Bahamas baby! And why I love the internets

That’s right, I just got back from vacation at the Bahamas. Bridge and I went on a 7 day cruise that made a few stops in Bahamas. It was an incredible vacation (I’ll post pictures soon). Funny crazy story though…

It was day 3 and we were on Grand Bahama Island. We decided to take a taxi from Freeport to the beach at Port Lacaya. The taxi only cost $5 per person so we hopped in the van with about 8 other people and were on our way. It took about 20 minutes, and then we were on the beach. It was absolutely beautiful. After a few hours we decided to walk around the Port Lacaya area and do some shopping. We shopped for a while, grabbed a late lunch and realized that it was 4:30pm. We had to be back to the ship by 5:30pm, so we went to find a taxi back. We found the same taxi driver that drove us out there, and he was going to charge us $30 to get back (since it was only 2 people riding back and not 10, he was charging more). Well, Bridge and I weren’t having that. So we walked around to look for more taxis, but all the taxis were going to charge us $30.

Now, right here you’re saying “David, just pay the $30.” But no, it’s the principle of it…we paid $10 to get there and we weren’t going to pay more than $10 to get back. Everything on vacation costs so much money and I was tired of feeling like I was getting screwed over all the time. Back to the story:

So we then decided to start looking for people who were going back to the port to share the taxi with (then it would only be $5). So we find a group of 8 people about our age leaving the beach and walking toward the taxis. We asked them if they were on our cruise and they said “No, but we all work on a yacht and we’re heading back to the port anyway…we’ll give you guys a ride.” Bridge and I were excited, free ride back to the port! We hop in the van with everyone and start making small talk on the ride back. By this time it was about 4:45pm.

These were some of the nicest people we’ve ever met. They were from all different parts of the world (USA, England, Sweden, Granada and Japan). They were easy to talk to and were a lot of fun to hang out with. We were fortunate to meet them.

They had to make one stop before heading to port, but on the way to that stop we had to turn around at least twice because they couldn’t remember how to get there. We finally get to the first stop and drop off half of the crew. We said our goodbye’s and were off by around 5pm. Bridge and I were getting a little nervous because it was getting close to our departure time and we really had no clue where we were. On top of that, it kind of seemed like everyone else had no real clue of where we were.

After a U turn, the driver runs a stop sign and then just comes to a stop in the middle of the road and asked the passenger “Was that my turn?” She said “I think so, but I’m not sure.” He said “Nah, I think I just go straight.” She said “No, I’m pretty sure that was your turn.” This goes on for a couple of minutes, all the while I was staring at my phone watching the minutes tick by. It was 5:10pm and we hadn’t completely decided which way was the correct way.

Finally, they decided on a direction and it was the right way. We made it back to our ship at 5:21pm, just 9 minutes before sailing time. We said bye to everyone (briefly because we were so late) and ran up to the ship. We got quite a lot of funny looks from the crew as if they were thinking “Who are these fools running up to the ship this late?” We were the last one’s aboard.

We got checked in and were going through security before I realized that I didn’t have my phone. My only 2 month old LG Voyager that I loved. I had been looking at the time on my phone and I have this bad habit of putting my phone between my legs when I’m in a car or sitting down. I was in such a hurry to make it back to the ship that I had not even thought about my phone until it was too late.

I looked out of the gangway and the van with our new friends was nowhere to be seen. They were gone. You might say “Well why didn’t you just call your phone and ask them to bring it back or mail it to you?” Well, I had my phone on “Airplane Mode” which means it cannot receive or send messages or phone calls. I’m not the guy that thinks he’s so important that he can’t turn his phone off for a week during vacation, I was just using my phone to keep up with the time and to take pictures with.

I had no way of contacting these people..I couldn’t even remember all of their names. I came to grips with it, my phone was lost. For good. Or so I thought….

A couple of hours of work, and I managed to track down one of the people we rode with on Facebook just through what she had told us about herself in the 20 minutes that we hung out with her (it took me a while, but I found her). I sent her a message about my phone and it turns out that she has my phone and is going to ship it to me!

Long story short: I love the internet!