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MULTIMEDIA PHOTO GALLERY Bahamas on a Friday MOVIES Atlantis Resort on a Friday No bikes allowed in this swank resort - but the tikit made it through Biking the Bahamas on a Friday Save the conch! (Note: if videos don't play smoothly on YouTube, let me know lynettec at bikefriday dot com - it's a bad connection here in the Bahamas, and/or I'll have to re-render them) |
Phonecall: Lynette, I'm going to the Bahamas. Do you want to come? Does a chicken have hard lips? To an Australian, "The Bahamas" evokes the usual touristy suspects - swaying palms, white sand, and big, sleek, trillionaire boats moored in sun-dazzled marinas. Not the usual spinning ground of the fun'n'frugal Bike Friday Customer Evangelist … A few months earlier, when customers challenged me to produce a 1-minute video for an island blogging gig downunder, I actually cited the Bahamas in my creative strategy, even though I'd never been there. So is there more to this paradise than the cliches? More importantly, is it a good place to bike? My hostess was Hilge Hurford, a New York Cycle Club member and owner of 2 Bike Fridays plus with a dozen or so regular wheels scattered between her residences in the Hamptons, Manhattan and Germany. Hilge has been known to ride all over Manhattan doing everything from running errands to attending fancy receptions, sometimes dressed in a suit jacket and always wearing stylish pumps (the Blahnik rather than the Topeak kind) - a legacy of her career in the fashion industry. She's also the bane of her apartment building's management committee, which prohibits bicycles passing through its formal lobby. "I don't care, these people should ride a bike," she sputters, recounting how she came chest-to-nose (she's tall) with the head of the board with her bicycle separating them - I'll spare you the colorful exchange that ensued ... I'd previously ridden with Hilge from Atlantic City to Cape May in late 2008, where she scorched ahead of me against fierce headwinds, creating a gap almost as big as the 22 years that separates us. Like many a fit German, she lives to bike. |
With a low cost carrier, you pay for every checked bag. Hence, the BF suitcase carrying my Speeding tikit cost $19 online. You might as well save all you can, because the saving stops the moment you hit that Bahamian banana lounge. The cab fare from the taxi to Paradise Island is set at $33 for 1-2 people, and $3 for the third. Hilge, who arrived a day ahead, reports she had three people in her cab, but was gouged for $25. I guess the cabbies figure that if you can afford to come to the Bahamas … The best way to avoid this fare of course, is to ride the 10 miles, pulling the BF trailer. More sticker shock on check-in: the Bahamian government's mandates a $25 per person per day visitor tax. Thus, my 5 day stay will mean coughing up $125 on departure.This is clearly to get money out of people who bring their own food and never patronize the restaurants. Like Hilge. "I like to be self sufficient," pronounced my hostess, opening the fridge to reveal a supermarket aisle full of provisions. Let's take a peek inside: Hilge's Travel Pantry: Good bread including pumpernickel. Ham. A giant brie. Cabbage, tuna, peppers and mayo, broccoli, to make a decidedly German salad. Oatmeal and nuts. Apples. I had hastily grabbed whatever was in the oven (my pantry in NYC) and shoved it in a carry-on bag. The Gal's travel pantry: Box of Ezekiel sprouted cereal. Carton of almond milk. Bag of pistachio, almonds, coconut, and dried unsulfered mango. Can of sardines. Apples. Kiwi fruit. Packet of crispbread. And a dozen SoyJoys, a new addiction thanks to Crusoe owner Ben Blum who introduced me to them, and which I subsisted on during my recent Singapore/Japan junket. |
Our room overlooked a marina full of giant boats. I took a stroll around to inspect these virtual condos on water. One, the ironically monikered Mea Culpa, evoked the Empire State Building on water, lit up, and complete with what looked to non-boatie me like a starboard dentist chair with a zillion dollar view. See the Photo Gallery above. The Atlantis Experience. You can't get into Atlantis during the day - security staff guard every purposely placed palm tree. But at night, perhaps to lure casino patronage, you can stroll right in through the pink marble lobby. The Dig, aka the subterranean aquarium is clearly the pearl in the clam of this staggering development. Resembling the crypts of some underground Mayan tomb, darkened corridors snake around and about, embedded with massive floor to ceiling tanks. Schools of big, medium and small fish float lazily and contentedly in these spaces. The whole scene has been 'art directed' like a Hollywood set; the fish are all shades of silvery gray with no random sprinkling of Nemos to upset the color scheme - they get their own little tank. There's a passage of tanks chock-full of greenish lobsters crawling on top of each other like an ominous Hans Giger composition. There's a striking tank of pulsating jelly fish backlit with orange light - mesmerizing and menacing. Surfacing from this fantastically fabrication, we were dwarfed by the monolithic hotel towers silhouetted in the moonlight. Two structures are joined by an aerial bridge in which "Michael Jackson had a residence," said Hilge. |
Again, we pedaled off to the lost world of Atlantis, um, next door. Our wristbands, together with guard boxes and boom gates everywhere, tell you you're in a completely controlled environment - it reminded me of being dumped out on Cayo Largo in Cuba when I hitched a ride with that crazy South African sailor and had to leave or pay $92 for a hotel room. We were told to lock up our bikes a respectable distance from the resort entrance, but there were zero bike racks to be seen. After giving the immaculately uniformed guard a piece of her bicycle advocate's mind, Hilge locked her Friday up to a chain poking out of a wall. I decided to fold the Speeding tikit, cloak it with the transit cover, and roll it right in. If I made it, it would be a cool addition to the tikit on Trial page. And I did! I have a shot of the tikit outside the Gucci shop in the marbled promenade to prove it. We lay on a beach bed for a while, to tick that box. Unfortunately, the potentially restful atmosphere was shattered by loud, frenetic dance music, a typical resort phenomenon. How about some soothing Caribbean plinky plunky music? "Lady Gaga, my daughter Jennifer went to school with her," said Hilge from behind her big glasses as the techno diva's latest hits blasted out from the pool bar. Want a snack? A Ben and Jerry's ice cream poolside will set you back $7, and a piece of fruit $2. However, 6 pieces of the local delicacy, fried conch, costs $5. A trippy highlight was the pool of baby manta/sting/eagle rays (no one can tell me for sure what they were), resembling autumn leaves wafting about, their frilly mouths vacuuming the sandy bottom. "I'm so glad to see they grow their own," exclaimed Hilge. |
The traffic, as David Lam had warned me, was nuts. So many cars, such narrow roads, and driving British style, on the left. A visit to a grocery store caused amazement all around when I rolled the tikit in. It was like a folding bike had never been seen in these parts. The riding is not unlike biking in New York City (as in this video shows). So if you're not fazed by traffic passing close, yet not buzzing you, you'll be fine. Arawak Cay is a place to eat Fish Fry and conch salad, but a stroll round the back of the restaurants raised Hilge's hair - a landfill of derelict conch shells dotted with aluminum cans and rubbish lined the estuary. "Poor little creatures - leave them alone!" she admonished the Bahamian going about his business of harvesting a clutch of conch for the next tourist tapas. "Um, what about the ham you brought along?" I ventured in a small voice. "True ... true ... but animals should be left alone. Eat broccoli!" she shouted to Conch Man. Needless to say, there would be no stimulating the econch-omy on a Friday ... Cable Beach. We headed out further to west to check out the Sheraton Wyndham resort. A series of giant beige monoliths set, bizarrely, in a meandering lagoon of blue ... concrete, it must have been designed for an easy hose-down when corporate shindigs get rough. As we'd been eating in every day, thanks to Hilge's imported pantry, I decided to spring for a conch salad. Hilge took off down the beach so as not to watch Lynette the animal cannibal. For $10, the dish basically resembled a bland cerviche. Perhaps the conch should have been left in peace, as she kept insisting. The Cove is an exclusive part of Atlantis that is very strict about letting people wander in. "Where are you going ma'am?" said the big burly black guard stepping in front of Hilge's front tire. "To see the dolphins," she said, upon which he let us through. We got some dolphin action all right - observing paying observers in wetsuits cavort with leaping bottle noses in a giant artificial lake. |
"I'm not sitting here when there's no one to talk to!" proclaimed Hilge. I tried to persuade her to join me, and thus colonize the forlorn lounge, but I failed to enrol her. "Can I order just one?" I asked the barman as I sat there populating the bar on my ownsome. "Can't. It's in the computer like that." So, momentarily forgetting I was going to be hit for $25 per night visitor tax on departure, I ordered two, and drank both - fast, like a true non-drinker. Yep, we teetotallers scarf cocktails like they're a Jamba Juice instead of pacing ourselves. But since the bar was empty, I succeeded only in bending the ear of the barman. With questions like, so how does Land'Or stay a happening place in the shadow of its glitzy neighbor? (Fleeting vision of Camilla Parker Bowles standing next to Princess Di). "This is they way the owners (two guys in Virginia) and the people who come here, like it." Yes, I must admit there's a laid back feel about this place; something about the worn carpet, thrice-painted over concrete and synthetic palm tree in the room. I took my foam plate of peanuts and fish crackers, no doubt carefully counted out and entered in the computer, and retired to our villa. Hilge was preparing one of her delicious, signature pumpernickel, brie and distant-relative-of-conch sandwiches with coleslaw while furiously Barackberry Stormin' ... So to bike or not to bike in the Bahamas? Despite warnings that the Bahamian roads are narrow, pitch black at night and the traffic totally nuts, Hilge and I found it perfectly rideable - perhaps due to our experience of biking daily in NYC. While traffic grinds to a halt you will feel as free as an AWOL conch, zipping around on flat as a pancake terrain, and in doing so, avoid banana-lounge butt. Oh, and bring a good front and rear light (I'm biased, but have to say I felt supremely immortal wearing my Traffic Cone Bag). Just take a Samsonite suitcase full of money or failing that, a swag of personal food - the key to frugal Friday fun. Door to door, for the 5 nights, I calculate I dropped almost $600 on flights, transfers and the annoying $25 per person per night government kickback without buying a single meal or paying for accommodation. Any suggestion that this should be otherwise is met by a "Hey! This is the BAHAMAS!" Again, I will make a biased statement and say, I prefer the Hilo side of the Big Island of Hawaii on a Friday, where papayas are still four for $1 ... Postscript: Australia's Great Barrier Reef certainly does measure up to the Bahamas as I set out to prove to in my Best Job in the World video - although if you're looking for Caribbean-like color, downunder you gotta remember the land of Oz was colonized by pasty white Brits who can't take much sun ... - Lynette Chiang, Bike Friday Customer Evangelist |
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