Thursday, May 14, 2009

roach motel anyone?

4 things that happened yesterday


1. woke to several nightmares about cockroaches. jumped out of bed thinking they were crawling in my sheets (premonition of things to come? very likely)
2. saw cockroach crawling on the wall of the food bank minutes before photographer arrived to take pictures
3. found baby caterpillar crawling on my sandwich wrapper at lunch (at least i know the lettuce was fresh...?)
4. went to subway for dinner, saw cockroach scurrying around in bread container. sudden loss of appetite, and yet another place on the island i refuse to eat.

yowza.

Monday, May 11, 2009

The Fam Visits 1

The Froning clan was reunited recently for a week of pure Bahamian relaxation. Somehow, everyone made their flights into Nassau (and by everyone I mean Clay), and so began mini-reunion 2009. After a short sleep at my apartment in Nassau, we flew off to Eleuthera for the true island experience.

The Bahamas are not all picturesque beaches and palm trees, believe it or not. If I were to compare the country to Arizona, Nassau::Phoenix as Eleuthera::Sedona. Nassau is the capital city, home to 90% of the population and nearly all of the business. For these reasons the island has been a bit abused, and empty sands with gin water are harder to come by (although they can be easily found at many of the luxury resorts on the island).

Back to the trip. After a 30 minute ride East, we arrived on the island, and were greeted by none other than Friendly Bob, taxi driver to the stars (or anyone willing to pay $80 for the 40 minute ride to the cape). Eleuthera is over 100 miles long, but only about 1/2 mile across in most places. Enough boring narration, here are some pictures of our hotel.





The place we stayed, Powell Pointe Resort, was at the tip of Cape Eleuthera on a beautiful, well kept marina. We spent our days walking to one of the semi-private beaches, snorkeling, kayaking, drinking kalik, reading and relaxing. The resort was less of a resort and more of a grouping of 10 or so townhouses lined up on the docks of the marina.






Of course, we didn't realize that the bull sharks swimming all through the marina and surrounding ocean are one of the deadliest sharks in the world at the time. Only after countless snorkeling trips and dives off the dock did we think twice about the 10 foot sharks. Hey if the locals aren't concerned, why should we be...