Many of us here in the Northwest have the dark, wet, winter weather to thank for the travels we end up planning to balance off the gloom. Even though we are in the thick of it right now, even if you don’t go anywhere, dreaming and planning is its own method of escape.
Late January marked a year since my husband had a life-changing accident while out bicycling and a resulting traumatic brain injury. January is also his birthday month – a time when the island is rainy and gray, so we typically have a fairly quiet, low-key celebration. He’s been wanting to get out and experience something besides physical and mental recovery, so I planned a trip for the midwinter break to an area that I had researched a few years ago and kept in my Notes app.
I originally began the research by Google-ing simple statements like, “best place in the world to swim with dolphins,” “best wild animal experiences in the world,” and so on. The Bahamas popped up multiple times for different types of animal encounters, which led me to plot out different Bahamian islands on a map. My next thought was, “Wouldn’t it be great if there was a tour company that took visitors to all of these islands so that you wouldn’t have to figure out how to get to each one, or take on the expense of doing so one at a time.” That then led me to inquire from Google if any company did such a thing. Bam! They do! Then it’s a process of figuring out who is reliable and legitimate.
The plan:
- Swim with wild manatees in Crystal River, Florida
- Swim with dolphins on Blue Lagoon Island near Nassau, Bahamas
- Visit the swimming pigs who live on Big Major Cay
- Visit the wild iguanas who live on Bitter Guana Cay
- Swim with wild nurse sharks on Compass Cay
The following is a map from a company I will reference later, and the pigs, iguanas, and sharks can be found on the islands below.
By the way, before I get any further I feel it’s vital to express this: In the sea of photos and experiences you can find on various forms of social media, I think it’s really important to mention that not everything is always perfect, beautiful, easy, or enviable in the lives of the people posting travel photos, family vacations, pretty places, and pretty selfies. Everything in our lives is certainly not peachy keen, and some days we are barely holding things together for various reasons. I do not post the following memories to stir up any kind of negative or envious emotion in readers. I love living vicariously through other people’s travels, which often motivates me to keep dreaming, planning, and adventuring. May the following photos do the same for you and create only positive ripple effects in your life.
We landed in Tampa, Florida, around midnight and headed to Budget to pick up our rental car, only to learn that all cars had been rented out for the night and none would be back until 5 AM (even though I had reserved it a month ahead of time). Thank goodness for Uber! Within minutes we had a driver to take us 75 miles north to Crystal River, home of the wild manatees, which was a blessing in disguise. Aside from the additional cost, how nice to “have to” be driven to a place we had never been in the middle of the night, tired and bleary-eyed.
Our heads didn’t hit the pillows until about 3 AM, and my alarm awakened us after only about 3 hours of sleep. A “taxi,” a local lady with a car, drove us the short distance to Fun 2 Dive, where we pulled on wetsuits and boarded a small riverboat bound for manatee central.
According to Fun 2 Dive’s website,
Crystal River Florida is the only place in the United States where you can legally swim with these amazing and gentle creatures right in their own natural habitat. Crystal River, FL boasts the largest concentration of manatees in the world and since 1995 Fun 2 Dive has been the leader in bringing visitors face to face with these gentle giants.
The boat ride was surprisingly short, maybe 12 minutes, and before we knew it we were being told to don our masks and snorkels and slide into the shallow river. If you’re a map person, as I am, here’s some orientation.
The air temperature was about 45-50° and the water temperature was around 72°. The manatees like it here because it’s about the warmest water they can find that stays a consistent temperature in the winter. Our guide, Storm, explained that if the water feels cold to us, it feels even colder to the manatees. While they appear to be very blubberous, he said they actually have fewer fat reserves than we do, and this is the warmest water they can find.
According to the US Fish and Wildlife Service,
The manatee season at Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge begins in mid-November and ends in late March. This is when the manatee sanctuaries go into effect. During the winter months, manatees come to the springs of Crystal River NWR to conserve the energy necessary to survive the cold Gulf waters.
There are more than 70 springs in Crystal River, which release over 580 million gallons of new, fresh, crystal-clear water every day, but “warm” is not how I’d describe the water when we slid off the boat.
Within seconds we were seeing manatee shapes come in and out of our sight in the deep, murky water. Storm told us we must stay flat on the surface – no legs dangling down and accidentally kicking the gentle, big-bodied buddies below. He demonstrated the most effective method of propulsion, a rolling doggy paddle below our torsos, which we used to motate from the deeper, dark, murky water to the shallow, crystal-clear water. And just like that, we were hovering over a moving community of manatees inches below us.
Some manatees were still and sleeping, some mothers were swimming with their calves, some were curious and made eye contact and even physical contact, some were simply passing by, and some were rising to the surface for air. They are used to seeing hundreds of snorkelers by the hour, so they had no problem going about their lives with us literally on top of them. The main rule – no touching. Well, we couldn’t touch them, but they were allowed to touch us.
We were originally on a later morning tour but it was a little too close to when we needed to head back to Tampa for our flight to Nassau, and the dawn tours didn’t have three spaces for us so we had to separate. I went on a boat that left at 7 AM and my husband and son went on a 7:30 boat. The guides from both tours took photos that customers could purchase afterward, and we didn’t buy any (though somehow I was sent all of Storm’s photos without purchasing them, which is how I ended up with the ones above), but I took some photos of some of the best ones. Ignore the watermarks and you’ll get a good idea of the amazing things we experienced up close and personal…
I love that the manatee swim wasn’t some half-hour thing. We swam about as long as we could before hypothermia set in – about 1 hour and 45 minutes. I didn’t even realize how cold I was until I climbed back onto the boat and my arms and legs started shaking. Storm mentioned that cold mornings are the best because the water feels warm compared to the air; it’s the hot, sunny days that make the water feel freezing.
A woman on the boat next to me told me she got a good video while swimming behind me, and she AirDropped it onto my phone. How fortunate!
It was worth every minute in the water with those sweet creatures. Houses were hovering over the water all around us, and I don’t know if residents are allowed to slip in the water and swim with the manatees anytime, but if so, it would be amazing to rent an Airbnb there for a few days and watch and swim with them as often as possible. Something to research.
After some hot chocolate on the boat, we were back to shore, back in the van, and back to headquarters to change into dry clothes and peruse photos and merchandise. From there we got a quick, cheap Uber to the hotel, ate the continental breakfast we had gotten and saved in our room before the tour began, and met our next Uber driver to get back to Tampa Airport. On the way, he told us about a horrific accident he had been in the year before – a boat ran directly into his head. A moment after, his jaw was separated from his skull and hanging out to the side of his face. He had quite the stories of growing up in the area near Crystal Springs, and described experiences with all kinds of wild animals that live there.
Normally when we travel, we like to see the real areas, not the tourist traps and tchotchke stores that are meaningless to the local people and their traditions and culture. This time around, I decided we should stick close to main cities, just to be on the safe side considering my husband’s continuing recovery. Of the nearly 700 islands in the Bahamas, about 30 are inhabited and it would be amazing to go out and stay on a few of them – Harbour Island, the Exumas, Eleuthera, the Abacos, etc. But I didn’t want to take a chance, so I decided Nassau would be our jumping-off point for most of the trip.
First, a satellite view of the Bahamas.
Astronaut Scott Kelly called the Bahamas “the most beautiful place from space.”
When embarking on the planning, I didn’t know much about the Bahamas aside from the animal adventures I had researched a few years back. I wanted to make sure of the right season to visit each type of animal – according to various sites, February is a great month for all of them – and avoid hurricane season, which is June to November. When I began researching again last month, I quickly learned that there is a gigantic, looming, sprawling resort on Paradise Island, a little island just a few minutes north of Nassau by bridge, called Atlantis. Anyone who watches TV has probably seen the ads, but I hadn’t…
Aside from its five separate luxury accommodations on the property with different names – the towers of The Royal, the family-friendly Coral, the Harborside Resort villas, the luxury Cove, and the residential-style Reef – that vary in price from $650-$1,200 per night (yikes!!), it also has a 141-acre waterpark called Aquaventure, over a dozen amazing pools, and 5 miles of white-sand beaches.
Atlantis would never normally be on my radar, but this would be a different trip for us. We would not be staying on one of the more remote Out Islands below, as we would have preferred before my husband’s ordeal.
So with Nassau planned as our main base, and after researching day trip possibilities, prices, and ideas for endless hours, I happened upon some threads that tipped me off to a really great deal. There is a hotel right across from the Atlantis entrance called Comfort Suites. It’s literally a 3-minute walk away. If you stay at Comfort Suites, every person in your group gets a free daily pass to the Atlantis waterpark, beaches, and grounds each day. Even though the waterpark closes at 5 or 6 PM depending on the day, you can still hang out at the massive resort in the evening with the free pass. Comfort Suites is $270/night, which is considerably more than we pay nightly for Airbnbs when we travel, but it isn’t a bad price in the Bahamas. Especially considering that if you were to stay elsewhere and buy a day pass to the Atlantis waterpark, it costs a whopping $200 per person per day! Comfort Suites also offers another deal – buy 3 nights and get a 4th night free. Not to mention they have a continental breakfast included each morning, which isn’t the case at a lot of hotels. And what Atlantis charges for food if you get a daily meal plan per person is exorbitant – $99 per day per person. Even more, paying per meal per person is $36 for breakfast and $56 for dinner. While Comfort Suites does add taxes, “other charges,” and a hotel service fee to the total charge for staying there, it is still worth it, as we found out.
Our plane landed in Nassau and we got one of the many taxis waiting outside the airport to take us to Comfort Suites on Paradise Island. We arrived on a cloudy day, but this is what it looks like in the sun.
After getting settled in our room and taking a little while to relax, we headed over to the Atlantis monstrosity across the street. Opulence is the word that comes to mind when entering the magnificently huge resort, which cost over $800 million to build…
Super hungry after two long days of traveling, we ordered some way-too-expensive mushroom burgers and fries at one of the many take-out places outside along the sprawling waterpark. You’re basically a sitting duck when it comes to food on Paradise Island, which we knew ahead of time, but there was no other option. Several years ago we visited one of the Cook Islands called Aitutaki and read ahead of time about the price of food, so I packed half of my suitcase with bags of rice, beans, and energy bars. I was tempted to do the same thing on this trip, but disliked the memory of eating so many back-to-back rice-and-bean meals that I decided against it this time. It was a very windy afternoon and we barely kept our buns from flying off our burgers while sitting among a sea of blue lounge chairs by the large, warm, shallow, family pool below the main towers.
With only a few hours left in the day to enjoy swimming and watersliding, we doffed our clothes and began exploring the Mayan Temple in our swimsuits and trunks. The air was lovely and warm – just about the most perfect air – not too hot, not too cold. Except for the wind on wet skin after getting out of each new pool we tried.
It had been a lot of traveling for my husband, and my son wasn’t moving at his usual speed either. After a little swimming and a waterslide or two, they decided to meander slowly back through the resort and toward our hotel to rest.
I opted to continue “waterparking” even though the weather was getting a little less inviting by the minute. The waterslide lines were almost nonexistent, and I wondered if I would ever get the same chance to ride repeatedly with such little wait in between if the next days happened to be sunny and hot.
The plan for our next day was the central hinge of the whole trip – a jet boat tour 75 miles out to the Exuma Cays to visit wild iguanas, swim with wild nurse sharks, and swim with wild island pigs. I had researched this extensively and I knew a few things going into it:
- It would cost a lot more to stay out at one of those far islands and then do the tour, because the animal islands are spread out and hard to access without a personal boat, so this was the best option (or so I thought) to see it all without staying out there.
- A jet boat tour could be canceled at any time due to rough seas.
- Lots of tour companies are trying to replicate the true experience of these islands by going to other, closer islands and “faking” it by paying locals to either bring in or raise pigs, iguanas, and other marine life.
We got a message that evening that our tour had been canceled due to weather. I had planned ahead for this and followed the advice to book the tour early on in our trip in case we’d have to reschedule. Would we like to reschedule it two days later? Definitely. So the following morning we finally got to sleep in for the first time on the trip. We ate breakfast at the hotel, grateful not to pay for an out-of-pocket meal. When you buy food anywhere, VAT and 15% tip are automatically added, so another 25% goes on top of the bill with each purchase.
The day was crystal clear with deep blue skies and lovely warm sunshine. Back to Atlantis we went for our free waterpark bracelets, ready to explore every aquatic adventure it had to offer.
I’m thankful that Atlantis has enough places with shade that I didn’t feel I would fry to a crisp in the sunshine during a full day of playing in the water.
Dinnertime – a search for food that wouldn’t break the bank. I had read in many different threads online that the pizza place down in the promenade along the water in front of the Atlantis was about as affordable as we’d find. True. We ate pizza almost every night. An 18″ pizza – half cheese for our son and half whatever we asked for – with VAT and tip came to $42 and filled us perfectly.
As you’ll see below, while eating out on a picnic table in the temperate evening air, we were surprised by a Junkanoo presentation complete with colorful costumes, loud horns, and drums. We later learned the Junkanoo dancers and musicians come through twice a week.
According to the Bahamian Government’s website,
Junkanoo, named after the West African John Canoe Festival, originated in the Bahamas around the 17th century as a masquerade. Slaves with their faces hidden under a flour paste celebrated on Boxing Day and the day after Christmas. Later, flour paste was replaced by wire masks held on a stick. Junkanooers blew bugles and horns and beat on goatskin drums.
Junkanoo reminded me of Mardi Gras. I grew up hearing all the memories my parents had from living in New Orleans. My parents met while living down the hall from each other in an apartment building on Bourbon Street, and all my siblings were born in New Orleans.
For the next day’s adventures, I had planned a half-day trip to swim with dolphins on Blue Lagoon Island. If you are ever in Nassau and want to swim with dolphins, know that there are a lot of random companies and middlemen out there selling this. After a lot of research, I’m pretty sure there are only a few legitimate operations going on. The best options seem to be the Atlantis and Blue Lagoon Island. While the Atlantis has amazing half-hour experiences in their “Dolphin Cay” that you can book with dolphins, sea lions, and sting rays, you can book a half-day dolphin trip for the same price to Blue Lagoon Island and it includes hanging out on a beautiful beach as well as a buffet lunch. So that’s what I booked.
The following photos show what it’s like to do a half-hour dolphin swim. It’s incredible…
The finale…
With the whole afternoon ahead of us, we walked over to Atlantis again to get our free bracelets for more water fun. We passed by one of the Atlantis staff members feeding the animals in the huge outdoor aquariums.
After more waterslide rides and floating down the Lazy River again, I got some photos of our son in the Serpent Slide tube surrounded by sharks.
The guys opted to head back to our hotel and I stayed a little longer again.
We learned the night before our final day on Paradise Island that our jet boat tour to the various islands to see the wild animals was canceled again. Just like that, the purpose that our trip hinged on came unhinged.
There would be no swimming with wild nurse sharks at Compass Cay…
No swimming with wild pigs at Big Major Cay…
And no communing with wild iguanas on Bitter Guana Cay…
Forlorn that the heart of our trip was no longer an option, I couldn’t imagine going back to man-made Atlantis again. It was fun as filler, but it wasn’t the end-all-be-all. I decided it was a blessing in disguise, saving my husband from a potential jet-boat-meets-brain-injury nightmare.
I made a last-ditch effort just to see if Bahamas Air Tours had three spaces on their small plane leaving in the morning, but their tour with a whopping 7 island stops was full.
The next morning I knew there would be no great replacement, but I dug in and did another few hours of research to see if I could find any tour that left in the afternoon. I found one. It advertised a snorkel session with turtles, a stop to meet pigs (on a fakey pig island), and lunch with cocktails. Nothing like the original plan, but I needed for us to at least feel like we had gotten away from Nassau for even a few more hours out in the crystal blue water before heading back to the cold Northwest.
The meeting point was over the bridge. Rather than getting a taxi, we walked the mile and some, which was like leaving Disneyland and entering reality…
I had booked one last night in a different hotel, for the very purpose of seeing something besides Paradise Island and all the glam. We stayed at a very basic place called Sun Fun Resort that would be a hop, skip, and a jump to the airport early the next morning. Most people would call it a major come-down, but I felt a sense of relief to be in a “normal” place in a “real” area with bus stops and stray dogs.
Our flight the next morning took us to Miami, a place I had never been. After having researched the 9-mile beach, I reserved a comparatively reasonable room at The Lexington in Mid-Beach. My Mom grew up in Florida, and I have heard her stories of Daytona Beach, Kissimmee, and West Palm Beach all my life. Her dad, a kind, loving man, left home at 13 to escape his violent father and never returned. He had to make a living at a young age in whatever way he could, which began his life as a traveling salesman. The story goes that he was the first person to sell suntan oil on the beach in Florida, spread out on the hood of his car.
I have very distant yet vivid memories of what it feels like to play on a warm, Florida beach, surrounded by darkly tanned and deeply wrinkled great aunts who just about lived in their swimsuits – perfect air, wide and flat shores that stretched as far as the eye could see, and a gentle lapping of water.
The next morning we were up at 4:30 AM for our final Uber of the trip to Miami Airport. How surreal it was to walk into our house on Orcas that night, having awakened in a hotel on Miami Beach just that morning. I am always in awe of the places we are able to travel in one day – something people for millennia only dreamed about. We even had time for a whirlwind grocery stop at Costco on the way home before our 8:55 ferry.
After so many meals of pizza, fries, empanadas, and various breads, how thankful I was to wake up, open the fridge, and make my own healthy, inexpensive breakfast of oranges, frozen strawberries and blueberries, yogurt, granola, and smoothie.
If you ever think you’d like to go to the Bahamas for a short animal trip, I have strong advice now that we’ve had these experiences. While it may be one of the most expensive day trips you will ever book, I recommend considering the Nassau to Exumas Day Trip offered by Bahamas Air Tours. Though it is a jaw-dropping $675 per person plus a mandatory conservation fee of $40, it goes to all of the real places. No fakey pig or iguana beaches where animals are being temporarily raised to attract dollars from tourists who don’t realize they aren’t at the original beaches. And trust me, I’ve done the research – it costs a lot more to book flights, boats, and hotels if you want to see all of these places by going out and staying on the inhabited islands they are near. From what I’ve read and the reviews I’ve seen, Bahamas Air Tours does everything the right way. The jet boat tour we originally booked with Pieces of 8 seemed to be the jet boat equivalent of that – highly rated and reliable – but as we sadly experienced, jet boat tours can easily be canceled due to weather, whereas planes will most likely be good to go. Additionally, Bahamas Air Tours will get you out on the Exuma Cays in 30 minutes, with stunning aerial views of the islands below. Jet boats take 3 hours to cover the same distance, so you have much less time to enjoy the island animal experiences once you’re finally there. It’s just one of those things that might be worth a major splurge someday.
Here are the Bahamas Air Tours details (you’d think I was their spokesperson):
When I was younger, I used to look around and wonder why everyone around me didn’t travel. I thought it was a money thing. Some trips can be too pricey, but it took me a while to realize that traveling isn’t everyone’s thing. As a kid, I couldn’t imagine it not being everyone’s thing. Some people prefer to spend money other ways:
- a fancy latte and treat every morning – $12 a day, 5 days a week is over $3,100 a year
- lunch out every day instead of a bagged lunch from home – $20 every weekday is $5,200
- make-up, skin care, hair products, clothes, and shoes – spontaneous purchases can easily be much more than $10,000+ per year
- a nice car – $40,000+
The list goes on – the newest technology items, meal kit delivery services, hobbies, sports, movie and music subscriptions, video game purchases, concerts, camping gear, liquor, gardening supplies, pet products, you name it.
But traveling can be a possibility if you want it to, if you weed out other expenses, and if you research affordable elements in your trips, which makes it twice the fun in my opinion.
I hope this crazy-long post inspires you in some way to live out your dream trips.
While these experiences have nothing to do with Orcas Island per se, it is a fact of living here that many of us must seek out sunshine elsewhere in order to stay mentally healthy in the winter. In that sense, getting away from Orcas Island and above the cloud layer has everything to do with navigating life on our little island in the Northwest.
Happy planning! This is a great time to dream up a fantastic August Mediterranean trip while it’s still dark and gloomy out. When there’s little light in the sky due to constant cloudcover and rain, transporting myself online to places like Capri, Amalfi, Riomaggiore, and Monopoli keeps me sane. There’s nothing like that perfect Italian water…
Wow, Edee, what an amazing post. Thank you, I feel like I went to the Bahamas with you. I loved it.
Thank you so much Eileen!!
Thank you so much, Eileen!!