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Travel Journal Nassau, Bahamas 01-21-2000 It’s Friday the 21st of January today and tomorrow my ship will be leaving port and my Semester at Sea will finally begin. I’m more than a bit excited and filled with much anticipation of what’s to come. Right now I’m sitting on the beach enjoying the breaking waves and a gentle evening breeze. There’s a flock of seagulls sitting on the beach with me not 20ft away. It seems that even the birds here know how to relax. And on that note, the Bahamas truly are an extremely relaxing place. As for myself I’m doing just fine although I’m not exactly staying at a topnotch hotel. The Ocean Spray Hotel has now officially made my list of places I shall never stay again. This morning the water shut off for a time, which made it impossible to flush the toilets and also impossible to get any drinking water (but that was ok by me because the water tasted like piss anyway…) The redeeming quality of the hotel is the attitude of its employees, who all seem to be very mellow. I got into Nassau yesterday around 12:30 but didn’t get out of the airport till about 2:00. This was partially due to the fact that the lines for the customs officials were so long, but also due to the fact that Bacardi had a free drink booth (since Bacardi is made in the Bahamas), and let’s just say that I got to know the Bartender… I reached my hotel around 2:30 after getting a taxicab with a driver who seemed to be deathly afraid of talking to me. After getting all my bags to the room I went out for a stroll on the beach and then went back to my room for a 3 hour nap (I’d been up for 36+ hrs.) By the time I woke up Trisha (one of the girls I was staying with) was just getting into the hotel. We got all her stuff into the room and then went out for a walk and some dinner. Along the way we bought a bottle of Bacardi because, well, we were college students in the Bahamas and it just seemed like the proper thing to do. We also reasoned that we probably wouldn’t be drinking much during the semester and had better just get it out of our systems…boy were we ever wrong!
After about an hour of doing a little drinking and getting to know her and some of her friends we all decided to go out to a club called the Zoo. After haggling a bit with a cab driver we finally got there for $3 each plus $5 to get into the club. As soon as I got into the club I met a ton of SAS kids, a few of which got me to drink many many Long Island Ice Teas with them. At this point my recollection of that evening gets a little bit blurry but I remember dancing with some local girl for well over two hours and having one hell of a great time. Later I met a few more Semester at Sea kids and we had a few more drinks and then went back to their hotel. Once I got up to their room I realized that it was getting pretty late so I stupidly decided to walk back to my hotel on my own. This is something that should never be done. After having walked countless blocks I realized that I was lost at 4:30 in the morning. Not only did I not know where the hell I was, but I also couldn’t remember the name of my hotel or where it was located. On top of that I was piss blind drunk! As I staggered along I saw a group of guys standing around on a street corner and they waved me over. Not realizing what type of neighborhood I was in I walked right on over. When I got there one of the guys told me to give him my money, and upon my refusal landed a good blow into my stomach. Luckily all I had on my person was $5 (and they didn’t take my watch) so I didn’t lose too much. So after that was all over with I was pretty fired up and just walked down the road in a ball of anger. Eventually a cab driver picked me up and I explained that I’d pay her upon arrival and thankfully I remembered the name to my hotel. The cab driver followed me all the way up to my hotel room to get what I owed her. After all that I was totally exhausted and went to bed and slept till 8:00am. I woke up with a killer hangover and took some aspirin, went to the beach and relaxed all day falling in and out of sleep and doing my share of swimming. Looking back on yesterday and looking ahead on what’s to come I’d have to say that I’m in for one hell of an adventure! |
