That One Time We Cruised, part 4: The Beach

No pictures from the actual beach because that would have
necessitated bringing a camera to the beach. Crazy talk.

I read in one of John Gottman’s* books that every couple has about seven “irreconcilable differences”—things that they will just never agree about so they have to learn how to deal with that. I have discovered at least two of ours: 1. Brice’s enjoyment of Radiohead. 2. The one that matters to this blog post: His adoration for the beach.

Happily, though we will never agree on the topic of Radiohead “music” being music, we have adapted quite nicely to these particular differences.** When it comes to beach time, I happily follow along after him, and as long as I am not forced to try to surf or swim through the ocean much, I’m pretty content. (Although I do always manage to get awkwardly placed sunburns.) Plus, he takes me to a lake now and again so I can row in a rowboat—which is my version of watery bliss—so it evens out.

On the day that we docked in Nassau, we gamely gathered our stuffed, tossed on our swimsuits, and headed off to find a beach for a little while. It was scorchingly hot. The kind of hot where you’re not sure if all that water pouring off you is sweat or if your body is just melting. When we finally found a nice little patch of beach, we were all very happy to get into the water. It was lovely and fun, and the girls were ecstatic to be playing in the ocean, finally getting to test their swim lessons against something a little less tame than an indoor pool. Brice, of course, was in heaven. He went up to a big concrete overlook where a number of slightly drunken individuals were taking turns egging one another into jumping off, and he enthusiastically cannonballed down several times.***

After a while, though, we headed back to the ship (melting some more along the way). We knew there was a fancy beach in store for us the next day.

And fancy it was! Castaway Cay’s beaches were the kind of perfect that, in this case, had to have been manmade. As in, they carted in tons of perfect, soft, white sand to make these lovely beaches. At least I assume so. There were no shells, no pebbles, nothing but tiny grains of sand. Pretty sure that’s not natural, even in the awesomest natural beaches on earth.

But that wasn’t a complaint, merely an observation. The beach was absolutely beautiful, and the water was calm enough to hang out and have fun splashing around in with small children. We built some sand “castles” (AKA piles of lump sandy), dug some holes (a perennial beach favorite), and relaxed both in and out of the water. It’s possible that some of us even peed in that lovely cool water because the bathrooms were too far away (too much information?).

I also got to have a fantastic extra experience that Brice bought me as a surprise—hanging out with the stingrays! Ever since watching a giant manta ray swim up against the glass at an aquarium in New Zealand, flapping its wings (wings? what are they called?) so smoothly, I’ve been pretty much enchanted with rays. They’re like the flying carpets of the ocean! How can I not love them? So Brice took all the kids while I got to go feed the stingrays and snorkel around them. It was fantastic.**** So what they do is there’s this floating platform thing with an up and down ramp attached. The stingrays are trained to swim up the ramp and around this semicircle platform to gather food, then swim back down.

While they’re on the platform, all of us who are gathered around it get the chance to try to feed them. Which essentially consists of holding a piece of weird food stuff (like really thick, gross-looking green jello or a piece of slimy fish) sticking up between two fingers with your hand flat on the platform. Then they come along and vacuum it out of your fingers. Seriously—it was like having your hand attacked by a rather bristly animated vacuum. Pretty cool, if you think about it—rays are both carpets and vacuums! I loved it. And then I got to snorkel around for a while, watching the rays swim just beneath me. Lots of them. Ah, it was lovely.

Are the stingrays happy? I don’t know. They seem to lead pretty cooshy lives. They are well-fed and it was very clear that the fellow who was teaching my group about the stingrays loved working with them and loved the stingrays themselves. Sure, they don’t go around and catch their own food, but they also don’t get eaten by sharks or whatever their natural predators are. They seem pretty content, but who knows? I’m very sorry, little stingrays, if you aren’t happy at Castaway Cay, but I sure couldn’t tell.

And that, my friends, was the beach. Stay tuned for the Diaper Dash, the Kennedy Space Center, and the wrapup!

* Marriage therapist extraordinaire, studied extensively in grad school.

** Sing praises for the invention of earphones! Also, fyi, I realize that these are ridiculous “irreconcilable differences.”

*** Don’t worry; this was the express purpose of the overlook, so the water was indeed deep enough and such. Just because the people urging one another to jump were drunk doesn’t mean it wasn’t safe. In this case.

**** Way better than the towel-folding, in case you were remembering that I said the towel class was my favorite activity. I only meant it was my favorite activity on the boat.