A Day in the Life...: Oh, Abaco

Where to even begin about my trip to the Bahamas? Well, it started of with a red eye from LA to Miami, where we arrived at bright and early 6am (which was actually 3am CA time). After 6 hrs. in the ice box of an airport, we hopped on a plane that was taking us to Marsh Harbor, located on the Island of Abaco. When we arrived, we waited for the rest of our family to arrive, who were coming in on a later flight. I had a very relaxing afternoon; I took a walk down to the beach, laid in the hammock and read a book. What beats that? The rest of our family finally arrived and we spent the evening out by the pool catching up, though it had only been what 3 weeks since we last saw them. The rest of the evening Betsy, Justin and I flipped through the tv channels, trying to find a movie to watch. We ended up watching Planet of the Apes...weird movie. Totally entertaining though.

The next day we just hung around the resort and walked down to the beach, where we decided it would be fun to take some kayaks out to this small island a little ways away. Jamie and Betsy take off towards the island, Justin and I follow and then my Uncle Jeff brings up the rear by himself. We got about half way out when Justin goes "Um, Danielley, we are takin' on a lot of water back here". I turned around and saw that he was almost up to his waist in water and that it was slowly filling up the front of the kayak as well. "Start bailing!" I yelled, and we began frantically bailing, but we were taking on water faster than we could bail it out. Eventually we were just sitting in the filled kayak with the top of the kayak just under the surface of the water. Justin hopped (or rather, swam) out, hoping it would float again, but by that time it was too full of water so his weight didn't even effect it. So, I got out too and we tried tipping it over and then flipping it back, but we couldn't get it to drain. The whole time we were laughing hysterically, while his dad was paddling around us, yelling directions at us and freaking out...just a little. We just thought it was hilarious. We began trying to swim in with it, Justin pulling it in front and me pushing it from behind, but the current was pretty strong. Finally some guy on a paddle board came out and took it from us, giving us his paddle board to get out to the island. However, we only had kayak paddles, so that made it interesting. Justin tried swimming behind it, "pushing it" (he was slowing it down more than anything), while I sat on top and paddled. Finally he let go and I just took off, leaving him to swim the last of the stretch. Quite a funny memory...I didn't even know it was possible to sink a kayak. haha

here are some pictures of us hanging out in town the third day we were there.

what can i say? we're hardcore

aw, see we do like each other

oh, kaite...

Izzy was our waitress at a restaurant called Mangos. She was hilarious! So great, in fact that we took a picture with her before leaving.

On the fourth morning, we went out to the fake clay tennis courts and played some pretty good tennis. We met some other people staying at the resort and got a few games going with them. It was really fun. While we were playing against Gary and my Aunt Julie, I missed a ball and Justin jokingly goes "damn it danielle". My aunt goes "Those two words are never to be used in the same sentence!" So, to spite my aunt for standing up for the person who gets made of the most in the family, for the rest of the trip, the ongoing joke was damn it danielle since it had such a nice ring to it. For example, I was in the other room and Jamie dropped something in the kitchen and expresses her frustration by saying "damn it danielle". Then Gary had to chime in and say that saying "damn it" was only okay if my name was after it. So i guess my name is the new family expletive...great haha.

After tennis, we returned to the house and since it was ridiculously hot outside, we wanted to get in the water. Justin and I went down to the beach and swam a bit. Have I talked at all about the beach yet? Well, I think it just might have been the most spectacular beach I have ever been to. There was no one else around (I think the entire week we were there we may have seen 10 people total on the beach...crazy!)

katie's model shot

playing in the sand...it was super soft!

Aunt Julie, Justin and my Mom

We also played croquet! I was terrible at it...Jamie kept laughing at how bad I was.

Here is Justin, Gary, Katie and I down to the clubhouse beach, where, as you can see in the background, there was a giant floating trampoline! One afternoon when Justin and I were jumping on it, he told me to try and do a flip off of it into the water. I did, but completely over-rotated and smacked on the water. So great haha.