Our Neighborhood-Port Lucaya Marketplace

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood...now let's take a stroll from the pink palace we call home down to Port Lucaya, the main tourist trap here in the Bahamas.

We start out on our trek by going past the local police station. As you can see all of the buildings are various bright colors. Not quite the same as Provo, Utah. 

We are also fortunate to live across the street from a bus stop. There are always buses running, and they are fairly cheap transportation. 

The drivers however, are not to be toyed with, and there are a few we like to avoid. The buses themselves are fairly run-down and are not nearly as used as we thought they would be. Most people here have their own vehicles.

Now on to Port Lucaya! It is a place like none I have ever seen, although Reed says it reminds him of Mexico. This is the large entryway into all the shops and restaurants. 

There are shops everywhere with people trying to stop you to look at what they are selling. I had never felt so accosted in my life! Each of the shops sell almost the exact same thing, and most of the owners are willing to cut you a great deal. 

Next come some of our favorite stores. We always laugh at this one. Oh Bahamas and your clever marketing schemes...

This is the best store that they have to offer. There is a huge variety of candy, Reed is giddy whenever we walk in! Unfortunately this doesn't happen very often, seeing as the candy is more expensive than our ticket home.

We were pleased to find this ice cream shop, since we couldn't go spending $15 for a half gallon at the store. We got the best flavor available on the island, which was honestly called Garbage Pail. 

In the middle of Port Lucaya, there is a stage where they have live bands play and occasionally dancing take place. There is always music in the square, but it's not all pleasing to listen to and it is extremely loud.

This is one of the only Christmas decorations we saw on the island. There are definitely no houses with lights timed to dub-step here.  

This little shack is one of the only places that we have found where authentic Bahamian food is prepared. The specialty here is Conch, in a variety of forms. I'm not sure I will be trying that one though...

We can sum up why many people come here to the Bahamas in one store...we watched a woman the other day chug down the rest of a beer, just so she could go in and buy another.






This opportune photo op happened earlier today when we saw a man being fabulous at Port Lucaya. We sneakily fit him in the frame.

This in the entrance to the actual port where all of the boats are. Anyone can go in, but they have a security guard standing there so most tourists don't bother the rich people with boats.

 While most of the island of the Bahamas lives in serious poverty, there are giant million dollar super-yachts in the harbor.








This is one of a dozen or so three story yachts that we saw today. We're trying to become friends with some of these rich people and get a ride in one. We will keep you updated on this goal.




Just off of the marina walkway there are lots of different types of fish you can see in the water swimming around hoping for fat tourists to drop in food. We normally give in; this frenzy is from us throwing pieces of bread in the water.

There is a scuba diving certification pool right here and a nice shop with a cafe as well. We would love to just sneak into the pool to swim a bit...







And last but not least; this is the most epic boat that we have come across. It has a slide from the second story and oh, did we mention the rock climbing wall?! Yep, this sight-seeing boat has everything.

The Beautiful Beach!!

If there is one thing this island has done right, it is the beaches. We walk along the beaches almost every day and we love to swim and go snorkeling as well. The water alternates between being as clear and smooth as glass, and then randomly murky and choppy. We haven't figured out the rhythm or timing of this phenomenon yet though...

All of the beaches on the island are free to the public, you just have to use the approved entrances, which includes this sketchy shack. 

Reed is hanging out by the braiding shack here. There are always a few women that shout to everyone that pass by to come and get their hair braided. We actually looked at how much it would be though, and it's $120 for a head of braids! 

Those women are not the only ones on the beach though. We are always bombarded by people trying to sell us anything they can. They have jewelry, shells, t-shirts and plenty of other sketchy things as well...

We saw a Rastafarian dude building this shack by himself in a little less than a week. He would be on the roof and would pound in a nail, then take a swig from his brown paper bag...it was an ongoing cycle.



















This is Reed wearing a t-shirt the improv comedy group made him. We got quite a few weird looks.

We came back and the water was crystal clear and absolutely beautiful. We knew we had to take this opportunity and go snorkeling. 

Here is Reed sporting his stuff, and getting ready to snorkel. And yes, he does wear a shirt while swimming.

The ocean is only about 10 feet deep for the first fifty yards, and there are buoys set out to let you know how far is safe to swim out to avoid boats and jet skiers which are everywhere.





What we didn't realize however was that this was the coldest day on the island thus far. The temperature was around 62 and it was very windy. The water was probably in the 40's. This may look like a happy go lucky shot of us, but what you don't realize is we were only embracing for the warmth.

Rain, Rain, Go Away...

As a welcoming gift, the Bahamas decided that it wanted to get us accustomed to wonderful sunshine and warmth. Then, it changed its' mind. Here are a few pictures of what a "light drizzle" looks like in the Bahamas. Fortunately the temperature doesn't drop too much when it rains, but there are puddles and standing water everywhere afterwards. This makes it difficult to venture out...since we walk almost everywhere we go. It's still better than driving in snow I guess...



The weather here really can be interesting though. It goes from pouring rain to beautiful sunshine in seconds. It has been really fun though to see these changes. We love being able to play outside in the sunshine, but it has been nice to have a little break from all this humidity! At least our skin in getting hydrated...

Downtown Grand Bahamas

 In order to show what a lot of the island is like, we took a trip downtown with the local bus system. These buses appear to be old vans and there are bus stops every quarter mile or so. It costs $1.25 per person to ride, which we thought was a steal compared to walking 3 miles to get there ourselves.

This Bazaar is in the heart of downtown Freeport, and boasts on a plaque to say it is the cultural epicenter of the island. Upon further investigation, we were disheartened to find only one semi-sketchy chinese restaurant.

 Here are some shots of the city with the strip plazas and on the right is the tallest building on the island. Apparently it has been undergoing some renovations...for the last few years and everyone has been vacated. One thing of note here in the Grand Bahamas, people drive on the left side of the road. You would think that shouldn't be hard to get use to, since we are not driving here, but we have had many friendly reminder honks...the islanders are very helpful in reminding us to stay clear.


 I think we would both agree that our favorite sight downtown was when we found the LDS church here. We looked it up online, but it wasn't very clear how to get there. We asked a bunch of people if they had seen the elders or the church but no one had even heard of it. That was so discouraging, so we went walking to look for it. We found the branch and were able to attend church. There are only about 30 members and we are definitely the minority! Everyone is so polite and friendly, which has been such a nice welcome for us. We are excited to keep going!