Monday, February 15, 2010

Second Entry

Finally, a four day weekend, and what better way to spend it than family vacation to the Bahamas? Well, I can actually think of a few better ways to spend it, but I guess I won’t complain about a free trip to a tropical paradise. But unfortunately the conventional belief that the Bahamas is a tropical paradise is actually not true. My family and I are all in agreement that the Bahamas is just Florida in terms of scenery and food, but the Bahamas’ cost of vacationing is noticeably more expensive.
Upon arriving Friday afternoon, on a surprisingly only a two hour flight, I was pleasantly notified that many of my friends were trapped in their homes. As everyone must already know, Atlanta was unfortunate enough to have, to my knowledge, four inches of snow, and what better time to have snow than when there is no school. My parents could not have picked a more perfect date to travel to the Bahamas, because as my peers are shoveling out their driveways in freezing temperature, I will be soaking up the sun’s warm rays on a relaxing beach. Although it is unlikely that any of my friends would subject themselves, or their parents subject their kids, to shoveling out snow, one can always hope.
Not to be a pessimist, but to be honest the Bahamas hasn’t been anything special or exciting. Like I already said, the Bahamas can be best compared to a pricier Florida. The expected hot temperatures that I vividly imagined were in reality nothing more than seventy degrees. Unfortunately, towards the evening the temperature drops into the sixties and the wind chill by the beach actually creates a quite chilling and uncomfortable environment. But who can really complain? At least it is not snowing.
The real kicker of the entire trip is the true ridiculousness of the natives and more specifically the taxi drivers. Upon exiting the airport we began searching for a taxi. And to my parent’s dismay, the first taxi driver we found informed us that the trip to our hotel would cost us $28 despite the fact that our hotel was literally three miles away from the airport. Upon inquiring why the cost was so high, we were informed that the distance was irrelevant and that they charge $9 per person and $3 for each child, me and my sister, and $1 for each luggage. The numbers added up, but the reasonability of the situation did not. Unhappy, my parents searched for another taxi driver only to discover that the next driver demanded $25 for the ride. Still unhappy, my parents discovered a chart displaying the taxi fees and lo and behold there read: “$9 for each adult and $3 for each child”. However, there was no such thing about additional baggage fees thus making the true cost a still ridiculous $24, but at least the price was somewhat lower. Apparently, these taxi drivers had been trying to mise a few more dollars out us stupid Americans and unsurprisingly this was not the first or the last time would be dealing with these money fiending locals.

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