Advertisement
Published: April 23rd 2018
Half Moon Cay, Bahamas
White, white, white, clean powdery sand in a crescent moon shape with palm trees ringing the beach. The sky is deep blue, the waters warm and turquoise. The perfect Caribbean island right out of Robinson Crusoe.
We are spending the day in a fairy tale. The beaches are groomed, there are young, strong lifeguards every 400 feet, and our clamshell cabana awaits us. This island is owned and operated by Carnival Cruise Lines which also owns the Veendam, our Holland American ship.
We settle in spreading our towels on the lounge chairs, shed our beach cover ups and head for a walk to the far reaches of the beach. As the small waves lap at the shore, our feet hit what seems like cold water, but that’s just because we are so hot. The white powdery beach looks like it goes on forever with hardly a shell. Well, that’s not totally true, we do see tiny white shells every now and then but nothing really, just pristine powdery white sand.
As we walk along, passing guests from the 2 Holland America ships that are in dock at the same time, we start to
see horse hoof prints in the sand and realize there is a stable and just ahead of us and emerging from the palms is a string of 8 horses and riders heading for the surf. They go out into the water for a refreshing ride and circle back to the beach. Really a beautiful sight with the horses, white sand, blue sky, white clouds and turquoise sea.
On most Caribbean islands we would see vendors on the beach, shacks where we could have a cold beer and stray dogs lazing in the sun. But not here. This is fantasy paradise. As we head back we can smell the island BBQ (brought off the ship) getting ready to serve us jerked chicken, beef, beans and rice and all things island and tasty.
But before we partake of the food we head into the cool water. Soft sand under our feet, no coral, the water is warm and buoyantly salty. We stay for a looooong while before heading to our clamshell to read.
We only have about 6 hours here so start to pack up and head for the pavilion for lunch. Lining the brick walks are Sea grape
trees…actually a bush of about 6-8 feet. We pass the showers and misting stations to cool off (misting stations, really ??) and places to rinse off our feet. We pick a picnic table and spot and a mother hen her with her 12 chicks come pecking through looking for leftovers.
Although this was an easy island, no traffic, no crime, no vendors, it wasn’t for us. We like talking to the locals, practicing our Spanish and haggling over a necklace. We love learning about the country and having dogs jump on us, LOL (you may remember the pup that spotted Cope on a beach when we were heading down to South America, and jumped right on his lap where he intended to stay forever ?)
Lovely peaceful day but… we are ready to head to the Turks and Caicos.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.45s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 11; qc: 50; dbt: 0.2666s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Rafael
non-member comment
Nice!
I would love to be there with you guys and Alisa and Isaac! Looks really beautiful, but I like the social interaction, too. There sure are some perfect photo ops there, though!