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.