(Bahamas)...Four days in the Bahamas to escape a Northeast U.S. winter is an excellent idea, and a fantastic opportunity to go to a new Caribbean island. I have only been to one once before—Antigua & Barbuda (see posts passim), so off to Nassau on New Providence I went. I was there essentially to see the new Sheraton Cable Beach (www.cablebeachresorts.com/sheraton), which is the first part—together with the existing Wyndham hotel—of a new megaresort called Baha Mar.
That hotel, to open in 2012, they hope, will also include a Caesars Park Hotel & Casino and properties W, Westin and St. Regis, which means—so the developers gushed—the largest cluster of Starwood-branded properties in the world. So there. The sea was a magnificent shade of turquoise, and the beaches are attractive. I was very interested in an abandoned, dilapidated horseracing grandstand, which stood slightly inland from the hotel.
I assume this will finally disappear, rather than slowly doing so, when Baha Mar’s golf courses (of course!) are finished and West Bay Street (the coastal road) is re-routed.
Or at least I assume it was for horse racing, although I do see that betting on horse racing is illegal in the Bahamas. In fact, it is illegal for Bahamians themselves to bet on anything. Only foreigners are allowed to. Anyway, the track—if such it is—could be reached fairly easily. No sign barred one’s way, and there were no security personal stopping you tearing up your legs on the brambles as you hack your way through. On the road out, there is a large shed full of old juckanoo costumes and floats. We went to the Junkanoo Museum in Nassau, which chronicles this Bahamian Mardi Gras-style parade that is held at Christmastime. All the costumes are made from pieces of paper or card, and the costumes reminded me of Dogon costumes and masks from Mali (or at least, pictures and photos of Malian costumes and masks that I’ve seen).
The different teams that compete for bragging rights have names such as “Roots,” “Fancy Dancers” and the “Valley Boys.” Seemingly, European warrior races are popular for names, too, with both the “Saxons” and the “Vikings” doing battle. Away from the port and its huge cruise ships (also avoid the terrible Straw Market and its cheaper-than-cheap souvenir schlock), Nassau—the capital of the Bahamas—does have a pleasant feel. Everything seems to be named for Queen Victoria, who never went there. The police walk about very smartly, and all the government buildings are pink.
One wonderful stop was the Graycliff restaurant, on West Hill Street, which I did not eat at. It is expensive in any way you could calculate it. It has, we were told, the world’s most-expensive wine cellar, which extends beneath the road, the world’s most-expensive collection of cognac and the world’s most-expensive collection of single-malt whiskies from Scotland. The one I saw was a 1948 bottle of Macallan, which sells for $5,800, or in a restaurant, probably at $11,600; apparently, also there is a bottle of Château Lafite going for the princely sum of $250,000. The restaurant’s building is beautiful, and its gardens and courtyards serene (see the photo above), a far cry from its original 1740’s days as the home of John Howard Graysmith, the pirate-captain of the schooner Graywolf. (I guess that Graysmith and Graywolf are not suitable names for restaurants.)
I got wet at Stuart’s Cove (www.stuartcove.com), where on one day I went scuba diving, the second day, snorkeling. The highlight of the first day was seeing delicate Tiger cowries (Cypraea tigris), while the highlight of the second definitely was bobbing over 40 or so Caribbean reef sharks (Carcharhinus perezii). We were allowed 10 minutes of doing this (10 minutes from the first person jumping in, not the last). After 10 minutes, the sharks (who have worked in tourism for many years) start getting restless and moving slightly nearer the surface.
After I had got back on to the boat and turned around, the sharks’ fins were breaking the water, and when some dead fish were thrown in, they positively went crazy. So did the gulls, and I was told it has been known for the sharks to grab one of them, despite their preference for scavenging food, rather than hunting it. It is confined to Caribbean and northern South American waters and is not considered dangerous to humans. Back at the dock there is a photo of actress Selma Hayak looking suitably unimpressed by being photographed while she is trying to enjoy herself scuba diving.
The most authentic Bahamian thing I did was to walk to Arawak Cay, where are several rows of shack restaurants cooking up local cuisine. Collectively, it is called the Fish Fry, and when I passed it on a bus one morning, I did not have high hopes for it. But it turned out to be fun. I chose one that had a crowd of local workers eating their lunches. An argument (from what I gathered, it was concerned with what was better, Electricity or Water; I suggested getting a large bucket, filling it with water, sticking an arm in and then, with a lead in a plug, shoving something electric in it to test their theories) was conducted in very loud voices. The radio was tuned to a religious programme, and the news told of four murders that weekend in a depressed neighbourhood of Nassau called Over-the-Hill. These murders were apparently drugs-related.
At the other end of the cay is an abandoned aquarium that looks the perfect place for one of James Bond’s arch-nemesises to live, a round, white structure atop a small base and topped with a high white spike. This aquarium was put out of business when the Bahamas’ other megaresort, Atlantis, opened; I wonder if that was the same fate that befell the track mentioned above. Now this former aquarium sits on a smaller cay of its own, the only people living there those paid to keep others off.