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	The Winchester Paston & Portsmouth Railroad Corporation


			Bahamas Cruise (February 15-18, 2008)

Nancy joined me and the Childress & Cunningham group for a 3-night cruise aboard the "Sovereign of the Seas", to the Bahamas.

Enjoy the following brief slideshow; it is an incomplete photographic record, since I did not have my large camera along with me all the time. Hopefully, I will acquire copies of photos taken by others, and be able to give a fuller description later.

Boarding the ship

With a few hours to go before we must be aboard, Nancy and I hang out for a while on the dock. Yes, this is a large ship!

The Centrum Stair

This is the sight that greeted us as we first came aboard - the "Centrum Stair" which connects the 4th to 7th floors. At the bottom, in front of the glass elevators, there was a piano and violin trio that performed every night.

Buffet Time!

After a very long day of travel to get to the dock, we were extremely hungry. So we hurried up to the Windjammer, the restaurant on deck 11 which served a wonderful buffet both for breakfast and for lunch.
They never stopped feeding us.
Ever.

Mustering Gulls

We had to go through a mandatory evacuation drill which had us each don our life jackets and then proceed to our "Muster Station", which is the location on deck 7 where we had been assigned to lifeboats, according to Stateroom number. This photo was taken from the dock in Nassau - I just like the gulls and the clouds and the intense light.

Closest thing to a navy

Our guide for the tour of Nassau told us that this little patrol vessel was the "closest thing" the Bahamas had to a military! It is only useful for intercepting drug and pirate traffic, and while we walked past we saw that they were doing extensive maintenance on it, grinding out rust in the chains and stenciling off the area where the name would be painted. Compare it to our ship, at left!

First stop on our guided tour of Nassau was Fort Fincastle, which overlooks the docks where no less than 4 major cruise ships had set their anchors!

Street Vendors

The street near Fort Fincastle was lined with vendors, selling all kinds of souvenirs... and each booth selling approximately the same items! This island's only water tower rises in the background; we are on top of "the hill", which divides the island into two sides.

Nancy and I pose at the Queen's Staircase, which comes down from the water tower through a man-made cleft in the rock. The waterfall is also man-made, but it is a beautiful and serene alley, a haven of cooler air in the heat of the day.

Further down the island, Fort Charlotte also overlooks the bay, with our ship in the distance. This fort was built in anticipation of a Napoleonic invasion that never came.

Green Parrot

After the forts, we went to Ardastra Gardens; the name comes from the Latin roots, "ardor" which means labor and "astra" which means the stars - it is a "labor unto the stars". This is a botanical garden combined with a zoo, as there are many species in cages to see, plus a few that roam free, such as this friendly parrot.

Big Bird

Another free-roaming bird let me approach and take this shot; I haven't yet figured out what type of bird he is, but I don't think I can add him to my lifelist since he is not a wild specimen.

Marching Flamingoes!

We were treated to a show, of flamingoes that have been trained to respond to marching orders! "Forward!" "Right Face!" As a flocking bird, they don't all have to understand the command, just enough of them to get the group to do the right thing. There was one proud fellow, though, that held his snooty nose high and refused to go along with the crowd.

Flamingo Flock

They showed no fear and paraded around the circle at the command of their "commander", giving us all a very close-up look at their radiant plumage.

Another pink flamingo!

Flamingo for a day! They called for volunteers, and there wasn't any way that Nancy could fail to be selected, wearing such a pink shirt!

Tree in the Verdure

We could have spent all day in Ardastra Gardens; the tour only gave us 45 minutes. Paths wander all around and through vignettes such as this.

Banyan Tree

You might need to forget that you are seeing this photo, as it might be a candidate for use in an upcoming Arbor Day card. You do know when Arbor Day is, don't you?

Parrotheads

We might look like a pair of Jimmy Buffet fans, what with a parrot on my head!

A Kiss

Who can blame him? This cockatiel gives my girlfriend a kiss, and I suppress my jealousy...

Crack Conch!

After the tour, we invite some newly-made friends from North Carolina (who had been on the same tour) to join us for lunch at Imperial, a little restaurant that was recommended by Nancy's friend who had lived in the Bahamas. There we ordered the Crack Conch, which is the squiggly stuff that lives inside a big conch shell, fried up and served with fries and cole slaw. It was GREAT!

Straw Market wares

Walking back to the ship, we could not avoid the Straw Market. Here, vendors beckon out to all the tourists, sure that they can help the visitors find just the thing they need, since what they need is definitely hanging somewhere on the tall racks to either side! Here, an avalanche of purses looms over us - somehow, it reminds me of mom's closets...

Straw Market outdoors

Row after row of the same merchandise, just different faces selling it to you, for different prices, as it doesn't really matter what the asking price is. You must haggle, a critical shopping skill which I lack. But Nancy talked a shirt vendor down from $15 to $12 to $10, and got a nice beach cover-up. For contrast, I asked as we walked in, "so, where is the guy's section?"

Conch and Starfish

One could even buy souvenirs right off the dock, as this man pulled up in his boat to show what he has probably caught himself. We discovered later (while kayaking across the shallows) how easy it is to find both starfish and conch, and since conch is such a local delicacy I have little doubt that he caught all these live and eaten them, though I wonder how you get the conch out of his shell without cracking it. We also learned on our kayaking adventure that the starfish are a predator of the conch - they eject their stomach into the conch's shell and digest it in-situ, then retract their stomach back into their bodies!

Next port-of-call...

At the end of the day we return to the ship; tonight will be the formal Captain's Dinner, so we must shower and change before the 6 PM dinner seating. Afterwards, there will be a comedy/magic show in the Follies Theater, and other night-life activities, much of which don't appeal to us since we don't drink or gamble. It is fun just to hang out with people from our group and talk, about all the various things we each did with our day in Nassau, and what we intend to do on Coco Cay.

I don't have photos of Coco Cay, because I didn't want to take my camera onto its sandy beach. Nancy took some photos, and other folks might have shots taken at the formal dinner, so if I ever get copies of those for myself I will add them here. As mentioned, Nancy and I did a kayak excursion on Sunday morning, which took us across the shallows between Coco Cay and another small private island, this one owned by Carnival and called "Margaritaville". The real names of the islands were something like "Big Stirrup" and "Little Stirrup", and both Nancy and I wished they hadn't renamed them. After kayaking, we swam and layed out for a bit, and grabbed lunch along with some of the others from our group. Then, we went back out in the water, and discovered that Larry had brought snorkeling gear that he had purchased for his family. He offered it to us, and saved us $29 each for the rental! It meant that we didn't go out to the more colorful reef that the paid tour visits, but we found something very thrilling - a large stingray! He sat on the sand, under about 5 feet of water, letting us swim right over top of him, looking down, so close that we could have touched him! We did not touch him, though. Also, a pair of silver angelfish, with black tips on their dorsal and ventral fins, rushed past at one point.

What else did we do? Well, there was the rock-climbing wall aboard the ship - Nancy and I both made it to the top, and rang the bell. Then, there were all the birds: we each added to our lifelists such birds as the Bananaquit, which greeted us on Coco Cay at 9 AM. And the Magnificent Frigatebird, who hovered over us as we swam for about 15 minutes, aloft on the breeze. Pelicans, both brown and white, who patrolled the docks in Florida and soared past our ship's windows at frequent intervals. Boat-tailed grackles who roosted in the palms by the dock, calling out and letting us watch from below as he sang his songs and did unusual gestures with his beak - and the brown females who let us see their strikingly different plumage in full. The ruddy turnstone, in winter plumage, who found the lunch buffet on Coco Cay to be truly "all you can eat". The palm warbler, who pumped his tail feathers vigorously for us.

What did we not do? We did not get seasick. Well, okay, so Nancy almost did - she had to get up and leave the first night, during the comedian's performance, for a little while, and she used up her whole supply of Dramamine pills. But I got over my dizzy feeling the first night, and was fine for the rest of the trip. We also did not get sunburned! Well, okay, so I missed a few spots on the back of my hands and the outside of my elbow, where the SPF-50 didn't get applied; these are now red and sensitive to the hot water in the shower. But the weather was great, with enough clouds and shade so that one did not burn up during the day, but with temperatures that were always comfortable in shorts and T-shirts.

created by Michael R. Rountree

Bahamas Cruise

(February 15-18, 2008)