Day 1

Saturday was travel day, with the changing of planes twice and lengthy layovers, it took us the whole day to get to Grand Bahama Island. It’s a good thing we got through Immigration and Customs fairly quickly, or I might have gone a little insane. Next we hopped in a van that seemed to be waiting just for the six of us (I’m a little delusional at this point) and headed to our hotel, The Ritz at Taino Beach.

On the way we were surprised to see that the island doesn’t look like a brochure. I know, what a shocker! Well I kind of expected this, I mean duh, everything can’t be beautiful, but that didn’t really prepare me for what I was seeing out the window. Sure it was green but mostly just looked like a bunch of small bushes. A lot of areas seriously looked like a giant had come along and took a stroll, literally smashing huge areas and knocking trees into other trees. Realistically, hurricane damage was evident and I assume there just wasn’t the time or money to fix anything besides maybe the buildings. I did see a lot of buildings with damage, some lots that had been reduced to ruins, and some half-built.

There wasn’t much we could do when we got there; it was almost dark by the time we got all our stuff in the room. In search of soda to go with our dinner (chicken alfredo that we cooked in the room with food brought in our suitcases) we found something that we had been expecting; four 12 oz. cans of soda for $6.00 from the hotel gift shop. Wow that was some good Hawaiian Punch!