Bahamas Trip: The Final Chapter

We're currently sitting at the Nassau Airport (though I'll have to wait until we get home until I can actually get online to post this), waiting on a suitcase that is missing in action. Those of you who know me and my travel history will not be surprised to hear we're already having difficulty, but I'll save the story for a little later. Mark wanted me to make sure I didn't let our frustration over the luggage trouble taint my reporting of the last few days.

On Friday afternoon, we had lunch at a deli Davida and her friends had highly recommended. The day was relatively cool again, but we sat in the sun as we ate our sandwiches and managed to stay warm in short-sleeved shirts. After lunch, we headed into Governor's Harbor, which is the closest town to the place where we were staying, and is also the capital city of Eleuthera (though you would never know it to look at it). We drove around a bit and then got out to explore the library, which is in a recently-restored historic building.

While we were in the center of town, we also wandered around an old Episcopal Anglican church and went through the cemetery, reading the gravestones. I've always been fascinated by cemeteries, imagining the stories behind the dates and phrases written on aging stones. We were particularly affected by a little family plot in which a woman was buried with five of her children, all of whom died before she did. Two were quite young - one died at five months old and the other at two years old - and died within a few years of each other. The other three were aged 29, 25 and 11, and they died within a year of each other nearly thirty years after the first two. Amazingly, the mother lived for another ten or fifteen years after that tragic time when she lost three children within such close proximity. Looking at those graves gave us a new sense of perspective. Here we are, still so caught up in our grief over our loss of one child, and there are people in the world who have suffered so much more. Such a humbling thought...

After our explorations in Governor's Harbor, we gathered our beach gear and went to Ten Bay, which is also listed in the book of elusive beaches, though judging from the number of people who were there, it's not all that elusive anymore. The sun was warm but the wind and water were still cool, so I opted to hang out on the beach with my book while Mark went snorkeling. Mark was freezing when he came out of the water, but he said the snorkeling was definitely worth the discomfort. He saw a lionfish, a blowfish, several starfish, jellyfish, and he collected a few beautiful sand dollars.

That evening, we went back to the Spanish tapas restaurant to have a drink at their bar that overlooks the ocean. We actually decided to go for a drink based on some snippets I'd overheard at the library. Mark knew that Lenny Kravitz was on the island (he apparently owns a house north of where we were staying), and that he occasionally goes to different restaurants on the island. While we were at the library, I thought I heard the phrases "Lenny Kravitz," "Beach House" (the Spanish restaurant) and "from four to six." I wasn't at all sure that those phrases belonged together, but Mark thought it was worth a try. As it turned out, I must have misheard - the Beach House was almost deserted except for one other young couple at the bar. It was a nice atmosphere for enjoying a drink, though, and we ended up chatting with the other couple.

They were from Boston, and in the course of conversation, they told us they had sat at a table with Lenny Kravitz and Penelope Cruz at a restaurant/club earlier in the week. I guess we were in the wrong place at the wrong time...

Several people told us about an event that happens every Friday night in Governor's Harbor called a fish fry, so we headed there after our drink at the beach house. We'd heard it was a great place to see "local color," but aside from the people who were selling food and drinks, the crowd was almost entirely made up of tourists. Everyone who told us about the fish fry said we should definitely try the conch salad, so we got in line at a stand where the creation of the dish was apparently as much a part of the experience as eating it. We watched as a man cleaned the conch and then chopped it along with a variety of vegetables, tossed in some salt, squeezed lime juice on it and scooped it into a Styrofoam bowl. The result was surprisingly tasty. We washed it down with rum punch and watched the other tourists milling around.

We weren't really interested in the fried fish aspect of the fish fry, and since we shared the conch salad, we were ready for dinner when we left the event. It was getting late and we didn't feel like going to a restaurant, so we ordered a pizza and ate it in our apartment. After dinner, we ended the evening by taking some wine down to the beach, though the wind made the experience a little chilly.

Saturday was our last full day in the Bahamas, so we spent the morning cleaning up the apartment and packing so we'd have the afternoon free to do something fun. We didn't have enough food on hand for lunch, so we went to an Italian restaurant called Dolce Vita. Several people had recommended it, particularly because of their homemade gelato. There were only two other people in the restaurant, so we had the deck where we were eating almost to ourselves. We split the bruschetta as an appetizer and then split a vegetarian pizza for our main course. Both were delicious and since the pizzas were designed for one person, we had enough room left to try the gelato for dessert.

That afternoon, we borrowed the kayaks from Davida, packed a bag with beach stuff, put a couple of beers in a cooler and headed down to the Caribbean Sea. We paddled out to an island we'd found during our first kayaking adventure and pulled the boats on the shore. I settled on the beach with my book while Mark went out snorkeling. Again, the water and wind were much too cool to motivate me to get in the water, but Mark didn't want to miss out on any chance to check out the undersea world. He came out saying the snorkeling was great, but he was shivering harder than I've ever seen him do before, so I didn't regret my decision at all. Once Mark dried off a bit, we had a drink and picked little seashells out of the sand.

The sun was beginning to sink behind the trees, so we decided it was time to paddle back to the mainland. The wind had picked up quite a bit, so the journey back was challenging. We were both fairly soaked by the time we pulled onto the main beach, but fortunately I was warm from the effort I had to put into propelling my boat.

Since it was our last evening, we went back to the restaurant we'd liked most, a place called Tippy's. We were both starving after our active afternoon, so we ordered a salad and an appetizer to share before our meals were ready. The salad was baby greens, arugula and feta with tiny tomatoes - delicious. The appetizer was chopped tomatoes tossed in a balsamic vinaigrette with fried onions on top - it sounds strange, but was also delicious. The tomatoes on this island are amazing, although my opinion might be slightly skewed since it's been several months since I had a good, fresh tomato. Our main courses were also good - I had a pasta dish with roasted chicken and Mark had Cajun grouper with pineapple chutney.

We ended our final evening with wine on the beach, which gave us a chance to reflect a bit on the last week as well as on the last six months. I don't think we'll know the full impact this vacation has had on our mental state until we're back home, but I think this has been a very healing time.
So, that brings us to today, which started out well but has quickly gone downhill. We remembered to set our clocks back (though we were not thrilled about losing an hour of sleep on our last night), finished straightening the apartment and said good-bye to Davida before heading to the airport. Once there, we discovered that their computer wasn't working, but they went ahead and loaded us all on the plane anyway, and we took off thirty minutes ahead of schedule. As a result, we landed at the time we were supposed to take off and everything seemed to be going well until we went to collect our luggage. Mark's bag appeared on the luggage carousel, but mine was nowhere to be found. I was not alone, though - several other people were missing bags, too. As it turned out, the pilot decided the plane was too heavy and asked to have ten of the bags taken off before we left the Governor's Harbor airport. Needless to say, none of us were happy with this news as we were all needing to get through customs with our luggage in time to make it on flights to the U.S. The Bahamas Air representatives told us they'd try to get the bags here by 12:30, and we'd just have to wait for them. So, that's what we're doing right now - waiting and hoping the bags will arrive with enough time for us to get through customs and security. We've been sitting here since 11 and it's now 12:20. Our flight is at 2:45 and the line for customs is not moving very quickly. We'll see...

Edit: I'm back in Maine and will finish the travel story soon...