Day 4: Half Moon Cay, Bahamas

Half Moon Cay was gorgeous, but it also made me more than a little sad to hear that Carnival shares ownership of the island with another travel company.

All 6 of us met up at 9:30am (different than the day before were we split up more), so we could all catch the boat over to the island together. Unlike our stop in Grand Turk, our ship couldn’t dock on Half Moon Cay, so we had to stay anchored out from the island and take boats (holding about 250 people) over to the island.

Our time on the island today was what I had in mind for this vacation: we all went for a hike together, following the signs for a nature hike, then veering off into the woods, following whatever paths we crossed. A follow the leader sort of walk, which allowed us to see island birds and lots of lizards, the biggest one maybe a foot long.

We found a beautiful, quieter spot a ways down the beach from the majority of the crowds and plopped down our stuff. We all stripped down to bathing suits and got into the cool water. We swam out and tried doing somersaults and hand stands and all the things I did when I was a kid. Maybe we were all kids again for a little bit. Maybe we are all still kids—fairly uninhibited by many things in this world. Maybe this is what freedom tastes like. Though we are all relatively poor in the fiscal sense, we are content and have enough money to attend to the things we want, like travel, every once in a while.

We ate lunch on the the island that day, an island BBQ; a huge spread of food put out for us by our stewards and wait staff. Can you imagine it?!! They start hauling our lunch—tons of food!!—onto the island for us, early in the morning as soon as we docked and while some people were still sleeping. There is no end to excess on cruises.

The rest of the day was as eventful as all the other days. What I will remember the most of that day is hiking to the point that I was hot and sweat was dripping off my face and how oh, so deliciously cold that water felt.