Well there's far too much to write in a blog, but here's my best go at it (with illustration, of course).
My week on Abaco with Steve & Rhonda:
Saturday evening (6 pm): Land at Marsh Harbour airport, wait outside for Rhonda until she walks out of the 'terminal' 5 minutes later... Head home with her, veg on their balcony overlooking the ocean, and then out to some friends' house for dinner - stuffed crawfish, macaroni casserole, potato salad, roast beef & gravy, some other veggie dish that I can't remember, cheesecake w/strawberries, birthday cake. And then.... home to bed!
Sunday: Church, where I shivered uncontrollably in their ice-box-of-an-air-conditioned-chapel and got quite a few stares for being a visitor. That afternoon - relaxing, snorkeling out front and hanging out at the resort down the street from their house and watching them play v-ball. A rousing game of Texas Holdem in which I made them tremble in their booties. Until I lost, that is.
Monday: Hanging out at their house (relaxing & reading, of course!) while they went to work. Here's the view from their house/balcony:
My taxing day:
This involved the very strenuous act of watching a storm approach along the beach, and sitting on their balcony being sprayed with the bit of rain that was being blown in under the roof while the rest of it roared tumultuously down from the heavens.
A few minutes after the storm rolled by, this is what it looked like:
It also involved the very risky business of stalking & photographing some Abaco wildlife...
Tuesday: Getting up and heading to work with them at the school. Here's a view of one wing of their school:
I sat in Rhonda's homeroom class, saw her 'office' and the rest of the school, and then we took off to Treasure Cay for the afternoon. This adventure resulted in an arduous walk along the Mombasa-like beach (low tide), saving a few starfish & sand dollars, and wading out on the peninsula to the many sandbars where the tide lines criss-crossed in confusion.
We followed a sting ray until it whipped its tail above the water at us, then swam through the deeper water to the island off the pensinsula, screaming in agony (okay that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I did indeed yell a bit) when a jellyfish trailed its tentacles from my fingers up along my arm to my shoulder (I still have red marks today from it!). As we explored the island, the sting turned into angry red welts & swelling, so we decided to head back to the resort to get some vinegar on it, and found a big barricuda (well, it looked big, but you know how water magnifies things... I mean shrinks things, it was probably actually 5 feet long) and only one of the sand bars still above water. We turned the resort staff ladies' frowns into smiles as we involved them in the tending of my fatal wound (okay, yes, I'm exaggerating again) and had some delicious fried grouper, fries and conch fritters. My wound:
And I had a Bahama Mama and discovered that they're a little heavier on the alcohol down in the Bahamas than they are up here in Calgary... And the rest of the afternoon was spent sitting/sleeping on the beach.
I can't even remember what we did Tuesday evening, aside from take pictures of my angry burn from where I forgot (apparently) to put sunscreen on. Oh wait, I think we sat/lay on their roof looking at the starry sky.
Wednesday: After a sleepless night (I think due to the combination of the sunburn and the jellyfish welts), I went over to their dive master's (Timmy) house to join him as he took a group of Americans diving so I could go snorkeling off the boat while they dove. It turns out they cancelled, so I went back to the house and fell asleep for a few hours and spent the rest of the afternoon reading. Ah, bliss. When Rhonda and Steve got home from work, we headed back over to the dive master's house so he could teach me the basics of scuba in preparation for our anticipated dive on Friday. So we hopped in the water in front of the house (me, Rhonda, Timmy & Rebeka (his daughter - sp??)) and I learned the basics.
We swam 'out to sea' to an old car and found a lion fish, and of course some other fishies of the sea.
Thursday: As Steve & Rhonda had Thursday & Friday off from work, we all slept in until 10 (aside from being woken up before dawn by a thunderous lightening storm) and had a delicious breakfast of french toast & turkey bacon. Then Rhonda and I headed out to patch one of the car's tires, which we left at the shop and decided to walk to the school. Along the way, the heavens opened, so we ducked into what we lovingly dubbed the poncho store and looked at the lovely merchandise before discovering that they sell ponchos there, so we decked ourselves out, got the dude to take a picture of us with the maelstrom behind us, then headed back to the garage in our bare feet (let's face it, flip flops just aren't the best thing when you're walking through water - they keep flipping the water up your legs which just negates the point of trying to stay dry under a poncho).
By the time we got back to the car (maybe a 5 minute walk), the rain slowed to a trickle. We drove back through town to the coffee shop and sat in there chatting while the storm periodically raged and calmed, raged and calmed, raged and calmed, with water streamed against the windows and bending the palm trees over. We righted a toppled plant on the way out to the car and ducked into a few tourist shops, and finally made it back home. Oh and don't forget the emergency snow route...
Friday: The day dawned windy & cloudy. When Rhonda got back from her early morning swim (prepping for her triathlon next weekend), we read on the porch before hopping in the car to try to get some updated pics of their school to put on their website. Then we cruised over to Deb's house to see if we could borrow her scooter for a while, which had the added benefit of trying some of her freshly-baked Monkey Bread (mmmm - thanks Deb!). We scooted away on her very-unaligned scooter (that thing was a bear to steer, but of course that just made it more treacherously fun!) down Pelican Shores, past the ferry docks and out onto the peninsula where all the rich folks have their homes that they come and live in 6 months out of each year - it was gorgeous! Sorry, no pics, I wasn't about to take my camera on the scooter with the angry grey clouds rolling past overhead... We made it through and around all the pothole-puddles, returned the scooter just as Deb's friend Sherry (sp??? who'd just arrived from Canada the night before) woke up, and headed home to eat before our big dive!
We all assembled at Timmy's house at 1:00 as the clouds parted and the blue sky & hot sun showed their faces. With everything finally loaded and ready on the boat, we cruised out to the boat launch and doped up on gravol and sunscreen as we headed out of the bay and into the open water. Just before the reef and the vast expanse of ocean opened up before us, we dropped Rose off with Rebeka on a tiny coral & sand island, suited & geared up, and motored out around the island and into the bucking sea.
One by one (with Rhonda leading the way before she could get sea sick on the boat), we plunged into the water and descended to the sandy bottom 20 feet below.
Needless to say, there were fish.
As we headed out over the edge of the reef and down towards the sandy bottom below, Rhonda found a sea turtle; my attention was only short-lived, however, as everyone else pointed out the shark. With all the hubbub of "Look at the turtle!" and "Look at the shark!", I can't say I got a really good look at either before they were both gone. It was still cool though.
I spent most of the first dive trying to get my boyancy compensator to make me boyant, but alas it didn't want to. Thankfully Timmy fixed it and it was fine for the last part of the dive as we headed back to the boat, just as another turtle went soaring past...
As a giant wave tried to capsize us (okay maybe I'm exaggerating, but it sure freaked me out!), we motored over to a different section of the reef and again plunged in. This time, my boyancy compensator worked gloriously from start to finish, and I was able to float through the water just like everyone else. As we wove our way through the maze of the reef, I found two tiny little cleaner shrimp, bright fluorescent blue. As I went to get Rhonda to show her, of course, my (and everyone else's) attention was taken by the three sharks that started circling. We didn't have the underwater camera with us, but Timmy graciously gave me his pics of these sharks that he'd gotten on other dives...
It was so cool. For a while, we all stood in a group on the sand as the three sharks glided in circles around us. I especially liked the little fish that was following the one shark around everywhere it went. As we began going our own way, they lost some of their interest in us, but one or two of them doggedly stayed on our trail. As I was at the back of the group, it was kinda cool to look back once in a while and see a shark appear out of the gloom behind me. Pretty cool stuff. And then there was, of course, all the other fish - trumpetfish, a triggerfish, these little weird things that I have absolutely no recollection of with regards to their name, huge groupers, parrotfish, yellowtail snappers (is that what they were called??), and so on.
At the end it was just Rhonda, Sherry and I left down in the water. For some reason our tanks were all still around 1000, while everyone else's were drained...
What a cool experience. Thank you SOOOOOOOOO much, Steve and Rhonda, for encouraging me to do it, and to Timmy for helping me do it!!!!
Friday night, Rhonda made me a birthday dinner of crawfish (that they'd helped catch!) - it was sooooo yummy. She even made a cake, and then all the other foreign teachers showed up and we hung out before Rhonda and I left to get me ready to fly out the next morning.
In all, it was an awesome trip. If I had been able to stay 3 days later, I even woulda been stranded there for a few more days cuz of the hurricane - too bad! =(
Saturday: Rhonda and I got to the airport at 6:45 for my 7:30 flight. At 7:30 or so (when the plane was still not there), they told us that they'd have more information for us at 8. Rhonda went and got us some cinnamon buns from the bakery.
At 8:10, they announced that the plane would arrive at 9:05 for a 9:20 departure.
Rhonda and I both went to get more cinnamon buns. This entailed going home and making Steve think I was never leaving (okay we didn't really manage to trick him, he was far too smart for us - either that or too tired) while Rhonda made herself a cup of coffee. I mean of hot water. That's what happens when you forget to put coffee in the coffee machine. She had tea.
We sat the rest of the time away at the airport until the plane landed. I hopped on and away we went, with only about 4 hours in Nassau and then two-ish hours in Toronto (which involved having supper with Uncle Sam & Aunt Bonnie - yay!). Lisa and Luci met met at 11 pm in Calgary and it was home-sweet-home (well, not so sweet, I did NOT want to be here...)
It was such a great time and I wish I could've stayed longer. Thanks, Steve & Rhonda, for the great time together and your friendship & hospitality, and thanks to everyone else there (foreign teachers and Bahamians alike) who added to the great memories!!!
