The Sights and Sounds of Nassau

12/22 - After settling in at the marina we explored the local area. Nassau is on the island of New Providence which is twenty-one miles long and seven miles wide. It is one of the smaller inhabited islands in the Bahamas but, as the nation’s capital, is the most important. Nassau has a population of over 250,000 and, it seemed, about that many cars. Traffic was incredible. The main street running through the downtown area is Bay Street. This is where the cruise ships dock and the foot traffic is what you might imagine with 4 or 5 huge cruise ships in port. On the western end, it turns into West Bay. This is where many of the resorts are located. On the eastern end, it turns into East Bay. This is the marina area and you find mostly visiting boaters and it is not nearly as congested as the downtown area. We stayed in this area at the Nassau Harbor Club Marina which was conveniently located across the street from a fairly good-sized shopping center. The center had a well-stocked supermarket, a Radio Shack, a Starbucks, Dominos and many other stores. On the night of our arrival we walked through the shopping center and then up the street a bit to the Poop Deck, a local restaurant, where we had happy hour drinks and free appetizers. We ended up back at the shopping center and went to Dominos for dinner. The pizza was very good. After that it was back to the boat and off to bed. It had been a long, but incredible day.

12/23 – We woke up this morning to very windy conditions. There were a few boats that had been anchored out but, after several boats in the anchorage drug and got tangled up with other boats, they decided to “bite the bullet” and pay for a slip in a marina.

Our main chores for the day were to get new phones from BTC (Bahamian Telephone Company) and tickets for bleacher seats for Junkanoo. Throughout the entire process we had to keep reminding ourselves we were in the islands and everything was done in a different manner and speed than in the states.

To buy our telephones we (Gerry, Linda, Jana and Michael) took the local bus to the Mall at Marathon. This was quite the adventure. They drive on the left side of the road here and everyone squeezes, crams and otherwise tries to take their piece of the road. With all the holiday traffic there was no room in many places and we passed numerous accidents. A good percentage of the cars here have dents, scratches or missing parts. The bus had a TV on board right above the driver’s head and he appeared to be watching it most of the time. The sound was turned up so loud that the bass resonated through our chests. It was an interesting trip and we got to see a lot of the non-touristy section of the Island. At the mall, after waiting in several lines, we were finally able to get our phones and the SIM card that gives us our phone number and our minutes. Our Bahamian phone number is 242-432-1306. Calling the states is still quite expensive so we will use it sparingly.

We boarded the bus again and this time took it to downtown Nassau, getting off around Bay and East Steets, close by the cruise ship docks. We tried to find out where to purchase our tickets for Junkanoo. Junkanoo is likened to Mardi Gras in New Orleans or Carnival in Rio. You don’t have to have tickets to watch the parade, but they do have bleacher seating all along the parade route and we decided for our first (and probably only) time at Junkanoo we should have seats. Linda had looked this all up on the Internet and found out the price of tickets and the fact that you could buy them online. However, we decided it would be better to buy them in town and set about trying to find where one could buy them. This ended up being quite the humorous undertaking. We must have stood in 5 or 6 lines and talked to numerous people on the street, all of them telling us something different or sending us to places we had already tried. After all was said and done, we discovered the easiest thing to do was to buy them on line, so after we got home Linda waded through the very S-L-O-W internet and purchased tickets for the four of us.

We spent most of the afternoon wandering through downtown Nassau. It was very crowded (Jana had read in a guide book that the weeks of Christmas and New Year’s are the two busiest weeks of the year in Nassau.) Oh well, that’s just when we happened to be here. We browsed through a few stores, including the local straw market which was so packed you could hardly get through it. We walked by the Governor’s Mansion and then ended up for a late lunch at Senor Frog’s. It’s by the cruise ships and pretty much a tourist trap but we had some great made-on-the-spot conch salad, some nachos and, of course, drinks. Instead of riding the bus back to the marina, we walked. It was a few miles but with the nice weather it was quite enjoyable and, as a bonus, there were several marine stores to stop and check out on the way back home.