Flight to Bahamas!

8-28-08
Last night (Wednesday) I took a red-eye flight from Los Angeles Airport to Florida. While I was waiting in line to board the flight I overheard two guys in front of me talking about what trips they had signed up for and one of them mentioned he wanted to go to the Taj Mahal. I immediately knew they had to be going on Semester at Sea too! So I asked them if they were and I instantly had two new friends! One of them even sat right behind me on the flight so we chatted for a while.

I Didn’t sleep very well on the plane so I’m running off of probably less than four hours of sleep! We then stuck together when we got off the plane and waited together for our flights to Bahamas. They took off an hour earlier than I did, so I managed to fit some reading in after they left.

On the bus ride to the little plane I was standing next to a girl who looked about my age and was by herself. So again, I asked if she was doing SAS...of course the answer was yes! So we walked through customs together. We then found my friend Andrea in the Bahamas baggage claim and she was already with about six more SAS kids! So we all took a taxi van to the hotel together. We each paid $15 for the taxi ride!

We are staying with my friend Allison at the Atlantis hotel, so we found her right away and got our swimsuits on! We went and explored the hotel because it is absolutely massive, complete with numerous waterslides, water sleds that shoot into shark water, gorgeous plants and full service by all the pools. We walked along the beach with the beautiful light blue water and chatted with a lifeguard along the way who told us about the hurricane nearby and about the dark clouds that seemed to be visibly moving our way.

There were couches in the middle of the pool, so we decided to go test them out. After a little while we started to feel water drops. All the sudden it started pouring!! We had to swim through the pool to get back to the pool deck and then ran back to the room! We returned about 15 minutes later when the rain stopped and the sun returned! We went back out to our special couches and a woman named Tarin who must have been in her 50’s started talking to us. She basically told us her life story about how she was supposed to be here with her boyfriend but they just broke up so now she is here in the Bahamas by herself. Long story short we all became best friends.

Then while we were sitting there one of the waitresses called us to come out of the pool and talk to her. We thought we were in trouble for something! Turns out some guys wanted to buy us a bottle of champagne. At first we said no, but then the lady encouraged us by saying “hey they have a cabana which means they have money...so you better take it!” We accepted and had it brought to us by the pool. We looked on the menu afterwards and discovered that it was a $350 bottle of champagne! We went and said thank you to them after a while and they said they just had to send it to anyone who was brave enough to first of all swim out to the middle of the pool and then lay out in the middle of the pool. Good times.