Two Nighter in Nassau 10/04
Tab Hauser
People picked on me when I said I had to attend a business meeting in Nassau in the Bahamas. Here it is, peak foliage season in NY state and I am heading down to the “sub” tropics. Anyway, my trip was Sunday morning and returning Tuesday at noon. Below are my comments on the Radisson Cable Beach and my diving.
While people snickered at me for “having” to go on this trip I was not happy about the airfare at $627 round trip on US Air direct. Presently they are in Chapter 11 and I truly hope that when Jet Blue starts their first flight November 1st and Song Air a little later with reasonable rates, US Air gets shut out here. US Air is now in bankruptcy proceedings for the second time and perhaps should be allowed to die out and have a reasonably run carrier take its place in the market. Anyway the good thing for me about the expensive flight down was that it had 25 people on board (bad for US Air considering they can pack about 180 people on board). On board I had the “poor mans first class” section to myself. For those that are unfamiliar with this term I use it means sitting at the exit row where you have extra leg room. My flight left on time and got in 15 minutes early and the only thing served was a package of cheese and crackers. Here is an international flight leaving at breakfast and there is no entertainment or food. This was a first for me. I am amazed there was no on board entertainment and US Air should be boycotted for this when the other carriers start and give you multi channel TV. See www.jetblue.com and www.songair.com.
Anyway, I got picked up efficiently and taken to the Radisson Cable Beach Hotel. While Nassau and 700 person hotel is not usually my taste, this place was not too bad for being close by. My room overlooked the 3 pools and the beach and had a balcony. At 11:15 when I arrived my room was not ready. The staff did direct me to a room they let guests use for changing but in the interest of speed I hit the bathroom with my bathing suit. After changing I grabbed my dive gear and went to the out door grill for a pretty bland smoked turkey sandwich and potato chips lunch.
I would rate the Radisson as average. It is not great, nor is it bad. The service with the hotel being at least 1/3 if not more empty was slow in some areas. Annoying things like asking for water or wine multiple times at dinner occurred. At 1AM I saw my host grilling the manager as to why the desk clerk told him 3 times he could not arrange a wake up call the next day and why the desk clerk told him to take care of it. The night manager, not very humble I am add, said that he did not understand why the front desk clerk did not take care of the request as other people had done during his few days there. My recommendation would be if you need to go to the Bahamas and this is the best air/hotel deal you can arrange it would fine. People we met during my stay that stayed at the Atlantis liked it. Keep this in mind when checking out rates. Doing the inclusive plan at the Radisson is not a bad idea. It frees you up from wondering where you are going eat as well as not thinking about how much food and drinks will cost. Dinners at the 4 places ran between$20 to $25 for a main course. Cocktails I found reasonable running about $5 for a mixed drink. The hotel had a steak place where you cook it in front of you. I do not eat much meat and was able to order a piece of really nice grouper that they brought from the restaurant next door. Other places restaurants were a Caribbean style, Italian and buffet. When you get here and you are not on the inclusive you can upgrade your package when you arrive here to the all inclusive. The disadvantage to doing this plan is that you are less likely to look for other places to eat in town. Down town is a $15 cab ride. Paradise Island is $17.
The beach here calm with no surf on it. There is a protected area for swimming where the wave runners you can rent stay out of. Wave runners here are not cheap. It is $125 an hour or $65 a half hour. I have not down snorkeling at this beach but I suspect that you will see fish out by the three sections rocks just off the beach. The Radisson is only 10 minutes from downtown where you can shop your hearts content off which is just across the bridge from Paradise Island and the Atlantis Beach and Casino. Keep in mind that Nassau is an easy destination from the east US Coast. You are more likely to see people from Brooklyn, Boston and Philadelphia. You will see though a fair share of Brits as there is a plain that flies regular to this former British Colony from London. Nassau is not a quaint little Caribbean island that you are likely to explore. In fact, it is not even Caribbean as it is in the Atlantic just off the coast of Florida. This island offers lots of water activities and trips as well as tennis and golfing but does not have the remoteness or diversity of a St. Lucia and Dominica or even Barbados. On those islands we rented vehicles to explore rain forests, caves, jungles and waterfalls to name a few places.
(For those interested in some hotel details including the food and my diving write up including seeing two former James Bond movie sets underwater read on.)
The highlight of my day was dive. I searched the internet a month earlier looking for a company that had an afternoon dive. I did Stuart Cove’s shark and reef dives 5 or 6 years ago and did not like the crowds so I went with www.divedivedive.com. They told me if my flight was late I should call their 800 number in N.Y. and they would pick me up at the airport. If my flight was on time they would outside the lobby at 12:30. At 12:25 a red van pulled up with only one other diver. Normally they do not go out with 2 but between the hurricane that slowed tourism and them not wanting to disappoint my guaranteed booking they decided to keep the PM dive. DiveDiveDive is a family managed place. Mom runs the shop while her sons are the dive masters, mechanics’ or deckhands. Rick, a man from Oregon had dove with them before and requested we go to “the runway” and “fish bowl” which they happily complied. The nice thing about the trip was that if they were not going to get their fill of paying customers they were going to have a few cousins come along for some snorkeling, diving and a day on the water. The Runway was a great dive. It was diverse with sharks, wrecks. The wreck was called or all names “Ray of Hope”. It was pretty open with interesting things to see in and around it. I particularly liked swimming the covered walkways where the deck hands used to get around to the aft section. Of course no wreck for me is complete with out standing on the very tip of the hull and doing a “Titanic”. You know, the scene where the star stands on the bow with her hands out and feels as if she is flying. When you do this underwater it takes on new meaning especially if you are upside down doing a handstand! The second dive nearby was nearby called the Fish Bowl. This had coral in good condition with plenty of fish.
After being dropped off at 4:30 I headed downstairs for some beach volleyball and rum drink before meeting for a out door cocktail party of the people who organized this meeting. The hotel brought in a man playing a guitar, a bar and appetizers of different cold items on crackers as well as cheese sticks, conch fritters and wings. From here we headed to a private room for a buffet dinner that was good. Afterwards I went with my friend and host to the Crystal Palace Casino next door for some “gaming”. (no one uses the world “gambling” anymore.) After losing $130 ot was back for another drink at the lobby bar where some music was playing and off to bed.
(One thing I would like to mention about the rum here. Better quality makes better tasting drinks. If you are on the inclusive, use the 8 year aged rum. It is much smoother and in fact could be sipped on by simply throwing it over ice. If you are not on the inclusive they charge you another $4.50 for it. The Barcardi 8 year stuff tastes very similar to the 7 year old Cuban rum I like. You can buy a liter for $21 at the airports duty free shop.
The next day (Monday) I headed to the buffet breakfast before my morning dive pick up. This was your typical buffet breakfast with the exception of a really good omelet maker. The fruit was fresh but the bakery and bread area was pretty much packaged mass produced stuff not worth wasting calories. Breakfast was nothing to rave about and nothing to really complain about either.
DiveDiveDive picked me up at 8:45 for my “charter” as they called it. I was the only one going out that morning so I arranged for the owners son to take me out on smaller and faster speed boat. He was joined by his wife who babysat the boat while we were under. The dive we did was in the same general area as the last one but this time we were going to see two man made wrecks from the James Bond movies Thunderbolt and Never Say Never. One movie was the original and the other the remake done by Sean Connery who said years earlier he would never do another Bond movie. (Hence the name Never Say Never.) Anyway, both sets were only a short swim each other. The first site we visited was from Thunderball. This was the jet that was submerged scene. The only thing left is scaffolding that is probably larger than any real jet as well as the landing wheels from it. There was different coral growing from it and nature has done a good job reclaiming it for the hiding small fish there. The second set was a barge. My dive master gave squatted down on the sand making believe he shot off a gun to show me the gaping hole perhaps 4 feet across which can be swam through. This is where the ship was shot through in the movie scene sinking it. After viewing this wreck we headed to the wall. We were diving at about 60 feet when I followed my guide into a tight cave. Normally I pass on these things but it looked interested. He went first and did not realized the storm surges tightened the narrow tunnel. I went second but half way in he kicked up too much silt blackening my way. After stopping in a long 15 seconds the silt cleared and I was able to see the light happily exiting out of the tight hole which was down at 80 feet. I advised him later not to take new divers or heavy people in there in the future which he agreed. We continued to swim along the wall. Here we went up to 50 feet and looking down to our right could only see dark blue turn to near black or the abyss as I like to call it. One highlight after doing another turn towards the boat was seeing my first eagle ray “fly” with in 15 feet of me. It is a strange looking creature. It flies and glides like a manta ray yet has a head or snout like a Doberman or maybe an eagle it is named after. It cruised by me making eye contact, turned right to check out what I was doing and then continued on I guess when it realized I was not a threat. Our second dive was 5 minutes away called Fish School. This is a good beginners dive staying in 15 to 20 feet. Here the highlight is small fish which followed us on much of the dive. The current picked up so we floated about in a large circle checking out the different fish. My favorite fish yesterday and today were the queen angel and French angel. We did see a barracuda which gave my guide a minor concern but nothing else as he does not like them when he wears is brightly shinning gold bracelets and necklaces. Going back to boat we swam against the current making our effort needed about 30% harder to swim.
The dive people dropped me back off at the hotel where I proceeded to inquire about a lost hat that morning and surprised to have it actually found and kept at the bellhop station. This was nice to know because upon check in the bellhops were no where to be found outside where you needed them. From here it was off to the buffet for lunch. Lunch had a nice assortment of salads, pasta, and hot dogs and burgers. Desert was a couple of basic pies along with a soft ice cream machine accompanied by candied almond slivers and cherries.
With 2 hours before my allotted time for my seminar I had to give I went down to the business center to plug my notebook computer into their DSL line. It is $10 per hour or any part of an hour and worked fine. From there it was up to the fourth floor meeting room where I waited my turn to talk to mostly Eastern European distributors about my company and products. For those holding a meeting here, the room I spoke at holds about 60 comfortably. I know the room downstairs where we ate dinner at the night before can be used as a meeting and I believe that opens up to hold more people if needed. After the seminar I went up to the room to finish some business before meeting for cocktails, conversation, dinner and the casino.
The return flight had me on a fully packed US Air flight. It was nice to have the exit row although this time I had to share it. This flight was leaving at 12PM with no lunch or entertainment.
Thank you for visiting www.tabhauser.com You can email any comments at tabh@hacorelays.com