"" Writer's Wanderings: Cruising the Bahamas--Great Exuma

Saturday, November 20, 2021

Cruising the Bahamas--Great Exuma

 The Exumas, a district of the Bahamas consisting of 365 small cays and islands. The largest island is Great Exuma and is about 37 miles long. As we approach the island, we question whether we might hear another announcement that we won't be going ashore. The waves and wind seem to be just as bad as at San Salvador. This time we aren't concerned as we had not planned to go ashore other than to maybe walk around a bit rather than shuttle to the beach. The excursions offered, while tempting, were a bit pricey and we're trying to save our pennies for the Grand Voyage in January.

We hear the announcement as we're finishing our breakfast. It might be a rocky ride but the tenders will run today. Bob's brother and sister-n-law decide to chance it. They'd like to try to see the grotto where the Bond movies, "Thunderball" and "Never Say Never Again", were filmed. We will hear later that it was a really rough ride in to shore and back and unfortunately, they didn't get a chance to see the grotto.

The big draw for Great Exuma was the swimming pigs. I would have loved to see them--not swim with them as the excursion was planned--but we didn't want to spend the money just to go and look. I have heard lots of good feedback for the excursion from those who took a bathing suit and jumped in with the furry critters.

Instead of a shore visit, we went up to the paddle ball courts and started hitting balls back and forth again feeling a little more successful this time in hitting the balls over the net and in the court. Two ladies came to hit balls on the other court and eventually asked if we wanted to try to play a game. One of them had asked the fitness director to show her how the game was played and scored. The score is done like tennis and we improvised what we weren't sure of. The bottom line, we had a fun time and the one lady who is a tennis player was a whole lot better than we were. It was a lot of fun through.


On the Promenade Deck we did our 3.35 times around to get a mile of walking in. While we did, we could see the tenders bobbing in the water as they loaded and unloaded their passengers and made the trek back and forth in the choppy water. You have to really appreciate the crew that man those tenders. They bobbed all day long. 

Just a little before five, we dressed for dinner as we wanted to attend a talk by celebrity photographer, Marc Serota. He has photographed a lot of G.O.A.T.s and showed many of his pictures of Lebron James and other great athletes that he has featured in his new book, G.O.A.T.s, Greatest of All-Time. 

We hurried to the specialty restaurant, Prego, to meet our traveling companions. The restaurant features great Italian dishes but quite a variety of other entrees as well. I had veal al limone and Bob had veal parmigiana. I would love to show you pictures of dinner but we dove into our meals before I thought of it. 

The evening entertainment was Crystal On Broadway, The Show. It was music from three different Broadway shows from producer Kevin McCollum, Rent, Something Rotten! and the revival of West Side Story. It was excellent. 

On the way back to our stateroom, we poked our heads into a music venues for a few minutes that featured piano music and another, a guitar. We were very sleepy. I was relaxing more and more and sleeping solidly through the night in a comfy bed that rocked gently. So grateful to be on a ship again.

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