Top 3 Cool Hotspots of The Bahamas

With a chain of 700 jewel-like islands that stretch lazily across the Atlantic, The Bahamas is beach bum paradise. But it’s also a hotspot of very cool Caribbean stuff. Here are three top examples:

1) Chat n’ Chill, Stocking Island, The Exumas 

Few spots capture The Bahamas’ chillin’ atmosphere better than the Chat n’ Chill, a relaxed, family-friendly hangout on Stocking Island, across the harbour from George Town on Great Exuma.

Hop aboard a water taxi piloted by a guy named Elvis and motor through crystal-clear, topaz-coloured water to a perfect white sand beach. The Chat n’ Chill is a beachside, tiki-like bar stuffed to the rafters with sailing relics (ropes, flags, bits of sail) and barefoot skippers swapping survival stories. Snap open an ice-cold Kalik (a Bahamian beer pronounced kah-LICK) and flip open one of the encyclopedia-sized guest books to record your presence in the midst of all this coolness.

For an appetizer, wander along the beach to a little wooden booth flogging fresh conch salad — a Haitian chef hauls conch in from the sea, hammers it open, cuts out the meat and chops it into a spicy salad. While you wait, let the kids pet the stingrays, or wander along a Stocking Island path ‘til you emerge onto its rugged Atlantic coast — the waves are big, the sand dunes huge and the vistas endless.

www.chatnchill.com

2) Compass Point Studios, Nassau, New Providence Island

You don’t have to be a music buff to get into the chillin’ vibe of Compass Point Studios. Founded in 1977 by Chris Blackwell, owner of Island Records, this blink-and-you’ll-miss-it building has witnessed some of the world’s greatest rock n’ roll history. The Rolling Stones recorded Emotional Rescue here. ZZ Top, Lenny Kravitz, Pink Floyd, George Thorogood, Iron Maiden… even Shakira have all used it to lay down tracks for platinum albums.

Operated now by producers Terry and Sherrie Manning, Nassau visitors can simply call up 24 hours in advance and organize a cool and casual tour. The layed-back Mannings fascinate with rock n’ roll tales — don’t miss a peek into the studio’s Recreation Room, where rock legends still come to party when they’re in The Bahamas.

www.compasspointstudios.com

3) Pirates Museum, Nassau, New Providence Island 

Few characters are as cool as Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean — much of which was filmed in The Bahamas. When you get there it’s easy to see why. Privateers — famous rogues like Blackbeard and Charles Vane — actually ruled this island chain through the Golden Age of Piracy (1690 to 1720). Most were disgruntled crewmen of Royal merchant ships convinced revellery and the plunder of passing ships were far more fascinating than an honest day’s work.

Their fantastic history is tracked at Nassau’s Pirates Museum, which walks you through an interactive, day-in-the-life of a pirate, including details on wine, women, lawlessness, amputations and scurvy.

Afterwards, strike out on a tour of Bahamian cays. With hundreds of desert isles dotting this pretty blue seascape, tales are thick of pirates both past and present.

www.pirates-of-nassau.com

www.loriknowles.com

Twitter: @LoriExploring

 

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Atlantis: Vegas for Kids?

Photos by Lori Knowles

The following is an excerpt from my Family Fare column in the Toronto Sun:

It’s no wonder Justin Bieber loves this place.

Atlantis, the extraordinary resort on Paradise Island, Bahamas, is Vegas for kids. Its mind-spinning action — 13 pools, snorkelling lagoon, Mayan temple with waterfalls and slides, swim-with-dolphins program, 140-acre waterpark, teen hangout, oasis of tropical fish and… oh, yes, five Bahamian beaches — plays like a high-octane video game, one that never shuts off and requires the energy of Red Bull from morning to night.  Bieber, the continually mobbed Canadian 16-year-old teen sensation, is a fan. He shot his hit video Never Let You Go here in the hotel’s aquarium, and will resurface at Atlantis this spring for a live concert…

But you don’t need the frenzy of a Justin Bieber crowd to liven up Atlantis. The resort’s relentless vim is a guaranteed magnet for any kid…

For the rest of the story, visit http://www.torontosun.com/travel/international/2010/05/17/13973851.html

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Exuma: How to Swim in a Bay of Wild Pigs

I’ve had a taste of the sailing life, and I have to say it’s more sweet than salty. After our Piper plane dropped down softly on the deserted tarmac at Staniel Cay, Exuma, Bahamas, our taxi drove us along a winding road to a wonderful little waterside gem called the Staniel Cay Yacht Club (SCYC). While its name suggests men in starched white pants and crested navy blazers, this hideaway marina is anything but a typical yacht club. Its nine oceanside cottages painted pastel green, blue and pink surround a little pool and deck chairs, with waves crashing the shore below its windows. Each cottage comes with a little boat called a whaler as part of the package. Guests travel the island on golf carts and bicycles. Boats both huge and relatively small are tied up at the marina. And a bar and restaurant alongside the dock is everybody’s favourite.

I step up on the porch and engage in instant chat with visiting sailors. Mostly retired folk who own their own boats, they’ve disembarked from their sailboats  to get a bite to eat, do laundry and check email.

“Did you know,” says a surprised woman of about 65 whose eyes are fixed on her computer, “that a volcano erupted in Iceland?”

“Yes,” I answer. “Last week. Caused quite a disruption.”

“Hm,” she replies. “Isn’t that amazing. This is the first I’ve heard about it.”

Ah… the disconnected bliss of sailing.

SCYC owner David Hocher

Inside I order breakfast from Rhonda, an expressive local waitress with a lovely scarf wrapped around her head.  My choice: two eggs over easy with a side of bacon and grits, and the best sweet toast I’ve ever tasted. On the table is a placemat that draws out a map of the Exuma Cays, a long stretch of 350 miniscule islands SCYC owner David Hocher offers to help us tour.

We hop into one of his whalers and he navigates the ever changing shades of sapphire blue water with an ease of  man who’s grown up in the cays. Indeed, Hocher was raised in this remote place by his father, a pilot and hard worker who partnered with another in the 1960s to help introduce tourism to the islands of Exuma. He started the hotel, the marina, a bar and restaurant, a water system for Staniel Cay, and… wait for it… an airline! Known as Watermaker Air, their central business is transporting guests and cargo direct from Fort Lauderdale to Staniel Cay. With his father now gone, the operation of the whole thing has passed to David.

We weave in and out of cays, narrowly missing sandbars, sliding over water that’s so many shades of blue it’s impossible to describe it. Pure white sandbars are everywhere, and we pass other boaters who’ve beached their crafts and gone for a warm swim in the crystal clear water. The rule, Hocher says, is that if you can’t see the bottom you do not swim. Period. Blue holes, as they’re called, contain sea creatures we’d likely not want to encounter. But blue holes are few—most what you swim in is only about six to eight feet deep, and you can spot the lovely bottom easily.

We make a series of stops along our tour. Our first, at Little Pipe Cay (I think!) we snorkel. Sea grass is swaying softly, and blue and purple fish are scurrying around the coral. We enter a sea cave that’s deep, but with ledges we can pull ourselves up on to walk around in our flippers.

Travis Snelling swims with the sharks.

Next stop is at Compass Cay Marina where the nurse sharks are swimming. Members of our crew hop in the water to feed them hot dog wieners. I decline, with thanks–not the hot dogs, but the swimming. Though nurse sharks are apparently relatively harmless—their teeth aren’t positioned well for biting—I’m taking no chances. I’ll snap the pictures so I can live to write it.

Stopping to swim with the sharks is popular among sailors, too, judging by the number of old buoys on which they’ve painted their boats’ names and tacked to the trees around the marina.

Olga Petrycka feeds a wild pig.

At yet another cay, David tosses food on the beach and a wild pig—yes pig—comes running. Our crew again hops in the water to pet and feed the pig. Usually there are more than one, but today we settle for this single blubbery, out-of-place creature we affectionaly call ‘Wilbur’.

Our final stop of this bizarre day is Bitter Guava Cay, where massive, wild, ugly iguanas slither out of the bush and beg for more food. It’s a good thing we’re touring these islands with a local who’s thought ahead to bring iguana and wild pig-friendly sustenance. We humans don’t really need to end up as a wild thing’s dinner.

Our day ends, sadly, back at SCYC, where Hocher treats us to some crispy conch—pronounced conk—fritters. Then we taxi it back to the airport, where our private plane is waiting to ferry us back to Sandals on Great Exuma.

We hate to leave so early, as the sailors are snapping open their local Kalick beers and, like modern-day pirates, are swapping seaman stories. As one guest says to Hocher: “A night in your bar is like being in a movie.”

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Exploring Bahamas Exumas in my Private Plane

His name was Stephen and he was my pilot.

He trundled into the Exuma airport late, a last-minute replacement for another errant pilot named Roland who somehow muddled the date he’d been hired to fly our little group from Great Exuma, Bahamas to the tip of the Exuma Cays for an extraordinary day of shark-feeding, boating, eating and swimming with the wild pigs…. But more on that later.

First, our flight.

Stephen put the Bahamian rush on prepping the plane while we sipped instant coffee across the road in the charismatic airport pub. Unaccustomed to private plane travel—usually, I’m strictly Coach—I was a mix of stunned, thrilled and made-silly by the effortlessness of what came next. We were ushered fast out the terminal door without security, across the tarmac of the tiny airport, past the massive American Airlines jets and tiny propped two-seaters, to our little Piper, a five-person-plus-the-pilots plane that I swear could fly sideways without any effort by its driver.

We took off equally fast—and again, practically sideways—then humped and bumped our way over the sea and along the long stretch out of the chain of Bahamian islands called the Exumas.

What a lovely sight are those islands. Bahamas has about 700 of them in all, and only about 30 of them are inhabited. They’re low and scrubby green, with pure white sand surrounding them. But it’s the water that you can’t tear your eyes from — so many shades of sea blue it’s impossible to name them. My group’s leader, Olga, representing Bahamian tourism, calls a particularly clear shade of water-mixed-with-white-sand “gin clear”. I think she ought to be the writer.

As our private plane yaws and bounces its way toward Staniel Cay, our destination, I lock my head against the seatback and stare firmly at the horizon—a desperate attempt to stave off nausea. But I do move my eyes sideways once or twice to catch fascinated glimpses of the infrequent and remote beach homes below owned by the impossibly rich. Faith Hill’s all-white estate makes me think of a Bahamian castle.

There’s a real Bahamian castle on an island next door, however. One Olga says may once have been owned by the local drug mafia. These islands, she says, were once absolutely chock full of drug lords—and before that, pirates. They’d set up illicit shop on these isolated isles and either ply their drug wares or, in earlier decades, steal booty from passing ships. I’ll be visiting a pirate museum on this trip, so more on that later.

Stephen soon touched the plane down softly on the runway at Staniel Cay, a smooth landing that was in surprisingly stark contrast to the lumpy, windy ride in the air. He threw open the door, helped us out, and we all nauseously wobbled toward the chainlink fence that led us out of the airport and into the waiting mouths of sharks… stay tuned. Soon, I’ll fill you in on the rest of the day’s story.

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I Have a Butler in The Bahamas

Whomever invented the concept of a butler deserves a lot more praise and recognition than this genius is currently receiving. I mean really… a butler? Someone to serve you drinks, iron your clothes and colour-code your undies? Is there anything better in… well, the Bahamas?

My butler’s name is Trudy-Ann. She’s part of the package at Sandals Emerald Bay, a swank new couples-only resort on the island of Exuma in the Bahamas. Reachable direct now from Toronto on Air Canada, Exuma is home to a lovely, gentle and genteel set of Island people, one of whom—for two glorious days at least—is my dedicated butler.

Here’s how it works: I enter the hotel weary and travel worn, hot from the humidity and slightly surprised by the experience that is the luggage carousel at the Exuma airport—a trailer dragged about by an ATV that screeches to a stop at the airport’s outdoor exit: a chain link fence. I haul my luggage past the metal gate and into a waiting cab and drive a brief distance on the left—as in, opposite to right—side of the road to the sanctuary that is Sandals, directly into the welcoming arms of Trudy-Ann, my very own butler.

Trudy-Ann effortlessly offers me cool, damp towels to wipe my face, hands me a fruity drink, guides me swiftly through the winding paths of the property and delivers me safe and sound to my enormous, ocean-view room, second drink at the ready and with an offer to open my luggage and unpack my clothing.

I decline, of course. I am Canadian. But while I’m working up the courage to ask her maybe… well, perhaps… if she could please, um… point the way to the iron so I can unwrinkle my clothes for dinner… she offers to do the ironing for me.

I am in love. Not with Trudy-Ann, but with Sandals’ concept of a butler. I’ll have to see about hiring me one once I’m back in Canada and fabulously wealthy from, obviously, winning the lottery… which is what I’d have to do to ever afford a butler.

In the meantime, here in Bahamas at Sandals, with my day-to-day trials and tribs turned over to Trudy-Ann—and with my kids safely back at home in Toronto with my husband—it’s time for me to explore the Exumas.

More later.

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Bahama-Mama Prep

Twenty-four hours to go ’til I fly off to the Bahamas–research for my Family Fare travel column in the Toronto Sun. The schedule is packed but fun.

First, an am flight on WestJet, Toronto direct to Nassau. Then a quick lunch at the Compass Point Restaurant (www.CompassPointBeachResort.com) before jetting off to Georgetown in the Exumas.

Compass Point Beach Resort, Nassau, Bahamas

While the whole day ought to be spectacular, I’m especially looking forward to checking out Compass Point, a sweet, colourful little Boutique hideaway only 10 minutes from the Nassau Airport. A shame these hidden gems are always so hidden… this spot at least looks sweet, with tiny cabins built right on the beach and painted pink, green, red and blue. Viewed from the internet, the inn’s whole aesthetic makes you want to ditch the Blackberry and roll your pants up.

The patio at Compass Point

Our agenda allows us a few hours for noshing at Compass Point’s restaurant, hopefully on its outdoor patio… check out where we’ll be eating:

Around 4 pm we’ll mosey back to the airport to catch a 50-minute SkyBahamas flight to Georgetown in the Exumas. Destination: Sandals Emerald Bay (see my previous blog for an overview.) Then it’s off to dinner at Il Cielo, then drinks at The Drunken Duck… now this ought to be interesting.

Monday morning, work starts in earnest–at lease as earnest as it gets for a travel writer. We’re boating off to Staniel Cay for breakfast at the Staniel Cay Yacht Club, then a water-based tour of the Exuma Cays. Can’t wait… better take my Gravol!

More soon… direct from The Bahamas.

Family Fare by Lori Knowles appears Sundays in the travel section of the Toronto Sun. (www.TorontoSun.com/travel)

 

 

 

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Prepping for a Stay at Sandals Emerald Bay

Sandals Emerald Bay, Bahamas

I’ve just spent a lovely afternoon browsing through the press material for my upcoming stay at Sandals Emerald Bay, Great Exuma, Bahamas. It’s Sandals newest resort, having debuted in February 2010… and it’s enticing.

An overview of the property pre-visit:

• Sandals Emerald Bay is a 500-acre resort on one mile of beach on Great Exuma, the largest of 360 Bahamian islands.
• Onsite: an 18-hole golf course by The Shark: Greg Norman. Plus a marina and 183 Beachfront rooms. Did I mention they’re BEACHFRONT?
• Most compelling: Sandals Emerald Bay is its first all-butler resort. Which means… I’ll have my own butler. At. My. Service. I’ve only had this once before–aboard Cunard’s  Queen Mary 2–and trust me, it is luxurious.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Sandals Emerald Bay has a gym. A very expansive gym. With treadmills on which I can train for the upcoming Sporting Life 10K in May I’ve ludicrously signed up for.  No lounging on the beach sipping mohitos for this travel writer. I’ll be running Great Exuma.

More soon. Lori

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