Jason's Flight

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Captain Jason's First Flight

Fear. Adrenaline. Pure excitment. These were all of the things running throughout my body as Pilot Paul went thought his pre-flight check with me. With my parents and Wendy snapping pictures like I was walking down the red carpet at a movie premiere at Mann's Theater, the magnitude of the situation began to rock my personal Richter scale.

As I strapped my self into the pilot's seat and made some last minute adjustments to my headset, Pilot Paul informs me that I will be doing everything during take off. After allowing that nervous feeling to travel down my throat, pass my rapidly beating heart, and into my stomach, I stared down what I could see of the runway and prepared for my first ever take off.

Before I knew it, the Tower signaled us for take off and in my headset I heard either Pilot Paul or my brain say "Let's Do This!"

I pushed the trottled all the foward and waited for the dial to hit 59 knots before I pulled back on the yoke. We quickly gained speed, and in less than 15 seconds, it was time for us to start our ascend. With Wendy grasping onto dear life in the back seat, I gently pulled the yoke back making sure that I wasn't climbing the skies too fast. During our ascent, I could not help but look over the side, only to find that we were roughly 1,500 feet in the air. Paul instructed me to keep ascending until about 3,500 feet and who was I to argue his instructions this high up in the air.

The hour flight went by in the blink of the eye. Paul had me do several turns and even assisted me on a 45-degree angle turn that made my mind spin when I saw the low-level clouds hovering over the skies of Half Moon Bay. As the hour came to a close, Paul had me descend back towards the San Carlos Airport where he took back over the reins of the plane to land it.

Overall, it was an outstanding expereince that I will not forget any time soon. I am officially hooked and would love to someday get my own pilot license.

Pre-flight instructions on all the gadgets.

Up, up and away!

A look back at the Bay.

A clouded over Half Moon Bay.

Jason about to perform a 45 angle turn with a firm grip on the controls!

Return to Brisbane air strip.

Jason bringing the plane in for a smooth landing!

Travel Review: Atlantis, Paradise Island, Bahamas

Yes - Atlantis is beautiful...the property can be described as a cross between a water park, aquarium, and the ultimate island resort.  But after a week of calm isolation and soothing remoteness, it felt a little more like arriving at "Disneyland on crack".

After our plane arrived in Nassau we met up with a shuttle service for the 40 minute ride to Paradise Island and the Atlantis Hotel.  Walking in to the Coral Tower lobby was like walking in to a war zone.  The check-in line was practically out the door and groups of crabby kids and impatient parents were huddled about every available space.

With only three employees behind the front desk the line took us approximately an hour.  We finally "checked-in" around 3:30pm to find out that half of our rooms (we had four total) were not yet ready and we would have to wait at least an hour until we could get inside.  Beside the fact that check-out time is 11am apparently it takes the maid service about five hours to complete the room turn-over.  Not a great way to welcome your guests paying an arm-and-a-leg for their overpriced rooms.

So the family decided to pass the time by having an early dinner at Johnny Rockets. A typical burger style diner, but what would typical cost you $7 in the States cost you $15 at the Atlantis.

After dinner we followed our given instructions and called the "Prompt Response" extension on the internal hotel phone to see if our rooms were now ready.  After some difficulty finding our reservation, the Not-So-Prompt response did confirm that our rooms were now ready and we finally got into our rooms around 6:30pm.

Our rooms were on the 4th floor of the Coral Tower and had a great view of the Royal Towers with the "Bridge Suite" and were directly above one of the predator lagoons that contained at least 30 stingrays and assorted small sharks. Very Cool.

Excited to settle in and get out in the great pools on the property, we quickly changed into our swimsuits and went downstairs to retrieve a wristband for pool access and towels from one of the few-and-far-between "Towel Huts".  After swiping our room key card and handing us pool towels the Hut Lady crushed our spirits when she refused to issue us wristbands, because in her words "you wouldn't be able to use them anyway."  Although the nights are extremely warm and the sun sets around 8:30pm in the Bahamas, the Atlantis closes all their swimming pools at 7pm.  I seriously believe the Atlantis purposefully closes their pools early in an effort to force all the guests into the resort's restaurants and casino, where the slots are tight and the tables are crowded. (greedy $$$) Also thereby forcing all patrons to "hit the showers" at approximately the same time after returning to their hotel rooms from the pools- which could be an explanation for the lack of hot water in the room's shower. (half of the rooms my family stayed in were without hot water during our entire 4 night stay.)

Speaking of the resort's restaurants, there is a plethora of dining establishments and also dining plan options available for your stay.  However the food quality does not match the high cost at these restaurants and leaves much to be desired.  Sure there are probably a few exceptions, such as the Mosaic Buffet and Bobby Flay's MESA restaurant, (each of which are located in the uber-expensive Cove Tower).  The rest of us non-billionaire's are forced to fight for reservations amongst the riff-raff and settle for the average quality.

Customer service at the Atlantis is unacceptable.  As another recent visitor described it, "The staff acts as if they are doing you a favor."  With automatic 18% gratuity tacked on to every single transaction, (but there's no tax either) it's easy to see why there's no incentive for attentive customer service.

But like I started this Review, Atlantis really is beautiful.  Even though the pools were closed we still got to wander the property grounds to find hidden pools of sting rays, sharks, sea turtles, dolphins, amazing manta rays and colorful tropical fish.  The property boasts that they have one of the largest marine habitats, second only to Mother Nature herself.

A new addition from my last visit in 2002 is Dolphin Cay.  A hands on encounter experience arena with 36 dolphins and 16 sea lions.  Jason and I attended one of the sea lion meet and greet interactions and we both had a lot of fun getting to know some other friendly native Californians. (And I don't mean the Santa Clara High School student we met on the Tower of Power - what are the odds that the one random person we talk to in Atlantis is from our exact same small Bay Area town.)

I could still give Atlantis the benefit of doubt - Maybe in the off-season (and not smack-dab in the middle of summer vacation), a smaller crowd could enhance the experience.  Maybe if we would not have arrived from a quiet laid back destination to a cracked out Disneyland environment the opening day experiences would not have been so bothersome.  But the cold shower and crappy customer service are hard to forgive.

It was a once in a lifetime experience for Jason.  I do feel very lucky to have been able to experience it's beauty twice myself, so far.  But we have no current intentions of raising Atlantis again.  Our Atlantis adventure is now complete.

The best laid plans...

In advance of our Calypso arrival, Jason and I thoroughly scouted out the Calypso floor plan (shown below) to ensure us the best possible bedroom option.  Calypso has a total of six bedrooms, five of which would be used by the nine people accompanying us.  We knew it would be a matter of first-come first-served, with my parents having the ultimate veto option.  Our "plan" upon entry in to Calypso was to make a bee-line up to the second story and pick the most isolated bedroom... the thought of having a stairway buffer zone between us and the demanding kids drove our bedroom decision.

Our sights were aimed on the upstairs bedroom on the left, past the tv room/library.

In the moment of entry at Calypso, I was one of the first inside the house and immediately hefted my suitcase up the stairs and dropped it on the bed of our desired bedroom.  Effectively staking our claim to the room.  

Thinking our plan was a success, and with only a slight fear of the dreaded supreme veto taking it away from us I considered our plan to be a success... Until our first night.

There are two bedrooms upstairs, both identical except for the fact that only one had a television in the room, (which kinda broke our hearts when we realized our room did not have a tv), but then Jason of course went for his beloved iPad and realized that the wifi signal in the house did not reach our bedroom!  Our room was about the only place in the entire house where you could not get internet access, (unless you stood in the shower, which was the area of the bedroom closest to the wifi signal).  So my internet dependent husband's heart was shattered.  And of course I took the blame for not doing a proper reconnaissance of the upstairs bedrooms before selecting.

On top of those "electronic" glitches our bathroom shower was a nightmare... while the downstairs bathrooms enjoyed a decent amount of water pressure, the upstairs equivalents were not so lucky.  After spending a day on the beach and in the surf, the trickle of water dripping out of our shower head was insufficient to even remove the sand from our bodies.  Getting stuck with shampoo in your hair while you wait and pray for the water pressure to return left us craving for a real shower.  Calypso does offer an outdoor shower, which we began utilizing to at least remove the sticky sand, but bathing was an unpleasant experience to say the least.

I began comforting myself with the knowledge that at least we could look forward to a decent shower at the ultimate Atlantis resort.  In reality even the Atlantis could not deliver a decent shower... (See next post: Travel Review: Atlantis, Paradise Island, Bahamas) Regardless to say, I have never been more satisfied by our boring old shower and am happy to be home.

Day 2: Secret Cove

Years ago on one of the first visits to Abaco, boating around exploring the area we found this small sheltered inlet that we have since named Secret Cove. A shallow area between the Atlantic ocean and the Sea of Abaco. With two great bodies Of water forcing their tides into this one small inlet protected by three small island cays, Secret Cove has a massive sand bar that stretches between the great bodies of water.

This trip we saw a few rays and found a ton of sand dollars but in the past we have also seen dolphins and sea turtles enjoying this shallow playpool. The water is always a crystal clear azule and we spent the day frolicking in it's tepid waters.

Despite some dark ominous clouds rolling in from the East the waters kept us warm enough to spend the entire length of the day in Secret Cove. A picnic lunch refueled us for a long day of catch and play in the waves before we returned to Elbow Cay and a hot link dinner at Calypso.

Day 1: Calypso

We are finally able to enjoy the beautiful Bahamas weather and water! The turquoise water is as warm as a nice bath - not nearly as calming as one though... Being on the Atlantic ocean the Calypso house always has massive waves crashing on the beach.  So massive in fact that one raked me over the coral while attempting to drown my 8 year old nephew Aidan.  Luckily Aidan was unharmed but I opened a nasty gash below my right knee.  Fun part was I believe the blood seeping out actually did draw in a shark that was spotted a bit later!

We've spent our first full day enjoying everything Calypso has to offer: expansive deck with comfy lounge chairs, hammocks and a nice breeze to help dissuade th heat of the day. Other than a riveting debate on the prices and conditions my nephew charges for squirt gun refreshes, the day has been spent tanning and wave hopping.

My parents have already scouted out tonight's sunset viewing destination, a new resort that recently opened. So stay tuned for an upload of the first picture worthy event.

For now I'll just enjoy the view!

Are we there yet?

23rd July - 7am - MIA airport arrived at 5:45 this morning with one flight down, one sky tram trip down... Now waiting for the 8:35 shuttle bus to our next island hopper prop plane. It took five hours to get across country and it will probably be another 8 hours until we reach the Calypso house. 

Only one flight to Nassau, one "mystery" segment to Abaco then the final ferry to Elbow Cay left!