Bahamas
Friday January 3, 2025
Well, I guess we should talk about the Bahamas, huh? That’s what you do when you get back from vacation? Promise this newsletter won’t turn into Tripping On Roads.
One Place: Baha Mar
The most valuable discovery Lindsay and I made on this trip is that we are not resort people. The reason we went on vacation this Christmas season is because the timing of the holidays just happened to align so that Lindsay had nearly two full weeks off.
We tend to be more active vacation-takers, going places where we expect to explore and spend very little time in our hotel or Airbnb. But this extended break felt like a good opportunity to do a relaxing vacation for once, and we were both intrigued by the idea of doing the Caribbean beach resort thing for the first time.
I knew of Baha Mar through my brother and sister-in-law, Dylan and Liza, but figured it would be out of our price range. Surprisingly, after redeeming credit card points, the SLS Baha Mar was one of the more reasonably priced options for Christmas week. Lindsay’s co-teacher, coincidentally, was staying at Sandals the weekend before we arrived and I was shocked by the ~$250/night more it cost to stay there. Baha Mar is literally the subject of a BBC special called “Secrets of the Mega Resort.” I couldn’t believe how fortunate we were to book flights and four nights at this world-renowned resort for about $1,500 — especially when similar options like Sandals would be about $1,000 more.
In retrospect, I get why it was cheaper to book. Baha Mar, unlike Sandals, is not an all-inclusive resort. It’s an aggressively exclusive resort. This is abundantly apparent when you see the place, a 1,000-acre property with 11 pools, a water park, 3,000 square feet of beach, and three hotels connected by the Caribbean’s largest casino which operates 24 hours a day. The whole place looks like plunder.
We knew from Dylan and Liza that Baha Mar would be expensive when we got there, but figured we could create a cost-effective gameplan by buying a duty-free bottle of booze at the airport (good tip, Katie Greeley), and dining only at the affordable end of the resort’s 40 restaurants and bars. The cost of staying at Baha Mar didn’t really begin to set in, however, until our taxi driver from the airport described the prices as “should be illegal.”
I felt a little better when, at check-in, we were told our Chase card got us complimentary breakfast and one $200 dining credit at Cleo, SLS’s Mediterranean restaurant where we planned to eat that night. You might even go so far as to say I felt comfortable when he told us that our card would have an automatic hold of $200 per day for resort purchases, which would be refunded if we didn’t use it. $1,000 budget for the week? Okay. It’s a lot of money but not too bad for a week of vacation.
Lindsay and I put our stuff in our room, a very nice corner spot with two balconies, a California king bed, and a weirdly all-glass bathroom that’s probably made an appearance on OnlyFans. We took a minute to try to make sense of the resort map and decided to start exploring the resort by grabbing a snack and a daiquiri before dinner. Unfortunately, as would become a theme of this trip, we quickly learned that all outdoor businesses at Baha Mar effectively shut down at 5pm, just before a host of indoor businesses open.
We followed the map to shop after shop, all of them closed, before fruitlessly trying to find a pub called The Swimming Pig that I figured had to be open past 5. It’s a pub! By the time we wandered into the spa, we realized we had no idea where this place was and asked the esthetician at the counter if she could recommend somewhere for a snack. She acted like she had literally never heard the word “snack.” She asked her colleague, who seemed equally confounded by the notion that somebody might want a small bite to eat in between meals. Both of these women were flummoxed so, instead, we asked for directions to The Swimming Pig and were informed that once we found the Cartier in the casino, it was right around the corner. Mercifully, we ran into a noodle bar called Stix as soon as we re-entered the casino floor.
And this is where, finally, the impending cost of this vacation really set in. For a beer, two bottles of water (which were unnecessary, the drinking water in the Bahamas is fine), and two appetizers, the final bill was $115. Turns out, the expensive-but-not-obscene prices for everything in Baha Mar are all subject to a 15% service charge and a 10% VAT, effectively adding 25% to every bill before the expectation of a 10% tip.
That $200/day hold got you nothing at this place.
We tried to game the system by filling a water bottle with vodka and ordering non-alcoholic drinks at the pool, but virgin daiquiris were priced the same as alcoholic ones and cans of Schweppes were $8/pop. They know the tricks.
Since breakfast was free as a credit card perk, we resolved to sleep in each day, pig out on the (admittedly fantastic) buffet at Cleo, and then hold out until dinner, which would inevitably be $150+ regardless of quality.
The first two days, Christmas Eve and Christmas, felt like we were just killing time. Rather than letting the time drift by as we lay blissfully by the pool with a drink in our hand, we couldn’t justify ordering snacks or drinks, so I worked and Lindsay read until dinner.
Even sitting by the pool felt like a chore, however, since each day was an inevitable cluster to find seating as families apparently set out at dawn to cover pool chairs with towels just in case they decided to use them later. We saw chairs covered with tools go unused all day an enraging number of times. While Baha Mar loves to play up its service and exclusivity, for the standard guest, it’s barely a step above Disneyland. It’s claustrophobically crowded, unhygienic, and infested with children whose parents have no interest in parenting on vacation. Even at the relatively tame pool we found ourselves at each of these first two days, the peace was frequently destroyed by the blood-curdling shrieks of toddlers, balls flying all over the place, and uncovered coughs and sneezes. I can’t believe how many men I saw leave the bathroom without washing their hands after taking a shit. (Or how many times I saw literal shit all over the floor of a stall: Twice!)
When we weren’t sitting by the pool, we sure as hell weren’t going to the beach where thousands of beach chairs are crammed in like sardines. We couldn’t afford $50/round for drinks, we weren’t there to shop, and we didn’t have money to blow at the casino. When you’re not rich, there’s an astonishing dearth of things to do at Baha Mar after 5pm.
Supposedly the golf course is great, but I don’t want to know how much it is to play 18. I will say, however, that our one day at the water park, Baha Bay, redeemed much of the trip in my eyes because a free water park is one hell of an amenity.
One Person: Anosha aka “Nono”
By Thursday, we were desperate to get off the resort, so we planned a trip into Nassau to do some of the touristy things and eat some real Bahamian food. (Baha Mar is grotesquely Americanized, serving almost exclusively food you’d find at strip malls in the U.S. and barely any authentic island cuisine.)
The taxi ride into the city was a highlight of the trip, thanks to our driver, Nono. Apparently resigned to the sameness and disinterest of the typical Baha Mar resident, Nono was a full-on NPC. (An NPC, or “non-player character” is a video game concept that has been adapted into a social media trend in which humans perform as NPCs with scripted, hyperbolically robotic responses to different inputs.) As we left the resort, she began a clearly rehearsed, oddly rigid report about the history of Baha Mar and its impact on the island. Lindsay and I gave each other a look, both thinking this woman was profoundly neurodivergent.
After a couple of clearly canned responses to questions about the island’s history and the significance of The Queen’s Staircase, the historic landmark where we planned to start our day, we started digging deeper. I asked about Junkanoo, the dance festival that occurred the night before, and she broke character to lament how commercialized and catered to tourists it had become. By the time we got to Nassau’s cruise terminal, she was openly complaining about Chinese influence, the American devaluation of the Bahamian dollar, and the way the island’s leaders bent over backward to please non-melanated individuals.
On the one hand, it was nice to have an honest conversation with her, and that she felt comfortable speaking to a couple of white folks like us so candidly. On the other, it’s so distressingly grim that her experience has led her to default to this inhuman form of interaction with tourists.
One Song: “Take Me Home Country Roads” by Toots and the Maytals
The Fish Fry is a stretch of beachfront restaurants and bars about a mile long just outside downtown Nassau. Many of the restaurants are tourist stops, but we found that many Bahamians were eating at the Fish Fry, too. At this one place, we got some incredible jerk chicken. They were also blasting great island covers of popular songs, but I can’t for the life of me remember what any of them were. Instead, here’s an all-time cover by legendary Jamaican band, Toots and the Maytals.
One Game: Wheel of Fortune Slots
I took out $200 on the first night to serve as a gambling budget. Lindsay and I sat down at a blackjack table with $15 bet minimums, got $60 worth of chips each, and proceeded to lose all of it in less than five minutes. Fortunately, Lindsay found her way to a Wheel of Fortune slot machine and promptly won $150. A couple nights later, she won $170 on a different Wheel of Fortune slot machine.
When all was said and done, we ended up being $90 down after getting absolutely killed by blackjack and the slot machines on our second-to-last night. We probably spent no more than an hour the whole week actually playing games. Lindsay heard a guy telling a family member he “only” lost $2,500 so far. All roads at Baha Mar lead to the casino and all life circulates around it. We were not the desired clientele.
One Image:
Lindsay loved gambling until she hated gambling.
One Food: Peas and Rice
Bahamian peas and rice is spectacular. We got a huge helping at Oh Andros! on the Fish Fry and at the resort food hall on our last night. (The university-esque food hall seemed to be the only place to get Bahamian food at the bargain-barrel price of $60 + service charge + VAT per person, or $75+ on Friday for the seafood buffet.) I could have eaten nothing but peas and rice the entire week if we’re being honest.
I thought this would be a simple dish to replicate at home, but it’s a little more complicated than expected. Anyways, here’s a recipe, maybe we can both do it.
I was hanging on every word! More like Ba Humbug Mar the way it’s run by Scrooges