in the Summer time: adventures of B12 in the Bahamas

Our first evening was pretty low. key. We had a lifeboat drill early on wherein we caught our first glimpse of the dreamiest fellow ever...the crew member in charge of our section. Gustav (pictures to come later). Gustave is a handsome no not handsome...very pretty and beautiful man from South Africa. We swooned over him during the drill & later actually got to talk to him & get pictures with him. Welp the drill took what seemed like forever & then later we talked about who would live & die if we actually had to be in a lifeboat with our huge group. After laying on the deck like mentioned above, we watched as the crew including Gustave entertained with tons of dancing & crazy ladies who went and got crazy on the deck with them. Let's just say it was highly entertaining & then some especially because some of the crew members are so funny & really get into it all. After laying out & our drill we headed in, changed & headed to dinner in the Palace restaurant on board. It is classy & super fancy. I'm talking three courses, food that is designed beautifully, different forks, knives, plates & all of that. I felt so cool eating in a place like that & the food was tasty. I had some yummy salmon & delightful chocolate cake. After dinner we just walked around the deck & hung out, relaxing & finally heading to sleep so we could begin our first day.
Day 1: Freeport, Grand Bahama Island
We had a tasty breakfast at the buffet (which I love) first thing in the morning, then we headed off the giant ship. Right as you get off there are lots of small buildings to rent scooters, go on excursions & then the market where you can buy stuff. We didn't really know what we wanted to do & we wandered around for about ten minutes and finally decided to go with this super cute old Bahamian guy to a place where we could snorkel for only 35 dollars. We piled into a van with a couple of other people & headed off. We realized that this island is a poorer part of this country with lots of damage from past hurricanes that has still not been cleaned up or fixed. We saw piles of conch shells sitting on shores, just piles of them. There were people selling tons of crabs in giant cages on the sides of the road. The houses were beautiful because they are all bright, amazing colors, some with really great designs on them. Our driver was Nathan who was taking us to Paradise Cove to snorkel. He was adorable & told us all about the island & country on our drive over & I love drivers like that because then I get to learn real information about the place not just come & go. On the drive over it was pretty funny because we realized he could have been taking us anywhere, somewhere to kidnap us or whatever, but of we did indeed arrive at the beautiful & I mean beautiful Paradise Cove. This was a smaller, more private beach and there were only like 6 of us there. We walked in & it was breathtaking. The ocean is so beautiful here, it's clear & blue & words can't describe it. Em, Nicole & I rented snorkel gear while Sarah rented a kayak. And after some pictures & a tutorial by Thompson the instructor about things to stay away from...we went for it. It was amazing. I saw so many tropical, colorful fish. It was like something off of animal planet. We even saw a huge sting ray & that was terrifying but so cool all at once. I saw a really weird fish that looked like it had big dragon or alligator scales on it. And finally we made it to a deep reef & it looked like it was straight out of Finding Nemo. There were schools of bright yellow fish, some larger fish closer to the bottom, small fish with blue on them. It was incredible. Well about halfway through snorkeling I realized my knee was hurting pretty bad & I didn't know why. It stung like a bee sting but in a big patch. I pushed through and after an hour or so I finally was so tired that I headed back to shore with Sarah while the other two kept on. Turns out, I had gotten burned/stung by fire coral which stings you in the ocean. The woman working gave me vinegar for it so that helped & I saw I had a big scratch on my shin too from something. It was fine though. Sarah & I laid out for awhile after that & took some pictures. We then headed to the water to do some shell collecting & we saw some beautiful ones. Nicole & Em finally came in, after telling us they'd seen a barracuda! scary. Then we all laid out for a long time, went back & forth to the water to cool off & just relaxed. It was the most perfect day. Better than I could have imagined it to be. Finally, time came to head back to our ship. We were really worn out & tired from the sun so we were ready to go. We climbed into a bus & headed back & I was so tired I dozed for part of the drive back. When we got back we headed to the market & looked around for a little while but we were so hungry we decided to just head back to the ship. On our way back to the ship I loved the crew & people because before we got back on they had cold towels for us which felt aweeessommee & lemonade & ice water which topped of the day perfectly.