Bahama mama

Colorful artificial town, laundry drying all around the boat, Christmas Eve, dolphin’s spies.

Dolphin video added.

Lucaya marina in Freeport on the Grand Bahama island is 10days our temporary home (nobody knows it is going to be this long).

This touristic “artificial” town is full of colorful houses (stands) with souvenirs and clothes. There are also plenty of restaurants, bars or other activities where the tourists can spend their money.

We don’t like it here so much. One of the reasons is our low budget. Another is that all the locals just serve to tourists and get money from them. We are rich – we can travel, Jan has a beautiful girl next to him, we have educations and good job at home – and they need to work the whole day to earn enough for their families (this was a speech from shell seller on the beach from whom we didn’t want to buy anything). And they are right. We are rich, but because we are healthy, happy, we’ve got each other and we are fulfilling our dreams…

In the first days we update our blog – write new posts but mostly to translate the old ones to English (google translated texts are even less understandable that our English). We tidy the boat, fill water, I wash our clothes in a bucket (the same we use for washing dishes or peeing:)) and we dry the laundry all around the boat. When Joe sees me kneeling next to the washed socks in the bucket he says just “and now you are a real Bahama mama”. (BTW: Bahama mama was a name of a “booze cruize” boat passing us every day).

We enjoy the walks on the beach (we build also a sand castle), Christmas and the Saturday’s party on the square – this evening it is full of locals with their kids, everybody dancing and having fun (finally we see them enjoying the time and not just slaving to tourists).

Days go by. Joe and his girlfriend July enjoy Lucaya with their friends and we are looking for activities to reasonably spend the time. We try our GoPro camera, inflate the dinghy, equip it with motor and want to go for a ride in the water canals here (but we aren’t able to do it that day, because the motor stoles many times and wouldn’t start till next day). During the ride we also come to a bay where people are taken to swim with dolphin (this is really an expensive fun). After some time of persuading Jan, we go there. Our tactics is “to ask for more information and in the meantime just look around”. We get to the dock when nobody is there. I start the GoPro camera and go to the pools and one, two, three dolphins come to see me really close :). One employee comes out and sends us to the boat back. We ask about the info. We leave smiling a proud on our spy skills. We didn’t swim with them, but we have some footage and saved 350 bucks.

delfiny vimeo from cos on Vimeo.

Next day we rent a scooter and go to see the Lucaya national park (couple of caves, beautiful beach, many trees and other local plants and birds). The ride is great and we also see the decaying houses of the locals, old cars along the road and different types of nature. In the evening July leaves and we enjoy the Saturday night in Lucaya for the last time.

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