Bahamas Cruise Trip Report - Day 1

Day 1

I flew Southwest Airlines to Orlando where I met up with Luis, Jody and Kim at the airport. We took a 1 hour shuttle from the airport toward a town called Coco Beach where we would be staying for the night. Luis and Kim and I were on our first cruise, invited by Jody who ran the poker room on the cruise. Kim was going to be a cashier and to hang out with Jody, Luis and I were there to deal poker. We had to stay overnight at a hotel then board the ship the next morning, so we had some time to kill on a Sunday night.
Our shuttle driver was good enough to stop at a grocery store so we could buy some beer on the way to our hotel, the fabulous La Quinta Inn. Jody and I went in and bought a 12 of St. Pauli and another of some assorted local beers. We also got a six pack of 7oz bud lights for Kim, which Jody referred to as Strip Club Beers – for their potential to be sold for $10 each in a strip club. We got back into the van and headed to the hotel. The moment we got out we were assaulted by bugs, big slow ugly Atlantic mosquitoes. I caught one in the face and was teased mercilessly for the next 2 hours for the quarter size lump on my cheek. Legs, arms, everywhere.
While joking around with Andy, the Australian front desk clerk, we asked him about the local action there in town. He gave us directions to Sandbar around the corner. After a couple of beers and posing for a few wacky and vaguely sexual pictures with the life size astronaut statue in the lobby, we sprinted to our rooms and cracked open a few more beers and decided what to do.
Luis claimed he was hardly touched by the bugs and quickly concluded that it was some lotion he had on. 30 seconds later the rest of us were coated in lotion and ready to go. We called a cab and waited up by the lobby so we could head over to the Sandbar for drinks and some dinner. The cab driver was hilarious; I can’t remember her name but her “name your own cab fare” policy was pure genius. She must have got $20 from us for a $5 ride. We took a booth inside and checked out the menu. We were in luck; the Sandbar was a sports bar/meat market/dance club right on the Atlantic Ocean. There was literally no back wall; you could just walk right out on the beach. Nice place, tiki themed with beach signs, surfboards and bikini tops hanging from the ceiling. We were there on industry night - $1 Drafts, $2 Jaeger shots and $3 Jaeger bombs. We ordered appetizers like coconut shrimp and deep fried alligator too. I spent $50 myself that night on food and booze, worth every penny.
The place turned into a dance club soon after we finished eating. We wandered around for a few hours posing for facebook and drinking bomb after bomb until it was time to go. I wish I could say that something wildly exciting happened to make the night epic, but it wasn’t like that. It was calm, chill. Dance. Drink. Go smoke on the beach. Dance some more. Buy another drink. Do a shot. Dance. The music was bumpin, the weather was perfect and we were all smiling. I don’t remember what time we left, but I do remember it was time.
Hammer time.
We headed back to the hotel to finish of the rest of our beers and go for a swim and meet Jason, another dealer who was coming on the cruise with us. Couple laps in the pool and I was out cold. Perfect Day.