Bahamas Vacation

As I mentioned Tuesday in my blog about my dad, we took a whole family vacation to the Bahamas for my Dad’s 60th birthday. When we asked what he wanted for his 60th birthday his response that he just wanted us to all gather together and go scuba diving (one of his favorite family activities). So we all arranged to have the long holiday weekend off and ventured out to the Bahamas. My parents, all three of us kids, our spouses and my new niece! My mom even made my dad one of her DE-LICIOUS Homemade banana cakes. TO DIE FOR.

My family has been diving together for about 15 years, and it remains one of the coolest things I have ever done… like visiting a whole new world every time. And with the benefit of singing Finding Nemo songs in your head: “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.” It was a quick trip, just four nights and 3 and a half days, but it was the perfect amount of R&R for us. Mom does most of the research and travel arrangements and found a great place to stay on Green Turtle Cay called the Bluff House. They were great hosts, and we had our own little house to use as a family (four of us stayed in another place just down the beach, but this was our home base).

If you are looking for tons of excitement and night life, this is not really your island, but if you are looking for a beautiful locale, great diving, and a lot of relaxation, this place is PERFECT. Its out of the way, so you have to take a ferry to the island, after a plane ride over from Fort Lauderdale, but completely worth it.

The scenery was gorgeous and we had our own little private beach:

My husband and my sister-in-law got certified to dive for this trip, so it was fun to share that experience with them. We dove with Brendal’s Dive Shop, Brendal, CJ and Daniel were all excellent dive masters and a ton of fun to be around! Brendal is quite the character and has tons of experience and has even been featured on quite a few television shows! Reese was most particularly excited to see the reef shark on the first dive, but I’m pretty sure that was Becky’s least favorite part. My brother had his Go Pro camera with him, and snapped this super blurry photo of the husband and I.

We took the golf carts into town a few of the nights (about a 20ish minute golf cart ride away from our hotel) and walked around, its a cute, sleepy little town with very nice people!