Hey all, I just never seem to have any time these days. I'm sure I actually have lots to spare but with my head in 3 time zones it doesn't seem to work out that way. I guess I also need more downtime to get my head back on straight. In the middle of everything that goes on in my simple life it was pretty awesome to take a couple of weeks off work and enjoy two vacations back-to-back where the objective was to relax rather than see and do everything. The first week was at the Lake Cecebee cottage that we've been to the last 2 years.
The Emersons's joined us again for a few days and we had our usual fun time with their crew. The kids spent lots of time on the lake and we all did lots of swimming but I think the kids enjoyed the volleyball matches the most. I had also bought an Xbox360 Arcade game called Trials and another called Shadow Complex, both are lots of fun, and Cam and I spent a lot of time working together on those two, finishing Shadow Complex after 9 hours of play (over several days ;-)).
The weather started to drop off by the end of the week and Friday we had quite a lot of rain. The plan was to stay until Saturday and then fly out to the Bahamas early Sunday morning, but with the weather fading we decided to pull stumps on Friday and give ourselves a full day at home before we had to fly.
On the three hour drive back home Cam and I stopped for burgers at the 'famous' Webbers outside Gravenhurst. The girls had eaten there before and felt like something lighter so that just left us boys enjoying the burger juices running down our arms. 'Mmmm, that's a tasty burger!'.
9am flight on Sunday isn't too bad, up at 6am and the kids are used to the drill, Jo's always totally organised and we had no dramas. The flight was a little late but we managed to all get seated together despite our AmEx supplied seats being scattered all over the plane once again. It's only a 3 hour flight down to Nassau and the weather as we walked through the small terminal was awesome. A local in pirate costume welcomed us all and a calypso band was playing live in the immigration hall so at least we had something to listen to after I insisted we switch lanes 'to the faster one' and then the lane froze for 20 minutes (aint that always the way?).
The Atlantis resort on Paradise Island sounds pretty cool and it is. The island itself is only separated from the 'mainland' island by two bridges, like Phillip Island back home, but it still has some fantastic beaches. The entire western end of the island is the resort, five huge hotel towers, a full Disney-style water park and the largest open air aquarium in the world. Our suite was in the timeshare part of the resort as it's MUCH cheaper to rent from a timeshare owner who doesn't want his week than it is to book through the resort, we probably saved 50%, well worth it. The Harbourside is across the marina from the main Royal Towers and we had a 100sqm room with kitchen, dinning and seperate BR for us, lots of room and a great view too.
We had read heaps about the place online and were planning on not eating out too much, especially at the resort restuarants where meals can run USD$500 for a family of 4. So we asked our cab driver to stop at a supermarket on the way from the airport and it worked out really well. We could have breakfast in the room every day, eat lunch by the pools mostly as the food there was good value and then either eat in at night or hit a few local places. One night we went to a local resturant area called the 'fish fry' where lots of local resturants are set up near the fishing wharves. we ate the local delicacy, conch fritters (the creatures that make those huge conch shells), and then filled up on prawns, lobster, steak and awesome grouper fillets (best fish I have ever eaten.... ever).
The resort itself has heaps to do with the 8 or so water slides, a 1.5km long 'lazy river' that has 4 foot waves pushed through it and sections of rapids that you ride in 'inner-tubes', all the marine life and then the two beaches. We went down to the main beach on the second day I think and saw a guy feeding the fish with bread. The water goes from 0 to 3 feet deep in about 2 meters so pretty much as soon as you step into the warm blue water there are fish within a yard of you. If you have food for them then it's a bit crazy, I hope the video does it justice, the fish swarm all around and freaked the kids out a little although they soon got used to it. We bought the kids masks and snorkels (as the resort nickles and dimes you for everything, despite the high cost of entry) and they had a great time, really taking to it. On another day Cam and I were just floating around, I think we'd just seen two squid, and I dove down a couple of meters to pick up a shell I'd seen. The shell was 'attached' to a piece of coral and as I tried to pull them apart I felt resistance. The creature was a tiny octopus and I stopped trying to pull it apart so that Cam could see. Unfortunately I don't think I gave him a clear picture of what I was talking about (snorkles in mouths, heads underwater etc) and he just pulled the two objects apart. At this point the octopus gave up the fight and let go of both the shell and the coral, squirted ink 2-3 times in Cam's face and sped down to the bottom... where a fish quickly ate him... oops. At another beach there were some reefs, not colourful but plenty of fish hanging around and we all got to see dozens of species including fairly large ones (twice as big as a footy maybe).
The kids all took to the water slides but none as much as Cam. We let him go off on his own after a couple of days as his enthusiasm was much higher than ours. He went on the highest-fastest slide far more times than the rest of us combined. There's a famous slide that drops almost vertical and then finishes by taking you into a glass pipe right through the shark tank. Sadly you can't see a thing as there's way to much water spraying everywhere but we all had fun. My body was pretty beaten up at the end of the week, I just can't bounce back like the kids can after taking abuse from those slides.
We had thought about doing one of the dolphin encounters or hitting an out-lying reef but the costs were very high and we have that sort of thing back in Australia so we decided to pass. This meant more time on the slides, at the beach and by the pool drinking frosty daiquiris, Jo's favourite - the Dirty Banana :-). After a week in the Bahamas we can see why people like it down there, it really is pretty awesome. We now can't wait to get back home to the GBR for some real snorkling.
And now we're all back doing what we have to, the kids started school last week and I flew back to Madrid 24 hours after returning from Nassau [sob]. Still no word on what's happening long term, the current assignment provisions left a little to be desired so that needs to be discussed further. I'm hoping that we'll get time to come back home either over Christmas, like last year, or maybe a little later, maybe March, we'll see. Cheers all, nice to hear from those of you who recently pinged!
Andy, out.
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