Bahama Mamarama

Last week was Thanksgiving week, and as we found out, the whole of America slows down in preparation for the 2 day holiday. It is traditionally the biggest travel week in the US when everyone travels to be with their families....which made trying to get hold of our travel agents to book people on flights pretty challenging! I was e-mailing and phoning HRG-US from Monday onwards trying to make bookings...and only got through to someone on Wednesday morning! I had spent 2 days listening to a voice telling me "you are in a queue for the next available agent"...I stopped believing them after the first day!

Wednesday in the office was pretty darn quiet! There were only a handful of us in the office, and as Timothy had told me that he was "working, but not coming into work" it was up to Colin and I to man the reception desk. I was pretty incredulous that the receptionist was working from home (I mean, how on earth was that going to work? Did he have a remote control buzzer to let people in??), but it seems he was actually taking a vacation day, but was helping Colin at the off site storage for the first 1/2 hour of the day...it still caused me a brief "I don't believe it" moment!!!

As it was really quiet Dawn announced that she was closing the office a couple of hours early, so I escaped just after 3pm with some relief (its tough being the junior receptionist you know!). Rudy needed a run to the airport, so I gave him a lift over, and despite his pretty non-existent instructions as to how to get back to where I needed to be(!), I made it home. Home to the luxuriant warmth of a new furnace! Yippppeeeeeeeee!!!!!

The furnace was actually turning into a bit of a saga....Stephen had phoned the furnace company on Tuesday morning to find out what time they were coming on Wednesday, only to find that they thought that they were waiting on a part. There was then a discussion along the lines of "No. you are installing a new furnace". "No, we're waiting on a part". "No - a new furnace". "Are you sure? I'll need to speak to my manager. I'll call you back". He had about 3 of these phone calls, before they agreed that they were installing a new furnace! I'm grateful to have heat! It was pretty darn cold last week, and we were burning logs at an alarming rate. I think we were pretty much single-handedly responsible for deforesting large parts of Virginia! Also, cleaning out the grate was not such a fun job, and guess who got to do it?

We met Hils and Paul for drinks and dinner on Wednesday. It started out as drinks, but after a couple of PG's I think Hils decided (quite rightly!) that cooking sounded like too much hard work so we toddled off to Overwoods for steak and another couple of glasses of PG. We were laughing at the absurd time I had booked out taxi for the next morning. (If someone is going to get stuck in solid traffic, or have the taxi break down, it's going to be me! So I had booked it for 6:30...) As it turned out they were right! We could probably have got away with 7:30...but the flight was overbooked, so if we had turned up at the airport later who knows what might have happened!!

The flight down to Atlanta was uneventful. We were both in stitches at the announcement made by the cabin crew shortly before landing.... "As a way of thanking you for flying Delta, and as its Thanksgiving, we have hidden a voucher for $150 in one of the seat back pockets" (at this point there was a great scrabbling going on!) ".....Actually, I lied. There is no voucher. I asked you to look out the trash and no-one moved, but tempt you with $150 bucks and you're tearing my plane apart!!"

It was a teeny-weeny plane for the hop from Atlanta to Nassau. Just 3 seats wide! We had been sitting in Friday's near the gate and looking out for the plane coming in...little did we realise that that it was actually there, but was so teeny that we couldn't see it! We had a little shot of Bahama Mama when we landed (yummy!), collected the luggage, found our minibus transfer van and headed for the hotel. After a quick change, a quick look round the hotel and a quick drink at the bar we headed out to the local recommended restaurant Johnny Canoe. It was Happy Hour (our technically Happy 2 1/2 hours) and 2 for 1 on drinks, and that always sounds good, doesn't it? So after a G&T and a margarita we had dinner, and then I had a Junkanoo coffee (with all sorts of hard liquor in it! - yummy but potent!!). Feeling decidedly Happy after Happy Hour we sauntered off in search of the hotel (okay, staggered off!). We had barely gone 10 yards before we spotted the Daiquiri Shack. WOW! What a place (it was a rum shack - and I really do mean it was a shack!), but it was run by this great guy called Trevor who made the most totally amazing fresh fruit daiquiris, floating in about a pint of dark rum. After the first sook on the straw I made a joke about falling backwards off the school, and said that Stephen had make sure that he catch me. Quick as a flash Trevor said "he may not catch you on the way down, but we'll make sure he catches you on the bounce". So funny!! Anyway we spent a happy hour in there being introduced to all the locals (it was the only place I got a free refill of anything on Nassau! And a free refill of these babies was worth having!!!)

Stephen and I at the Daiquiris shack....delicious (and potent!) drinkies!! That's Trevor in the background.

Despite having had 42 pints of rum the night before we were up reasonably early (about 8, which is actually a 2 hour lie in, but early for holiday!) and more importantly, we were feeling pretty healthy (must have been because we got about 10 portions of fruit the day before!). We found a nice lounger and then didn't move from it all day!! This was a recurring theme for most of the time we were away - I think this was the first time I have totally relaxed in months, and I felt an overwhelming desire to sleep! I'd read for a bit, then snooze, read, snooze, read, snooze...bliss!

We popped back into the Daiquiri shack on the way to dinner....and on the way back!! There were a couple of college kids in there on our first visit, and they were still there when we got back so we got talking. Turns out they weren't college kids...they were actually pilots!!! They were in the Bahamas for the weekend as they had flown some high-rollers down from Vegas (they flew privately chartered jets). Is this a sign of advancing years, when pilots look about 20?

The restaurant had a bit of local flavour going on. There was a Junkanoo band which came through for a couple of circuits. According to Trevor (and I guess he knows!) Junkanoo starts on Boxing Day, and is a festival of dancing and Junkanoo bands. The band consists of a couple of brass instruments, a couple of drums and a cowbell. There is actually a competition for musicianship of individual instruments...including the cowbell!

The Junkanoo band

The cowbell player pauses for a close up

It was a bit strange on the journey home. We actually cleared customs and immigration into the US before we had left Nassau! Needless to say, we didn't expect that....but thinking about it rationally, it is small planes flying into regional airports which leave The Bahamas, so I guess they don't have immigration facilities. It was getting a little chaotic at certain points - one of the guards on the scanner points was getting flustered as there was a huge extended family with about 8 kids milling around and in pushchairs trying to collect their stuff off the conveyor. They were blocking the area completely, so we couldn't get forward to get our stuff and the security girl was getting really flustered. She started shouting for the owner of the laptop, so Stephen made his way over (past the small children) and I did my best to follow. By this time she was picking up our stuff out of the tray and thrusting it at us (didn't think they were allowed to do that), but as we were trying to put things in bags, put watches and shoes back on etc we weren't moving fast enough for her and she was getting really ratty. We had so little time that I was worried that we were going to end up leaving something behind in our (enforced) haste. It came to a resounding conclusion when (as they were still putting trays through the machine) the backed up trays spilled over the edge of the table and nearly squished one of the babies in the buggy, and the Mommy practically got the guard by the throat!

Collecting the luggage at National airport was amusing (well, it was be amused or be irritated!). It said carousel number 11 when we got to the display, so we waited for ages and nothing appeared. Then another flights baggage came out, but our flight was listed next. Then another flights luggage came out. Then our flight disappeared from the displays altogether. Finally there was a shout further down the baggage hall...someone had found it...about 3 carousels down! People were running down the baggage hall!

The resort

The beach

The Pool