January 1 , 2004
Nassau, New Providence

Happy New Year! Or is it? Let me explain my little disappointment here. Don't get me wrong. I am aware that few of you would go through inexplicably risky new drug testing to skip a cold city for a few days and have New Year in the Bahamas. Few of you wouldn't even care about the living conditions we have to endure every single day. Okay, very, very few of you. But. We're browsing around the town today, the first day of the new year, just to discover that last night here was the biggest carnival and parade this island has of yet. The celebration was so much greater, much more than usual, because Bahamians celebrate their 30 year anniversary of their independence this fine year. The streets still are littered with huge parade carts and breath taking ornaments. Wild celebrations took into late morning hours. Few fellas in fact were still sobering up and slipping off right there on the streets. You want to ask did we enjoy the festivities? Would you like to know if we liked the wild, exotic carnival? This is the peeve I have. We missed it all. Disappointment of this will probably hunt me for months to come because we were so close, anchored literally few blocks from the venue, yet for some unexplained reason we were totally unaware of the big bang party few streets away. There was no one who could utter a word of this to us since we arrived to Nassau's harbour wee bit late, way after dark, after long day of tacking our way in here from the Chab Cay. I am unable to convene the distress of my culture hungry soul driven around the world in search of the very experiences we have just missed. Okay, we are fine, really. The boat is all right, we are in one piece, we are fed, watered and surprisingly shaved and washed. And we are after all in a exotic place with more pleasantries of the Caribbean experience ahead of us. Yet I am so upset we missed the parade. Our welcoming of a new year was in fact very unassuming, more so, very humble indeed. Anchoring in the dark with no knowledge of the port or how to get around and onto the land, not excited to drive around in our dinghy in the dark against substantial currents, we have decided, oh how boring of us, to welcome 2004 right here on the Afterblue. Johannes, to his credit, cooked the most amazing meal and we also devoured, hold on to your seats, a block of chocolate (thank you Laurie:) while we watched fireworks going on around the Nassau harbour. Then we went to sleep like a couple of retirees. No offense intended to a mature folk everywhere. We scour the town the next day only to discover what we have really missed. Right under our noses. I better stop here. I can go on about this for quite some time, as you can see.

Nassau and it's port is nothing like we come to expect. Very unassuming, informal, bit cluttered place making their living off the hoards of white folk from the large cruise ships coming and going from here at an amazing rate. Just like Christmas we are somewhat homesick and we decided to cough up $10 each to talk to our families for a few precious minutes. Our minds today are far away from here. Thinking about our folks, friends and lives we've left behind, it seems a long time away right now. Tomorrow however, we'll resupply our ship and hopefully soon find ourselves snorkeling on the reefs and spear fishing and do the all the fun stuff we came here to do.

But I can't believe we missed the parade!

(M)

These pictures are from Chub Cay where we cleared the customs. My digital camera gave her last it seemed, shortly after that.