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We were in the Bahamas and spent 5 days on Long Island at Stella Maris, and 5 days on New Providence at Orange Hill. Our previous diving trips were to the Turks and Caicos (Provo & Salt Cay), Florida Keys (Tavernier) & Dominica. I've also been to a number of islands before becoming a diver, including Cayman, Cozumel, Jamaica and Hawaii, but we're still relatively new to diving.

Summary:

I'm long winded so here is the short version.

Long Island: A nice, relatively unpopulated island with absolutely beautiful beaches (although not within easy walking distance of Stella Maris), friendly people, above average coral and fish life, and I would recommend the island. There wasn't a ton to do on land, but if you're a diver that shouldn't be much of a problem. My main complaint is the value, there are only two major places to stay and both are relatively expensive. There are other cheaper places to stay on the island but you're going to be farther away from the good diving and you're going to be staying in more of a condo/apartment type atmosphere.

Stella Maris Resort: Good atmosphere, friendly and helpful employees, great food, "free" excursions, safe atmosphere, decent view, but merely good rooms. The rooms were actually relatively nice, and better than most of the places we stay, but given the price I expected more. I guess as a whole our week at the resort was just a few hundred dollars away from being really amazing.

Stella Maris Diving: I'm guessing it's not quite as good when there are more people diving, but hands down one of the best experiences I've had diving. Long Island has above average diving, not as good as Dominica or Salt Cay, probably on par with Provo, notably better than New Providence, and infinitely better than the Florida Keys. What made it stand out was the atmosphere, it was a easy going atmosphere where they truly seemed to want to take you wherever you wanted to go, do as many dives as you wanted to do, and where they wanted to take you to the best sites. We weren't able to go to Conception Island, which by all accounts is quite a bit better than the diving on Long Island, so it probably could have been even better. The surface intervals on beautiful, out of the way beaches were great. Lastly, Matthew our DM truly made our week a great one.

New Providence: Pretty much what I expected, is there anywhere else that's been more corrupted by cruise ships? The public transport system was decent but the fact that the busses don't run later is ridiculous. Lots of good restaurant options, although everything was a little more expensive than it seemed it should have been. The typical excuse is that they have to ship most everything in, but that doesn't apply to fish and conch, which is what we ate most of the time. It's a place I don't regret going, but not a place I would suggest to others or that I'd ever be tempted to go back to.

Orange Hill Inn: Good enough rooms and good enough accommodations. The employees weren't as helpful as I'd have expected, they didn't seem to have a lot of suggestions when asked. All in all it was a little run down, but the price is right, I felt we got what we paid for. The beach across the street is decent, not the cleanest but the lack of many tourists made up for it.

Restaurants, from best to worst: Stella Maris, Cafe Villagio, Outer Edge Grill, Poop Deck at Sandyport, Traveler's Rest, Cafe Johnny Canoes, Conch Fritters, Goldies,….(big drop in quality, atmosphere, and service)…..Orange Hill Inn.
I'd actually say I wouldn't encourage avoiding any of the above restaurants with the exception of Orange Hill, and I'd recommend the remaining restaurants with the possible exceptions of Goldies and Conch Fritters.

Stuart Cove: Every bit the cattle boat operator it's accused of being; it runs like a machine, which is both good and bad. I don't like the fact that the dive times are relatively short, and that they didn't seem eager to take you to the farther out, better sites, but other than that I honestly don't think they could do much of anything to make their operation better and still serve that many divers. There were tons of employees, they were all nice and friendly, and I think in general did their best to make you feel like you weren't diving with a cattle boat operator. The closer wall dives were a disappointment due to lack of fish and coral life, but the farther out sites were healthier. Tons of wrecks, most of them pretty good, although they didn't have much for you if you were into doing penetrations. The shark dive was expensive, but something that's still worth doing once.

And for those interested in more detail:

Saturday 6/13/07

Our trip started by getting up at 2AM for our 5:20 flight, but after getting to the airport we discovered that our flight had been cancelled due to some mechanical problem. They put us on the 7:00 flight and with a later flight out of Charlotte we were able to get into Nassau at 1:34, a half hour after our charter flight was scheduled to leave. We tried to get US Airways to find some other flight for us that would allow us to get to Nassau in time but it just wasn't possible. After arriving in Charlotte we were able to get a hold of Stella Maris and they held the plane for us and gave me the pilot's cell phone number in case I needed to get a hold of him; very nice. We got to Nassau, pulled up to the jet way and were told that the jet way was broken so we'd have to get pulled back slightly and use the stairs, then told that they'd changed their mind and we'd be towed to a different jet way, and then when we finally were done being towed to a working jet way they ended up using stairs instead anyways. So we were even later than expected, but the charter waited for us. The charter plane was an 8-passenger plane and the flight was fine, except for the fact that the cabin wasn't pressurized and I had to clear my ears constantly. With a short detour to Cat Island to pick up two more couples we arrived at Stella Maris airport, although we never actually went in the building and instead went straight to the taxi.

The resort is just a minute or two drive away from the airport, and upon arriving we were given room #11 and told that there was no key for the door and that people don't lock doors around here. When we stayed on Salt Cay in the Turks and Caicos we didn't have a key and felt totally comfortable with it, but that was an infinitely smaller island. After seeing all the newspapers earlier taking about "3 more murders," it was kind of unsettling at first, although the murders were taking place on New Providence and Grand Bahama so it obviously wasn't the same. There is no safe in the room, but the front desk will hold things for you and put it in their safe. I personally prefer a safe in the room like we had on Salt Cay because we could put valuables which we needed periodic access to in it.

The resort consists of a bunch of cottages (many of them near the water and some with their own pool) and 2 buildings of standard rooms. Our room was on the 2nd level, right in front of the main lodge. Rooms on the second floor definitely seemed to be better because it gave you a view of the ocean and there were less bugs when you sat on your porch than there would be on ground level. The rooms are some distance away from the water, but you have a nice view of the ocean over the trees. The rooms had a foyer type area, which also served as a closet and was nice for keeping sandy stuff out of the bedroom. The bedroom had a thru the wall air conditioner which did a nice job if you closed the door to the foyer and bathroom. Throughout our stay the housekeeping staff did a good job; they swept the room and kept the place from turning into a sandy mess.

They left us a nice small welcome basket of some gin & coconut water, which is meant to make sky juice I believe, but sky juice is supposed to have condensed milk in it as well. It was tasty regardless, plus you got to keep the small locally made basket as well.

We went into the lodge and had our free welcome rum punch. I found the rum punch here and everywhere else in the Bahamas ok, but I much preferred the version we got in Dominica, which is based on the 4-3-2-1 recipe and includes nutmeg and bitters. While we were having our drink one of the proprietors came by and asked what we were interested in doing and which dives we'd like to do. I said we wanted to dive the blue hole one day, Conception Island one day and spend the other two days diving Long Island.

We went down to the closest beach, which is just a short walk away. The beach is kind of rocky and there was a large backhoe right by the water, so we went back to the nice large pool and cooled off. The resort has at least 3 pools for guests to use, and all of them are pretty nice and well kept up.

We were on the inclusive plan so we ate all our meals at Stella Maris, always a scary proposition in case the food is bad, but as previous reports have stated, the food was very good. There are no restrictions on the menu for people on the meal plan, plus you could have however much wine you wanted. We had half a carafe of wine with each meal; a full one probably wouldn't have been a good idea for the dive the next morning since a full carafe was 1 L. The meal plan also included 3 drinks per day, which I believe meant 3 alcoholic drinks from the bar and didn't include the wine you had with dinner, nor do I think it included the soda or juice you had with lunch and dinner.

For dinner we had the conch chowder, a house salad with some house dressing which wasn't particularly good (they had 4 choices), cracked conch with confetti rice and leeks, with chocolate mousse and kiwi sauce for dessert. The conch chowder was very good, with plenty of hunks of conch in it. The cracked conch was excellent, it was probably the 2nd or 3rd best cracked conch I've ever had (behind Pat's and probably Marie's on Salt Cay). The conch was tender and well breaded. The chocolate mousse itself was good, but the kiwi sauce swirled around it on the plate did not go well with chocolate at all. They also gave everyone small glasses of Bahama Mamas with dinner.

6/14/07
Breakfast at Stella Maris started with a set of tables full of fruit, cereal and a few pastries. After sitting down I ordered the French toast and my wife had the German pancakes. The French toast was good, and the German pancakes were even better. The proprietors are German and you can see that influence in some areas.

We were picked up by our dive master Matthew, and were told that it'd just be the two of us diving. The blue hole is slightly south of the center of the island, which meant we'd also be doing an island tour, something we wanted to do anyways. Matthew was a decent tour guide, he didn't say a lot during the trip but there also isn't a ton to see, the island isn't very populated. The blue hole is off on some side road, there aren't any signs, and the side road has a number of additional splits so I would strongly suggest not trying to find it yourself without some help. We would later hear that one of the couples we met drove down there but ended up finding a nice, but slightly drunk guy to drive in front of them and show them the way because he told them there was no way they'd find it on their own. There are cliffs around the hole and it's a very beautiful sight. You can actually cliff dive into the blue hole, but we didn't.

Dean's Blue Hole
92 fsw, 44 min
This blue hole is the deepest in the world at 660'. It's a funnel shaped hole with a small reef along the rim. Matthew led the dive, as he would on almost every dive we did on the island (I really prefer this over self guided dives). We basically corkscrewed up and down the hole. It was cloudy so there wasn't as bright of a shaft of light as you would normally see, but the structure was interesting, although nothing spectacular. In the hole we saw a lionfish, squirrelfish, big eye, coral banded shrimp and some large tarpon. The tarpon normally hang out deeper, but today they were up where we could see them and swam spookily in the distance. The reef around the rim was actually quite a bit better than I expected. We saw 2 more lionfish, queen angel, peacock flounder, tangs, a small moray, grunts, sea fans, and mushroom coral.

After getting out of the water Matthew told us that he meant to bring his spear to kill the lionfish since they don't belong in the Atlantic, which I understand but it did make me sad since I like them so much. Apparently they first appeared in the blue hole and then spread to the rest of Long Island and now they're all over the Bahamas. While talking later he seemed to come to the realization that he wasn't going to be able to stop them, they were too widespread at this point.

After our dive we drove a little bit further south to Clarencetown and ate at the Outer Edge Grill located at the marina. It was an outdoor restaurant with a nice view of the harbor. We had cracked conch with plantains and fries. We could hear the cook pounding the conch while we waited and it paid off, very tender and the 2nd best we'd have on our trip. Conch is something we just can't get at home, and the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos are just about the only places where you can get it really fresh.

After lunch Matthew drove us by the churches in Clarencetown made by Father Jerome, which give you a great view of the city if you climb up to the top, but we just drove by. We started our way back north and stopped at Guana Cay. Guana Cay is a very pretty island just off the shore, which is home to a group of semi-tame curly tail lizards. We snorkeled the short distance to the cay and along the way there was some coral and fish but the main thing to see was sea grass, which was just covered in tons of tiny hermit crabs. Once on Guana Cay we went over to the end of the beach sort of below the old abandoned house and heard rustling in the brush. We made a bunch of noise to let the lizards know we were there and eventually we saw one of them come out. We tossed it some bread and more lizards came out of the brush. The lizards were small, about a foot long at most, but they were cute and not particularly scared of us. There was also a huge population of hermit crabs on the island. Any of the bread which wasn't picked up by the lizards was quickly covered in crabs. The quantity of crabs was slightly disturbing, kind of like something out of a horror movie.

We got back from our dive/tour around 4. There were buckets back at the dive shop for rinsing, and we hung our equipment up in the dive shop beside all the rentals. It didn't seem like there was a whole lot of room in the shop if there had more people diving, but we found enough space for the two of us. I do prefer when the dive master sets everything up for you and takes care of all your gear, but I realize that's not normal in most places, and we were just spoiled early in our dive career (Salt Cay).

After a rest we took a walk around the resort. There is a lookout tower on the resort grounds and although there isn't a ton to see it's still a nice view of the surrounding area. We then walked down to the second closest beach, one that was located to the north of the resort. It was a farther walk but the beach was nicer and is probably less likely to have other people on it. We walked over the rocks in the direction of the resort and came across a few more smaller, secluded beaches.

The weekly party with free rum punch and conch fritters was listed as occurring on a different day of the week, but it was going on tonight. We ate up, the fritters were good and the never-ending refills on rum punch were nice as well. In the bar area there is a pool table, air hockey table and foosball table and we took advantage.

There wasn't any choice for dinner that night, they served steaks cooked on the outside grill and had a small buffet. The steak and the rest of the buffet was pretty good. It was storming outside and the lights went off near the end of dinner but came on a little while later. The lights would go off again for a while later that evening in the room, not too much of a surprise given the generally undeveloped nature of the island.

6/15/07
After a breakfast of German pancakes we were driven to the dive shop to discover that once again we would be the only two people diving with Matthew. I noticed and Matthew brought it up as well that he should have a first mate but since there were only the two of us it would just be him. I don't like the idea of not having anyone in the boat during the dive but if there were a time when I could accept it, this would be it.

Angel Fish Reef
39 fsw, 55 min
Like all of the reefs on Long Island, this was a relatively shallow site. The site was full of scattered coral heads, and we did one swim through. We saw lionfish, large spiny lobster, a yellow stingray, large grouper, filefish, trumpetfish, gray and queen angelfish.

Matthew took us to Cape Santa Maria beach for our surface interval, a ways down from the actual resort though. We waded into shore and ate lunch by ourselves. It was a very beautiful beach but when it started raining we got back on board.

Flamingo Tongue
27 fsw, 59 min
This was another good site. We saw a number of flamingo tongues, a few large barracuda, gray and queen angels, a snowflake and a goldentail moray.

We got back to the resort around 3 and after a nap we decided to check out the games the resort had in their TV room. There aren't any TVs in the guest rooms, but there is a large area with a TV that also includes a bunch of books and board games. The selection of games isn't too exciting, but we played some Connect Four and Scrabble.

We decided to finally get some of those drinks from the bar that were included in our package and got a strawberry daiquiri and a buccaneer. Both were good, the buccaneer was also nice and strong.

Dinner was back to a normal menu (the menu does change each day though) and we had cracked conch and Nassau grouper with lemon sauce. Again both were very good.

6/16/07
After some more German pancakes we got to the dock and discovered that there was a big storm coming. We were also told that some snorkelers would be with us, although in actuality it seemed like they weren't planning on snorkeling and were just bubble watchers or something; very strange. We also had one solo guy diving with us, so it'd be a total of 3 of us in the water with the dive master. We waited an hour before leaving the dock due to the weather, the waves weren't too bad at first but once we got further out it was pretty ugly. It was a challenge getting our gear on with the waves but under the water everything was relatively ok.

Barracuda Head
47 fsw, 42 min
This site had lots of coral, fairy basslets, big lobsters that weren't being shy, including one lobster who was walking across the sand, queen angelfish and one swim through.

When we got to the surface we saw that the bubble watchers weren't doing well at all, one had fed the fish and the other didn't look too far behind. During our dive they had seen a water spout; very scary. The other diver would later tell us that he asked them to cancel the second dive and just go in because the bubble-watchers were so sick, and I wasn't complaining.

While eating lunch one of the proprietors stopped in to ask if we wanted to do a shore dive. I guess they wanted to make up for only doing one dive that morning, and we decided to go. Matthew drove us the relatively short drive to the site.

Poseidon's Point
24 fsw, 48 min
Entry involved a little walk over the rocks that wasn't too bad. We saw even more parrotfish than usual, some barracuda, lobster, moray eel, lots of fish, especially juveniles, wrasses and schooling tangs. There was some large elkhorn coral in the shallower water, which looked dead, but we never got close enough for me to be able to tell for sure. All in all a pretty good shore dive

After getting back to the hotel we went back to the north beach and spent some time on the beach alone. It's wonderful to be on small islands where you can have a beach all to yourself.

We had the much talked about Kalik before dinner, the local beer. Perhaps we're beer snobs because we come from Wisconsin and we like darker beer, but it really wasn't very good, it's a light beer with a not particularly pleasant taste. For dinner they didn't have cracked conch on the menu so I was forced to have sirloin since I don't like fish, and my wife had grouper. Both were good. For dessert we had caramel custard that tasted ok but had a weird texture.

6/17/07
When we woke up the sun was shining for once. After another round of German pancakes we went diving, but this time there would be 4 other divers with us. We wanted to go to Conception Island but the weather just wasn't good enough, which isn't uncommon at this time of year. Matthew really seemed to be trying to get us there even when the other captain didn't think it was possible. There are a lot of dive operations that take you to the closest sites even if the best sites are further out, but Stella Maris and Matthew both really wanted to get us to Conception. The weather was much better than the previous day so we were able to do "the wreck" (I believe it's the only one on the island).

Cumberback Wreck
98 fsw, 26min
This was our first real wreck, very exciting, and this is also the deepest we've ever gone. Due to the depth the other divers didn't want to do this dive with us as their first dive so it was just Matthew and us. Cumberback is a 100 ft freighter sitting at about 100'. There aren't really any deep reef dives on the island, so I was very surprised to see the amount of coral and life that was in the area around the wreck. The wreck had a good deal of growth on it, but it wasn't particularly colorful (but that might have been due to the depth). There was a jeep in the hold of the freighter, and a nice swim through the engine room; one that I wouldn't have done without Matthew since I'm not wreck certified, but it wasn't too difficult. There were a lot of big fish on the wreck and by the nearby coral heads. A short distance away from the Cumberback was a sailboat. It was a relatively short dive, but a good one.

Matthew informed us that we'd do three dives today. I'm sure he didn't want to cheat the others out of being able to get two dives in, and it's not uncommon for them to do 3 dives anyways. There was a very short surface interval and we were told we could do whatever we wanted, but only one of the new divers actually decided to dive. We basically just waited a little longer before getting in and got geared up real leisurely so that we had some time to off gas.

Blue Tang Reef
39 fsw, 37 min
We saw barracuda, lots of schooling goat fish, gray and queen angelfish, large filefish, cow fish, trumpetfish, blue tangs and butterflyfish.

For lunch we went to a beach on Horizon Bay, it was a very pretty, secluded beach, and one I doubt you could get to by car. The third dive it was back to just being the two of us and since it was our last dive Matthew gave us a choice of sites, but we let him decide.

Trumpetfish Reef
27 fsw, 45min
I really liked the diving on Long Island, but wow are their site names unimaginative. This is the sister reef to flamingo tongue. We saw a green turtle (in the distance), a large hogfish, big grouper, flamingo tongues, queen angelfish, lionfish and butterflyfish. This site had good coral life but not as many fish as some of the other sites.

I've never tipped a dive master before, I have a hard time with it given how expensive diving is, and Stella Maris is even more expensive than most…but I still felt I had to tip Matthew since he had been so great. Back at the resort we had a lazy afternoon of hanging out on the porch and playing games. For dinner we discovered that once again cracked conch wasn't on the menu, so we decided to ask and he said that cracked conch was always available. The cracked conch was good as always, and it came with some boiled cassava, which is a lot like a boiled potato; not too exciting, but different.

6/18/07
One last breakfast of German pancakes for us. After breakfast we went to the closer beach, and they had dug out an ocean pool of sorts. Basically it was right next to shore so it was protected from the waves, but it was deep with relatively steep sides. The "pool" and the removal of the backhoe made the beach seem far nicer than it had been on our earlier visit.

We checked out and got a ride to the airport, and discovered that this time we were on an even smaller plane, this time it was a 4-passenger plane and it was just the two of us flying. After arriving in Nassau we took a taxi to our next hotel, Orange Hill Inn.

Orange Hill is a tad run down and the buildings show their age. The place feels a bit like a large B&B, the service and employees have that sort of unpolished feel, which is both good and bad. The beach is across the road, a short walk, but a walk none-the-less. Our room was poolside with a patio facing the ocean. You could sort of see the ocean over the trees but it wasn't much of an ocean view. We arrived at our room to find a cat on the porch. There were at least 5 cats at the inn, and they were in general friendly. The room was a tad on the small side, but it was good enough for us. The room was also clean, although the housekeeping service would be nothing like it was at Stella Maris, and our floor would be full of sand pretty much the whole time we were there. The room had a kitchenette but was a tad short on dishes, there was only one bowl and we would have to take turns eating cereal in the morning.

Orange Hill takes a trip to the grocery store each morning and guests can come along for free, but since we were diving we would never have an opportunity to go with them. We went to the front desk to ask about how to get to the store and found out that they hadn't gone that morning since no guests wanted to go, but they had to go to pick up food for the inn so we were welcome to come along. We bought a few things for breakfast and lunch and they were nice enough to let us send the groceries back with them while we continued on into town. We asked the guy from Orange Hill which restaurants he'd suggest and about all we were able to get out of him was Cafe Johnny Canoe's, which I knew was a big touristy type place but we figured we'd try it. The grocery store is basically on the west end of cable beach and Cafe Johnny Canoe's is on the east end so we took a bus, a very good decision because it would've been quite a long walk, and the bus is only $1 each so it's not expensive.

Cafe Johnny Canoes was described by some as a Bahamamian version of Fridays, and this isn't a bad description. The walls are decorated in loud junkanoo fashion, and the menu has plenty of native and American food, but nothing too creative. We both had cracked conch, it was pretty good although not as good as what we got on Long Island.

Next we walked down the street and stopped into the Cable Beach straw market. The straw market vendors were beyond annoying. Every single one said something to us and one of them even started heckling us when my wife was looking at a nearby vendor but not the heckler's. It was typical straw market fair; lots of cheap t-shirts, jewelry and coconut souvenirs. I've been in straw markets before but this one had by far the most annoying vendors, my skin was crawling the whole time.

We took the bus back to Orange Hill and went snorkeling at the beach across the street. Orange Hill beach is a relatively long beach that seems to be mainly used by locals. It's not the prettiest beach, but it was relatively free from debris and the lack of mobs of tourists was very nice. We snorkeled around for a while before we found much of anything, eventually we found a few scattered coral heads that had a decent amount of fish and we saw a stingray and a lionfish. My memory is getting fuzzy, but I believe the reef was basically straight out from a pair of pinkish houses a little ways west of the resort.

We ate dinner at the hotel. The atmosphere, service and everything else left something to be desired. It just felt like we were eating in a run down hotel restaurant. We had to get up and get our own water, and yet a 15% tip is still included? The menus change daily and there wasn't a whole lot that sounded good (i.e. liver & onions) so I got the strip steak and my wife got the tuna. The food was ok, but at least it wasn't overly expensive. We got some wine from the self-serve bar. I believe the only choices available were merlot and chardonnay. The bar as a whole doesn't have a whole lot of selection, but the liquor included some medium shelf type bottles, and given the relatively low prices that's not too bad.

6/19/07
After eating a breakfast of cereal on our porch in shifts it started to rain and we and our bags got drenched while we waited for Stuart Cove to pick us up. Orange Hill is definitely a popular resort with divers; we filled up a whole bus just by ourselves. Stuart Cove is a massive operation, even in low season. I believe they were sending out 3 dive boats, 1 snorkel boat and 1 sub boat each morning. I can't imagine what it's like during high season. The line to check in was long but they left plenty of time for that. We were put aboard the boat Black Coral which was the smallest of the boats. It didn't have sides (making entry a breeze) and was also notably slower than the others. The boat had a camera rinse tank and drinking water. We were pleasantly surprised that there would only be 7 divers total, 2 of which were doing research on the impact of the shark feedings and who wouldn't be taking the tour so to speak. It rained on and off throughout the ride and dives. Stuart Cove states that the first dive is to be a maximum of 30 min, and the second dive a maximum of 45 min. They're on a schedule and you can tell. It was a shock to the system after the super casual, we'll do whatever you want atmosphere of Stella Maris. The first dive is guided, the second dive has a dive master in the water but you aren't expected to follow.

DC3
75 fsw, 33 min
This was a wall dive. The wall had a lot of coral but was short on fish, and this was typical for all of the wall dives we did. We saw angelfish but nothing else of note. At the end of the dive there was a DC3, which was a prop from the movie "Into The Blue." The plane is somewhat broken up, but they've made it look like a real wreck so there were some cool things like bent back props to take pictures of. The plane was too new to have any real coral growth. We watched the movie after we got home and it's cool that the plane is heavily featured in the movie, although the movie itself is very mediocre.

Surface interval was on the boat; they had a schedule to keep to after all (not that there were any beautiful beaches nearby like on Long Island anyways).

Willaurie
53 fsw, 49 min
This is a natural wreck of a mail boat (they're really the supply boats which run between the islands). The boat had lots of coral growth and fish, and there was a large cage on the top of the boat that was covered in coral and could be entered for some interesting pictures. We saw 2 lion fish, lobster, grouper, a French angel (on the reef), a grouper with his mouth open getting cleaned, arrow crab, coral banded shrimp, Pederson shrimp, and barracuda. There was also a smaller boat nearby with some growth on it as well. This was one of the best dives we did on our trip, and probably my favorite wreck on New Providence.

We ate lunch at Stuart Cove's, they have a small grill and cook up some real simple stuff like burgers and hot dogs. The food was ok, about what you'd expect. Next we got on board the boat the Phoecena, a larger boat that was much faster.

Shark Wall
58 fsw, 42 min
I'm actually not sure on the name of this wall but it was a wall right next to one of the shark feeding sites. They take you to a wall near the shark feed so that you can see the sharks in a more natural way before the feed. We saw a few sharks right as we got in, but that was about it. There may have been fewer sharks than usual because the Discovery Channel was doing something for shark week in a nearby boat and the sharks were probably congregating there instead of on the wall. Overall this was one of my least favorite dives; there wasn't much life of any variety. We did see trumpetfish, lobster, and queen angelfish.

Not much of a surface interval, but we definitely couldn't go too deep on the next dive. They try to scare you good before the dive, saying that if you feel yourself falling over don't stick your hand out to catch yourself because a shark might see it and bite you, just let yourself fall and they'll pick you back up. The photographers and feeder were in chain mail, but no extra protection for the rest of us (other than the requirement to be wearing something with full coverage, skins are ok but shorties aren't).

Shark Feed
38fsw, 50min
On this dive you all go down and kneel on the sandy bottom in a circle and after everyone is comfortable the feeder comes into the water. A number of people had trouble getting comfortable on the bottom, but there are a number of positions they suggest, kneeling really seems to be the best for getting a good view. I knew ahead of time that it's suggested that you have a little extra weight so that you don't have a problem staying on the bottom, so I grabbed one from the equipment station before we left. For some reason they didn't bring along any more spare weights than usual on the boat, so they ended up running out.

After anxiously waiting for everyone to get settled the feeder came down and the sharks quickly followed. The feeder put the fish on the end of a spear and fed the sharks, intentionally going around the circle and trying to get the sharks close to whoever the photographers were taking pictures of. We were joined by at least 8 sharks, I think that we may have had less than usual due to the Shark Week activities going on nearby. There were also 2 huge groupers that joined the group, one of which spent almost the entire time next to me, occasionally bumping into me. There was a loose fish sitting on the bottom at one point, which one of the photographers repeatedly tried to flick up to the grouper, but the grouper never ate it, so either the groupers aren't too smart, or they just weren't hungry. I found the flicking of the fish toward the grouper somewhat unnerving since the grouper was right next to me and I was worried a shark would come by and snatch it up, but the sharks didn't seem smart enough to find any fish that wasn't still on the end of the skewer (and even when it was on the skewer they didn't do a great job of getting it all the time). I was able to take a ton of pictures, many which ended up just missing the head of the shark since they move so fast, but I got a few good ones. Being so close to the sharks was very cool, and I felt safe, although I did get bumped in the head by a shark once from behind and that was a little freaky.

When the box was empty the feeder left the water and they signaled that we could start looking for shark teeth in the sand. Everyone rushed toward the center and I ended up just hanging back since I didn't feel like joining the melee. I tried to get some pictures of the few sharks which were still somewhat nearby while I waited. My wife, like myself, was a little slow on the mad dash to the center of the ring but she managed to find a tooth in the sand a little bit farther out.

When we got back on the boat I only heard of one other person actually finding a tooth, but I'm guessing there were a few more.

They take a bunch of pictures during the dive as well as video so we took a look in their photo shop but none of the ones of us were good enough to purchase. The whole photo thing felt like they were just trying to suck even more money out of people, but you don't have to buy them so it's still a nice bonus. Plus you can look at the photos free online if you want and show your friends pictures of you with the sharks.

When we got back we showered and immediately left for dinner in hopes that we could still catch a bus. We took the bus a few miles down the road to the east to the Poop Deck @ Sandyport. We got there early enough that happy hour was still going on so we decided to hit the bar. They said that there weren't any specific specials, they just gave you a discount, and they had some free appetizers. The appetizers included some things that we really like, such as conch fritters, but everything we tried was not very good.

For dinner I had cracked conch and my wife had the catch of the day, snapper. They actually have a big display of the catch of the day sitting on ice and the waiter picks one out and brings it by the table for your approval. While we were eating there was a guy who sent back the first 4 fish that the waiter brought him, I'm not sure what his issue was. My conch was good, probably slightly above average compared to what I'd all have on New Providence; my wife's snapper was blackened and was very good. After dinner we had them call us a taxi because although I've read stories in other trip reports about walking between Orange Hill and the Poop Deck, it seems like a crazy far walk.

6/20/07
After a cereal breakfast on the porch we got picked up by Stuart Cove and found out that we would be diving on the Black Coral boat again. This time we had a lot more people on the boat, about 15.

David Tucker
78 fsw, 40 min
This was a wall dive with a wreck up above the wall. On the wall we saw a spotted eagle ray, a shark, barracuda and the usuals. The wreck had light coral coverage but we saw a lionfish and a midnight parrotfish hanging out on the wreck.

Twin Sisters
70 fsw, 43 min
This site consisted of two wrecks, bow to bow. Both were decent size wrecks, on par with most of the wrecks we saw. We saw a southern stingray, parrotfish, lionfish, gray angels, and trumpetfish. The wrecks had light coral coverage and a decent amount to see between the two of them. One of the wrecks had some nice areas you could poke your head into, and the other had some pipes, hatches and ladders that made for nice pictures. Just so long as you watch out for the fire coral.

After eating lunch in our room we took the short walk to the Cave's Village, definitely no need for a bus to the caves. There is a decent sized shopping area that from the ads claims to have a bunch of different stores, mostly upscale stuff. We spent a lot of time looking at the maps and walking around before we realized that there was really next to nothing actually there. I assume that the stores are still moving in, but about all it had was a spa, a high end grocery store, Mango's restaurant with some really strange, a liquor store, and Cafe Villagio, an Italian restaurant. We bought some Kalik Gold at the liquor store and brown bagged it and drank by the fountain. Kalik Gold is pretty much identical in flavor to Kalik, it's just like drinking a more condensed version, more flavor and more alcohol. Not better flavor, just more of the flavor we didn't really like.

For dinner we walked to Traveler's Rest which is located about a mile or so to the west. This walk was in the range where it was a long walk but not long enough to justify taking a bus or cab. I've read some negative comments about walking there due to the narrow road, but I really didn't find it to be that bad; you could walk on the beach or some rocks near the top of the beach anyplace that road got bad. Traveler's Rest has sort of a large bar atmosphere, no air conditioning, but lots of outdoor seating if you want it. We were hot so we opted to sit inside under the ceiling fans, but the outside seating would've had a pretty nice view. We ordered the minced crayfish (spiny lobster) and cracked conch. The crayfish was very good, although the sauce did overpower the lobster a little, and the cracked conch was pretty average. Given the atmosphere and the location I would've expected the prices to be a lot lower than they were, but all in all I would still recommend the restaurant.

After a hot walk back to the restaurant we had some Goombay Punch, a soda that is very common in the Bahamas but doesn't seem to mention anything about its flavor anywhere on the can. It basically tasted like pineapple soda, not particularly good, but you could probably make some good mixed drinks with it.

6/21/07
This morning we were put on one of the faster boats. When the DMs were asking about where we'd been I asked if we could go to some of the farther out reefs and rattled off a few of the sites I'd heard recommended but I was told that the weather wasn't good enough and it'd be too rough out there. I was bummed, and didn't really buy it since it was a really nice day and it wasn't choppy at all. As it turned out we didn't go to any of the sites I requested, but when I got back and checked the map we did go to some of the farther out sites, which explained why they were some of the best we did on Nassau. We had a photographer with us on the dives, once again trying to sell us pictures of the dives.

Playground
80fsw, 39min
A wall dive with lots of coral (a first for us on Nassau), we saw 5 lionfish, lots of gray triggerfish, gray and queen angelfish, big grouper, large groups of schooling chromis and other fish. A very good reef dive, definitely one to consider requesting.

Southwest Reef
28fsw, 42min
This is a dive with scattered coral heads. It was self-lead so I chose to go away from the larger coral heads by the boat because I didn't feel like being around lots of people. It's a shallow one, so it was one of the dives where you can just pop up if you get lost. We saw 2 reef sharks, a nurse shark, barracuda, gray and queen angelfish, trumpetfish, parrotfish, triggerfish and a ton of fairy basslets. This dive had good coral growth as well, definitely another site I'd recommend.

After the dives we checked out the photos taken by the Stuart Cove photographer, which immediately showed me just how much I suck at taking photos. They do have much better equipment and infinitely more experience.

After a lazy afternoon watching a movie in our room and planning out what we wanted to do in Nassau the next day we walked to Plantation Hill, a restaurant down the road to the east, slightly past Caves. I'd read some good reviews about it in other trip reports but when we got there it was closed. Based on the posted hours it should've been open so I don't know if it's closed down permanently or if it was closed for the season or what. We didn't feel like taking a taxi anywhere and it was too late to grab a bus anymore so we walked back to our room and changed into some nicer clothes and went to Cafe Villagio in the Caves. We figured that even if Cafe Villagio was more expensive than some place we'd go to in Nassau, we'd end up spending just as much once we took the taxi price into consideration.

We had linguini frutti de mare and veal Milanese with a bottle of Masi Valpolicella wine. Everything was very good, the wine, the food, the service and the atmosphere. The restaurant was relatively empty but a large group came in later and the manager came by and asked if we'd be willing to move tables. He was extremely nice about it and acted like it was a lot bigger deal than it really was, and said that he'd give us desert for free. I'll happily move anywhere if we get free desert out of the deal. We had flourless chocolate torte and tiramisu, both were good. It feels really wrong to say it since the food was Italian and not Caribbean, but it was the best meal we had on New Providence.

6/22/07
A day in Nassau to unload some nitrogen. We took the bus to the western edge of Nassau and got off and had a short walk to the Ardastra Zoo. The zoo is a relatively small zoo with lots of little trails through the greenery. You're supposed to follow the signs to take the tour and see everything but we found that it wasn't marked that well, and some animals just plain didn't seem to be on the main path. We saw lots of birds, a bush pig, pot bellied pig, monkeys, lemurs, capybara, jaguars, crocodiles and some interestingly colored squirrels. The zoo's claim to fame is its marching flamingos, the worlds only. At designated times during the day they have a show where the "drill sergeant" gets the flamingos to march into the little arena and perform. The drill sergeant kind of chases them, so it's not quite as impressive as advertised, but they do do a decent job of following commands such as march, stop, and about face. After they're done marching they invite people to come into the arena and have your picture taken with the flamingos around you. My wife and I were indecisive about who would go in so he told us both to come in and took our camera. While standing there one of the flamingos surprised my wife by nibbling her side, I'm guessing right about the time when he snapped the picture since it turned out as just a blur. Next up was the feeding of the lory parrots. At designated times during the day you can go into their large cage and they give you apple slices to hold up and feed the parrots. They instruct you to not feed the parrots on their perches and instead to force them to come to you (otherwise they'll get lazy and never fly to people in the future) but unfortunately a lot of the kids failed to follow the rules and it wasn't always easy to get one to come to you. After a little waiting I had two on my hand, and my wife had one land on her head as it made its way to her piece of apple. The parrots just nibbled at the apple, eating the juice. All in all it was a cool experience. Before leaving the zoo we used some coupons for free rum punch that we found in one of the magazines. As you might expect at the zoo it wasn't very good or strong. As a whole the zoo was a decent diversion, it seemed a little pricey for what it was, and it would've been a letdown if not for the flamingos and parrot feeding, but I would definitely recommend it. You can only go into so many shops in Nassau after all; it's nice to have other options.

We took a short walk to Arawak cay, an island right off shore across a short bridge. Arawak cay is home to the "fish fry" which basically just means they have a ton of seafood stalls, most of them pretty small, where you can get some fresh, local, inexpensive food. The quantity of stalls makes it pretty overwhelming, so we ended up stopping at Goldies, which kind of felt like cheating because it was a relatively large restaurant, but we were drawn in by the large fan. The fan didn't do a lot, so it was really hot in the restaurant. There were some small tables outside in the back, but the umbrellas didn't provide much shade and the harbor smell quickly made us go back inside. I had cracked conch and my wife had the conch salad. The cracked conch was a little tough and light on flavor but the conch salad was good. We've only had conch salad once before, but this was basically salsa with conch in it, very limey and tasty. The conch salad was a lot to eat though. All in all I'd suggest trying somewhere else on Arawak instead, I'm guessing your best bet is to just walk the whole thing and try and see which stalls have a lot of locals eating there.

We did some shopping on Bay St and stopped in the straw market. The vendors in the Nassau straw market still called out but they were about infinitely less annoying than the ones at the Cable Beach one. The whole place was still pretty uncomfortable though, and we didn't spend long. The other stores are what you'd expect, overpriced jewelry, souvenirs, etc. We found a few art galleries, if memory serves me correctly the one called "Third Eye" was the best, but we didn't end up buying anything. One of the places which advertises itself as an art shop is Festival Place, which is actually just a large indoor mall where the cruise ship passengers get back on the boat. The atmosphere was kind of disturbing because you knew it was all put on for the cruise ships, but it was air conditioned and they actually had some decent stores. An article I read said that Plantation Hill hot sauces were made on Long Island, so I had been looking for them and I finally found them at festival place. Although the bottles made no mention of Long Island, the sauces were very good.

After shopping we decided to check out the Queen's Staircase (there really isn't much to see in Nassau, but this is one of the few attractions). We found our way to Fort Fincastle, which is nearby and ended up waiting out the rain under a wooden, semi-leaky canopy. We were officially past cruise ship tourist hours so Fort Fincastle was closed. It's relatively small but it looks like it'd be interesting to go inside. There were a number of vendors who were tearing down for the day nearby, once the cruise ships pack up the town really starts shutting down. We walked past the old water tower (technically considered a tourist attraction, but as expected it was pretty unexciting) and made our way to the Queen's Staircase. The staircase is 65 steps that were carved out of the rock, the area is a deep cut into the hill with sheer stone walls on either side. It doesn't sound particularly exciting writing about it, but it was a pretty site, and I'd recommend making the short walk out to it. We had the place to ourselves; it's probably not as nice of a site when it's crawling with cruise ship passengers.

After buying some cheap duty free alcohol we ate an early dinner at Conch Fritters. Suffering from an overdose of cracked conch but still feeling I should eat conch when I had the opportunity, I went with the grilled conch and my wife had blackened grouper. The grilled conch consisted of conch, onions, peppers and tomatoes cooked in foil. The conch was good but a little tough, relatively average overall, although I've never had grilled conch before so I don't have much to compare to. The grouper was very good. Atmosphere was decent, kind of touristy Bahamas atmosphere. Service was mediocre, which was particularly annoying since we were about the only people in the restaurant. For dessert we finally got guava duff, something we'd been meaning to try the whole time we were there but we were always full or it wasn't on the menu. The guava duff was good but we weren't sure if it was traditional or not, it didn't seem to be exactly what we had read about, but we didn't have it anywhere else so I really don't know.

Our early dinner meant we could catch a bus back, unfortunately it was very crowded and I had to sit on one of the fold out seats. The native directly behind me was none to happy to have the seat against her knees so she made angry comments for most of the ride, making the whole ride very unpleasant. She even made some comment about smacking me upside the head with her size 10 shoe. Now seems as good of a time as any to say that the natives were in general tolerant of tourists, not nice to them but most of them didn't seem to hate them either. It was nowhere near as nice as Dominica where just about everyone was really friendly and actually liked Americans.

6/23/07
The flight home was full of problems. We got to the airport relatively early which was good, because we were informed by Bahamas Air that despite the fact that we had paper tickets in our hands they weren't any good because US Airways issued them and Bahamas Air wasn't informed. They managed to get us on the flight but the flight was delayed and then we had to sit on the tarmac for a long time because of a mechanical problem. When we finally got to Ft Lauderdale we ran to the gate only to find out that they had already closed boarding. US Airways got us on the next flight to Philadelphia, of course not getting us seats next to each other even though the seat next to me would be empty till a traveling flight attendant decided to take it.

We got to Philadelphia and had an incredibly difficult time finding any US Airways employees able to help us. When I finally found one I found out that she was new and didn't really know what she was doing, so I was sent to someone who actually knew what she was doing. Unfortunately almost everyone was being sent to this one employee so it took forever for us to check in, and once again they didn't get us seats by each other despite there being an empty seat next to me. When we got to Milwaukee I was none too surprised to find out that our luggage had been lost. The US Airways employee who helped us out on our flight out of Milwaukee suggested that we send a comment to their website and we did, getting us each a $125 voucher good for use within the next year….too bad US Airways is more than $125 more expensive than the competition for the places we're planning on going next year.

All in all a good trip on two very different islands.