Our Cruise, Day 5

Day 5

Our last day, and the one we were probably most excited about. Nassau, Bahamas. And the Atlantis Water Park. Atlantis is a MASSIVE resort built on a beautiful island, and they have an awesome water park in the backyard. Jess was really excited about this one, and so was I, but first, we had to fix something.

You see, Jess has always been afraid of aggressive water slides. As she tells it, she was never able to go on them when she was young, and she never got over the fear. Well this place had a lot of slides like that, and Jess decided she wanted to try them out. So she was nervous, but she had her husband with her who would go down first to make sure it was safe. :)

We got to the water park early on, and as soon as the rides were open, we got in line for the “Leap of Faith”, a massive drop down a long chute that then goes *through* a shark tank. It’s really impressive, and Jess was nervous, but intent on defeating her fear. So we got in line, got to the top, and I went first. Everything went fine for me, and so Jess got in position, steadied herself, and then took the plunge!

From Caribbean Trip

My brave girl conquering her fear.

I managed to get a shot of her just as she was coming out of the ride. She was laughing and excited, and kept saying “I did it, I did it!” over and over. I was really happy for her, and I could feel her shaky adrenaline when I gave her a congratulatory hug. But she was glad she did it and thought it was a lot of fun.

From Caribbean Trip

After that, there was no stopping her. We went on this ride called ‘The Abyss’ right afterwards, which was the same kind of ride, but totally in the dark. At the end, it dropped us into a ‘hidden’ grotto with awesome aquariums filled with exotic amazon fish. Jess was all excited because if she hadn’t done the ride, she would have missed it.

After that, we did all the rides in the park, over and over. We especially liked their ‘lazy’ river, which had stretches with rapids and a long wave pool that we went through several times. My personal favorite was right next to the ‘leap of faith’ one. It was a twisty ride on a tube, and it went through the shark tank more slowly so you could see the fishes and get a good look at them.

From Caribbean Trip

After a long day of water partying, we took a tour, backwards, through the aquariums in the resort, and we nailed the timing, because it was feeding time. They had a massive tank with a couple of manta rays that would do slow, underwater loop-de-loops when their food showed up. There were a lot of other highlights, not the least of which was the style. Since the resort was called Atlantis, they had ruins in all of their tanks that looked really nice. There were also lots of lobsters, jellyfish, and other interesting sea life. Very cool.

The resort was very nice looking, too. They had several glass sculptures by Chihuly, there, too. Really beautiful ones. There were columns adorned with water accents and slowly spinning granite spheres among the paths. I really liked the place.

We picked up a couple of souvenirs on the way back to the boat. Some rum cake for work, some magnets for the Florida family, and a Conch shell for me, continuing my tradition of getting ‘containers’ from all the countries I visited. This one held fish. :)

Then another evening on board the boat, with food, music, and sleep.

Day 6 was our debarkation day, where we got off the boat. The one interesting note from this day was that if you were able to cary your own luggage, you could debark first, but everyone had to go through customs, so it would be a long day, and everyone just wanted to get home. So they gathered all the self-carying people all in the auditorium, had us wait until customs was ready, and then said, ‘okay, everyone, go!’ There was very nearly a stampede to get out there first. Jess and I, more restrained, just found our route and quickly made our way off the boat, through customs, and on to the mainland. Mom Swanson picked us up, and off we went.

So that was our vacation.

-N