Atlantis, Paradise Island

Chris had promised Alex that he would take him to Atlantis if he could when we were in Nassau and our guests weren’t due to arrive till 8pm at the earliest so we cleaned and provisioned like whirling dervishes in order that we could spend the afternoon there.

Atlantis is a huge resort on Paradise Island with its own hotel, marina, beach and village but what attracted us was the huge water park and marine life exhibits. We started our visit by walking past a lagoon full of very active rays swimming in “flocks”. Even though we had swum and dived with these creatures and seen them swimming around the boat many times, we still stood transfixed and oohed and aahed. I am so pleased that we never seem to lose our sense of wonder and delight. The predator tunnel beckoned and here were shark and barracuda and some really big tarpon along with a mass of reef fish. We knew that Jamie was able to name just about any reef fish in the known universe, but it was our first opportunity to hear Alex saying, “oh look, a queen trigger!” or “no mummy, that’s not a rocky beauty, it’s a creole wrasse (duh)”.

But our real business here was water slides, so that’s what we did next. They picked a nice easy tube ride for me: Jamie went on a single tube as point man and Alex and I followed behind on a double. After a series of luge like swoops and banks we plunged into a shark infested lagoon. Fortunately we were enclosed in a clear plastic tunnel to give us the illusion of being surrounded by shark while flat on our backs in an airfilled tube. A nurse shark had draped itself over the top of the tunnel and was taking a nap – quite a view.

Jamie decided to do a slide called The Abyss or Leap of Faith or something similar – and here she is!

The watery fun continued till 7 when the park shut and we had to get back for our guests. On the way out we walked past the Manta Rays and watched them moving majestically through the water – it was really hard to leave.

Once back at the boat, we again whirled around dervishly and only began to get concerned when our guests hadn’t arrived by about 9pm. Our mobile phones didn’t work in the Bahamas so we couldn’t make or receive the usual voice or text messages or even make a call. Our internet access was miserable and intermittent but we decided to check email and try to Skype. It turned out that our guests had an awful journey from the UK and missed their connection – they wouldn’t be in till the next day. We felt very deflated and disappointed – but very upset for them too.