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| The Atlantis hotel and resort, Paradise Island |
The proper way to make a Goombay Smash is as follows: combine one ounce each of white rum and coconut rum, half an ounce of either apricot brandy or cream of coconut, and two ounces each of pineapple juice and orange juice. Shake with crushed ice, garnish lavishly with maraschino cherries, locate hammock, attain appropriate sag and imbibe. Repeat as necessary.
With your opposite hand, prepare a large serving of conch fritters – a Bahamian delicacy fashioned from an otherwise inedible and vulcanised mollusc, rendered oddly delicious in fritter form. Combine the unlikely triad of conch meat, onions and bell peppers, then mould into plum-size spheres and fry in a large skillet for about 30 seconds. Promptly remove and garnish with chipotle mayonnaise and serve with no fewer than four Goombay Smashes, need I say sequentially?
Which brings me to the two other cornerstones of the Bahamian tourist economy: the sun – both a local miracle and a relentless, molten scab, its UV rays wreaking untold epidermal damage – and air conditioning, particularly the arctic variety swelling the duct work of the country’s casinos, endurable only when you’re swaddled in the hide of a muskox. One encounters these four pillars each and every day in The Bahamas: Goombay, conch, sun and air conditioning, though not always in that order.
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I imagine for Bahamians it’s a very different place. In fact, I’d be willing to offer long odds that most locals have never touched a conch fritter. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), the cloistered, painless, waterlogged, rum-addled tourist reality puts the native, presumably “real”, Bahamas largely beyond my comprehension. While I’ve spent what some might consider an eccentric amount of time in the country, I know almost nothing of it outside the half-mile stretch between my father’s timeshare in Cable Beach and the Crystal Palace Casino. Nonetheless, I was curious to see as best I could how the country was faring in this grisly economic climate, so I returned in September for my first “recession vacation”, armed to the teeth with sunscreen and indigestion tablets.
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| A conch seller in Nassau |
This hasn’t appeared to dampen Bahamians indomitable good cheer. I don’t mean this in the paternalistic “although-mired-in-abject-poverty-the-natives-are-so-friendly” way, but rather as a warning to prospective visitors. The relentless, almost pathological friendliness here can be a little unnerving at times, like that overly solicitous football coach who, to your undying detriment, never found fault with your abysmal passing.
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When in-country, I’m headquartered at the Westwind Club, a timeshare outside Nassau that doubles for my father as a refuge from Midwestern winters. It’s a handsome collection of bungalows with a pool, bar, hammock, resident collection of sexagenarians and a sliver of beach providing ready access to nature’s blue bounty. My time there is a blur of snorkelling, gambling, napping and carb-loading on the ubiquitous Bahamian potato salad. It’d be Eden if it weren’t for the fact that I’m often on sunscreen duty for my dad’s back.
On this trip, I wanted to try something new while rubbing elbows with the locals. To that end, Steve Darville, the longtime manager of Westwind, was kind enough to arrange a day of spear fishing and sunstroke for me at Rose Island. A twisted scrub of hardshells and seagrape about four miles northeast of Nassau, Rose Island is ground zero for spiny lobster, a clawless native breed found under reefs and rocky ledges along the coasts. Called “crawfish” by locals and prized for their meaty, succulent tails, spiny lobster are also dumber than spit, which makes them easy targets. Entranced by the glint of water-bound metal, they often delay retreat right up until the moment they catch a spear between the eyes.
With Darville’s 20-year-old son Demetri at the helm of an 18ft Sea Boss, we stormed out of Nassau in blazing sunshine. Bahamian law permits the taking of an unlimited number of lobsters with tails measuring more than 5.5in. Fifteen years ago, Darville and two friends speared 300 in one day; but the illegal use by fishermen of bleach and detergent to drive lobster from their dens has destroyed reefs and reduced lobster numbers. On opening day this year, Darville and his pals got only 64.
At Rose Island, the lobsters remained incognito until a member of our party speared two in rapid succession. Suddenly one appeared in my sights, tantalisingly prone, apparently sunning itself. I hauled back and fired at point blank range, but my spear glanced off the rocks and sank limply to the sand. I reloaded and shot again, exploding a chunk of precious brain coral. Slowly, the lobster began to slip back into his den. I swore (as much as it’s possible to swear underwater) as I reloaded. This time my aim was true. Lobster entrails drifted to the ocean floor like spaghetti.
We motored to the south side of the island, past a huge gouge torn out of the beach by developers of a $700m Ritz-Carlton, which, despite myriad environmental concerns, had been scheduled to open this year. Lehman Brothers had held a 50 per cent share in the project, however, and construction stopped last year.
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| An Acklins islander sets conch out to dry in preparation for its sale |
But there’s no denying that it’s a mind-blowing vacation spot. Atlantis is not about exclusivity, although it feigns it with restaurants such as Nobu and a marina bulging with grotesque yachts. Bus drivers and school teachers holiday here. It’s the opposite of snooty. It’s Willy Wonka. There’s cracked masonry and mildewed fountains and faulty plumbing, which is part of the charm.
Nonetheless, Atlantis was a ghost town, despite a fire sale on rooms. A three-night stay was $299, including a round of golf and entry to “dolphin encounters”. While the air conditioning was set to “pneumonia”, gone were the usual scrum at the craps table, the columns of underage drinkers, the tattooed art trash and Japanese moshers outside Nobu. You don’t need much money to enjoy Atlantis, but it turns out you do need other bodies to enjoy Atlantis.
Bahamians are barred from the island’s casinos unless they’re employees, which seems unfair but is probably a blessing in disguise. I’d had designs on making my next three months’ rent at the craps table, but the dealers and stickman were united against me, as were the most feckless assemblage of rollers I’ve ever encountered. The die travelled around the table in eight minutes, failing to hit the point even once, and leaving me about $250 poorer.
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Two days later, I was plying the ocean again, this time in pursuit of the elusive bonefish for which The Bahamas are infamous. Aaron “Big Bone” Bain, a fly-fishing guide who grew up on nearby Abaco, piloted us to the flats off Coral Harbor on the southern side of New Providence Island. Here, bonefish lurked among the mangroves, feeding on crabs and urchins and tormenting us with occasional flashes at the surface. Bain poled us quietly along, whispering orders to me in a near-inscrutable Bahamian accent. He is a ruthless administrator of the proper cast, and, watching my deplorable technique, a weird look appeared on his face, like he’d just fallen down a flight of stairs.
Onshore, colonnaded trees reached out and took hold of the sky, wrestling it to the ground. The sun vanished behind a sheet of clouds, greatly diminishing our visibility, while water dogs yipped treacherously in the shallows, riling the fish and further stacking the odds against us. Still, Bain is a professional and despite my abysmal casting I managed to land a fat 8lb bonefish within half an hour. I also missed several opportunities that afternoon. Clearly, when my time was up here, my therapist would have a lot to reckon with back in New York.
Bain’s business hadn’t suffered in the recession. Fly-fishermen tend to be at the top of the economic food chain – yachtsmen and tycoons and baronial jefes and so on – and they also tend to be the types that would sooner sell their wives and valets than pass up a bonefishing holiday.
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On my last night, sun-sick and woozy from so many hours at sea, I retreated to the landlocked La Hipica Restaurante, a tapas bar carved out of the palm forest in western New Providence, near the old village of Gambier. Overseen by Miguel Coello, a transplant from Madrid, La Hipica offers flawless Spanish tapas on a covered porch with an Australian outback vibe. Coello’s wife, Erika, runs a riding school here and the property includes a five-mile trail that happens to be on a migration route of monarch butterflies. It’s paradise.
My dad, stepmother and I sat at picnic tables and guzzled the local brew, Kalik, as Coello presented us with a spectacular array of tapas: garbanzos fritos, gambas, lomo and salchichon sausages. It was hands-down the best meal I’ve ever had in The Bahamas.
Dusk was approaching. Away from the beaches and casinos and conga lines, I found myself smiling. I don’t know what the future holds for The Bahamas, but I’d like to think this is it. Here, The Bahamas felt less like a repository of disposable incomes than just a nice place to hang out and drink beer and watch the night goddess Nyx wrench the sun from Hemera’s grasp, where the American Puritan aesthetic tries on new clothes, where little is boring, and where it’s okay to feel like a failure. There’s always tomorrow.
John O’Connor is a regular contributor to the FT Weekend Magazine.
