Leah xoxo