Tuesday, 18 January 2005 03:57 pm
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deckardcanineFrom Friday to Monday, my dad and I were in Nassau. My parents had been in Freeport before I was born but could remember nothing of it, so it felt as unfamiliar to my dad as to me.
The ride to it was so turbulent that not only did they never serve drinks, but the flight attendants had to stop passing out order forms. Good thing my dad and I brought something with us. He marveled at how calm I was during the turbulence. It must be the Douglas Adams attitude: if I have no control over it, I see no reason to fret.
The trip back took a total of about ten and a half hours. It wasn't simply the hassle of MLK weekend, exacerbated by redundant yet undersupplied metal detectors. The real problems were at the gate. We never got the full story -- even the announcer didn't seem to understand much -- but there must have been several reasons for delays, from an unsafe boarding platform to a dearth in luggage space. None of the various projected times were close, even the time we spent in the air (nearly double their estimate). We landed nearly three hours late. Good thing my mom already used her free flight with US Airways, because now we're thru with them.
On a less gripey note, Bahamian customs are remarkably informal. And on a more curious note, why do you suppose we got our seats assigned for the connecting flight sooner than for the initial flight?
Nassau must expect a lot of elitist tourists. Half of one visitors' guide was made up of John Bull ads, and we saw plenty of jewelry stores as we walked around. In many areas, you'd hardly know it wasn't the U.S.; their accent is not dramatic and they even prefer our currency to their own. But I was determined not to fall for the tourist's irony of going for familiar stuff, so I tried being experimental a lot. Learned to love the native grouper, for one thing.
One of my dad's coworkers wasn't crazy about the Bahamas because the people weren't very friendly. I will admit that they weren't a very smiley, eager-to-please bunch, but they weren't exactly unfriendly either. Nor were they as typically pushy as my dad remembers Jamaica. I was not under pressure when I bought a "tie-dye" cross necklace to replace my fragile one and a frog figurine attached to a location-labeled stone.
If you visit Nassau, do not rent a car. The traffic is crowded downtown and dangerous uptown (high speeds and narrow lanes, could use traffic lights), with a nearly even mix of SUVs and minis.
With shops, museums, and galleries closed on Sunday, and my dad not keen on me setting aside vacation time for church, we opted for a boat cruise to snorkel that took up most of the day. We could have tried the luxurious, laid-back SUBs (I forget the acronym meaning), but they were twice as expensive. Despite forecasts for a rainy weekend, the only time it came in earnest was on our snorkeling trip, when our wetsuits rendered it negligible. Our initial reason for wetsuits was warmth, but a better reason turned out to be thousands of jellyfish, not all of them tiny, at one of the boat’s stops. The first and longest stop was the best, with a wide variety of fish, all apparently harmless. At the second, we were supposed to find a plane wreck, but the water was dusty and obscured by wind and all we saw was a cage. My dad got to swim with five-foot reef sharks at the third; I declined not because I thought they were more dangerous than fist-sized jellies (these sharks neither could nor tried to bite your hand off) but because the waves salting my snorkel made me sick.
By sheer coincidence, I met an RCIA member at the docks. So in a way, there was an RCIA meeting this Sunday after all.
But what made the whole vacation worthwhile for me was my own suggestion, the Ardastra Garden/Zoo/Preservation Center. Its apparent claim to world fame is the flock of flamingos that normally roams freely around the zoo but is called to order for a marching session. Only the dominant males and young ‘uns ever fail to respond to the trainer’s military-style commands. It seems flamingos really do like to be popular: the audience’s applause is positive reinforcement. I was among seven spectators asked to step up and pose as a flamingo among the flock.
Also unconfined were peacocks, some macaws – one of which hung upside down and said “hello” without cue – and a black pig. Aside from that, there were lemurs, caracals, servals, capuchins, boas, iguanas unlike what I’ve seen before, jaguars that the zookeeper could play with, prairie dogs, meerkats, and capybaras, the world’s distinctive largest rodents. Even living a short drive from the National Zoo, I’m impressed.
Perhaps the best part was feeding apple slices to parrots in a large cage when they landed on my arm, my head, or in one mischievous case the front of my shirt. The red ones’ talons pinched a bit but were still enjoyable. I like how the personnel knew them all by names like Bilbo. I just shouldn’t have rewarded the one who alit on my shoulder: they do screech.
The ride to it was so turbulent that not only did they never serve drinks, but the flight attendants had to stop passing out order forms. Good thing my dad and I brought something with us. He marveled at how calm I was during the turbulence. It must be the Douglas Adams attitude: if I have no control over it, I see no reason to fret.
The trip back took a total of about ten and a half hours. It wasn't simply the hassle of MLK weekend, exacerbated by redundant yet undersupplied metal detectors. The real problems were at the gate. We never got the full story -- even the announcer didn't seem to understand much -- but there must have been several reasons for delays, from an unsafe boarding platform to a dearth in luggage space. None of the various projected times were close, even the time we spent in the air (nearly double their estimate). We landed nearly three hours late. Good thing my mom already used her free flight with US Airways, because now we're thru with them.
On a less gripey note, Bahamian customs are remarkably informal. And on a more curious note, why do you suppose we got our seats assigned for the connecting flight sooner than for the initial flight?
Nassau must expect a lot of elitist tourists. Half of one visitors' guide was made up of John Bull ads, and we saw plenty of jewelry stores as we walked around. In many areas, you'd hardly know it wasn't the U.S.; their accent is not dramatic and they even prefer our currency to their own. But I was determined not to fall for the tourist's irony of going for familiar stuff, so I tried being experimental a lot. Learned to love the native grouper, for one thing.
One of my dad's coworkers wasn't crazy about the Bahamas because the people weren't very friendly. I will admit that they weren't a very smiley, eager-to-please bunch, but they weren't exactly unfriendly either. Nor were they as typically pushy as my dad remembers Jamaica. I was not under pressure when I bought a "tie-dye" cross necklace to replace my fragile one and a frog figurine attached to a location-labeled stone.
If you visit Nassau, do not rent a car. The traffic is crowded downtown and dangerous uptown (high speeds and narrow lanes, could use traffic lights), with a nearly even mix of SUVs and minis.
With shops, museums, and galleries closed on Sunday, and my dad not keen on me setting aside vacation time for church, we opted for a boat cruise to snorkel that took up most of the day. We could have tried the luxurious, laid-back SUBs (I forget the acronym meaning), but they were twice as expensive. Despite forecasts for a rainy weekend, the only time it came in earnest was on our snorkeling trip, when our wetsuits rendered it negligible. Our initial reason for wetsuits was warmth, but a better reason turned out to be thousands of jellyfish, not all of them tiny, at one of the boat’s stops. The first and longest stop was the best, with a wide variety of fish, all apparently harmless. At the second, we were supposed to find a plane wreck, but the water was dusty and obscured by wind and all we saw was a cage. My dad got to swim with five-foot reef sharks at the third; I declined not because I thought they were more dangerous than fist-sized jellies (these sharks neither could nor tried to bite your hand off) but because the waves salting my snorkel made me sick.
By sheer coincidence, I met an RCIA member at the docks. So in a way, there was an RCIA meeting this Sunday after all.
But what made the whole vacation worthwhile for me was my own suggestion, the Ardastra Garden/Zoo/Preservation Center. Its apparent claim to world fame is the flock of flamingos that normally roams freely around the zoo but is called to order for a marching session. Only the dominant males and young ‘uns ever fail to respond to the trainer’s military-style commands. It seems flamingos really do like to be popular: the audience’s applause is positive reinforcement. I was among seven spectators asked to step up and pose as a flamingo among the flock.
Also unconfined were peacocks, some macaws – one of which hung upside down and said “hello” without cue – and a black pig. Aside from that, there were lemurs, caracals, servals, capuchins, boas, iguanas unlike what I’ve seen before, jaguars that the zookeeper could play with, prairie dogs, meerkats, and capybaras, the world’s distinctive largest rodents. Even living a short drive from the National Zoo, I’m impressed.
Perhaps the best part was feeding apple slices to parrots in a large cage when they landed on my arm, my head, or in one mischievous case the front of my shirt. The red ones’ talons pinched a bit but were still enjoyable. I like how the personnel knew them all by names like Bilbo. I just shouldn’t have rewarded the one who alit on my shoulder: they do screech.
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