Bahamas, USA: I choose adventure

People ask ‘Don’t you get bored’?

People gasp when we say we’ve been in the Bahamas for 6 months.

They scratch their heads and roll their eyes and say things like ‘Really?!’

Last night padding along yet another long white sand beach, we plotted and schemed – could we stay the whole season? – why not head further south in the Bahamas and enjoy a few more months? – what would we do in a hurricane? 

Weather plays a huge role in our lives and the storms of late have certainly kept us on our toes. Lightning, thunder and predictions of tropical storm development all around us.

In the end we resigned ourselves: we will go. America beckons. We will lift our anchor midday and set off across a little section of the Atlantic ocean and leave this expanse of paradise behind us.

By this weekend we’ll have replaced the dodging of jellyfish in the water, with dodging traffic - grocery bags in hand.

We will have the tangible memory of turquoise in our minds as the boats float in a broth of brown and grey…

A sea of turquoise off Little Sale Cay

No more searching tiny towns for the one onion and the last bottle of fresh milk in the fridge. Shopping will no longer be an adventure. Choice will overwhelm and bury us…

Organization and street lights; order and civilization, will take the place of stars in a vast sky, beaches and rocks and the distant sound of soca beating.

It’s a difficult trade off for people who’ve decided to make the sea their home. It’s like deliberately moving from a holiday resort to a concrete jungle.

It’s like choosing the mall over the beach.

But we’ve got landy pleasures planned. We’ll surely munch beignettes on Bourbon Street in New Orleans and comb the streets of tiny towns in Alabama. We’ll feel the breeze in our hair as we fly down a highway in the USA. It will be a rush.

Sure, we’ll have boat repairs and laundry and more lightning storms to endure as well.

But will we ‘get bored’??

I don’t think so.