We are back in Florida now (middle of April), but there are some things that happened in the Bahamas that nobody else has talked about in their blog posts yet.

We went to islands (Alan Cay and Leaf Cary) that had giant iguanas on them. Some of them were 3 feet long! They are orange, yellow, green and some red and they are scary! They are scary because tourists go and buy iguana kibble and feed it to them. Then they get very, very aggressive.  They run up to you…they get a little too close and then get closer and closer. A group of people we met had a bunch of bananas on the ground and the big aggressive iguana took a good clean chunk out of one with one bite. When we were first seeing the iguanas, a small Bananaquit, which is a kind of bird, hopped up very close to us on the ground, jumped onto Shadrach’s shoe and then from there jumped onto my hand! It was really cute and light. Later, when we went to Exuma Land and Sea Park, another one landed on my hand!

Sunbathing Bahamian Iguanas

Bananaquits love Rachel!

When we were on the island with iguanas, we met a group of people and we had two campfires with them. We had marshmallows, popcorn, hobo dinners, fish, potatoes, noodles and rice mixed together.

After we left the iguana island, we went to the swimming pigs!!! They were running free on a white, sandy beach. When we got there I needed to get to shore right away because I’d been waiting the whole trip to see those little guys. But some of them weren’t so little. There were some piglets (hoglets!) that weren’t even a foot tall and some pigs that were three and half feet tall! There were three huge ones. We named the biggest one Big Mama. She was mean and nasty. She almost attacked Daddy and she bit Shad’s shirt. The first day there were only seven or eight pigs, but on the second day, more came. A nice big pink one and three little baby piglets. And then we found this other very small piglet. We don’t think he had a mama because he was wandering around all by himself – we named him Snuffles (Snuffles was actually a she). Two more medium pink pigs came and they liked to sleep all in a row with another pink pig. We called them The Three Little Pigs.

Near the swimming pigs island there was a big natural hole inside a small island. It was called The Grotto (Thunderball Grotto as seen on the James Bond movie). You could snorkel inside it and see lots and lots of fishes. There were also little side caves you could swim into. It was very cool! The end

Hi sorry that I have not yet posted anything. I’m going to start from the beginning of the trip.

While we were driving to Florida, we saw this many road kills:

56 deer

2 skunks

6 foxes

3 rabbits

10 birds

1 mountain lion

5 squirrel/weasel-type things

1 armadillo

And bugs.

And 2 male African elephants.

A lot of road kill, eh? And don’t ask me how they managed to run over 2 elephants!

We went to two hotels during the trip and we stayed at our great aunty and uncles’ place for about two weeks. They had two hot tubs and a pool there.

Then we went to Universal Studios! The first day was dedicated to the special effects part. It had one roller coaster called the Rocket. We also went to the other part of the park which has mostly roller coasters and went on one roller coaster there called the Hulk. They were both really fun! You go up and down and loop-dee-loop and side to side and zig and zag! Then the next day we went to the other part of the park and it was all roller coasters and simulators. There were water rides too where you got soaked! By the way it was really warm that day…tee hee. My favourite roller coaster was the Chinese Dragons. That was in Harry Potter Land. We got to go to Diagon Alley, which is a place in Harry Potter books and Hogsmeade. We went in all the stores…Mummy didn’t let me get a wand, though. I did buy a chocolate frog (my card inside was Salazar Slytherin) and a box of Bonko’s Every Flavour Beans. The sausage one was disgusting. There were so many shops in Harry Potter Land. We went to Fred and George’s Joke Shop. Fred and George are two characters in the Harry Potter books. We drank Butterbeer and Pumpkin Juice. They are both really good but I like Butterbeer better! Then we drove home with lots of memories and tonnes of fun.

When we moved to the marina where our boat got put in, I caught my first two lizards there! I celebrated by running around, dancing and drinking orange cream soda.

After a lot of shopping for food and necessities, we were finally ready to go. We made our way down to a place called Clearwater. The water wasn’t actually that clear. We took our dingy, “Emma”, to a place where there were lots of street performers. We saw a guy get out of a strait jacket covered in chains and a guy who lit whips on fire and cracked them really loud. And we saw a guy who made glass nick-knacks with a big torch and glass sticks. You should search that up on the internet because I don’t know how to describe it.

After that we sailed some more. We saw our first dolphins ever! They are so beautiful!

When we got to Bimini in the Bahamas, we met a family there who had a daughter named Ava and we spent a week with that family and we spent Christmas with them. Then we parted. And then we went to Nassau where we met my Grandma and Grandma and Uncle Eric and Aunty Karmen Neta and Odin. They live in Africa and they came from there to visit us in Nassau. We had lots of fun catching lizards, playing on the beach and playing in gianormous really fun waves. We left Nassau to go to a place called Spanish Wells. We went snorkelling at a shipwreck together and saw lots of fish and coral. It was so cool! While I was in the dingy with my daddy, mummy saw a shark and jumped in the dingy and then Aunty Karmen Neta jumped in the dingy and then grandma jumped in and then Uncle Eric and Odin jumped in and Shadrach jumped in too – our small 8 ½ foot dingy! It was a very funny sight to see us all crammed into a tiny little dingy!

After a week, they all left us on a ferry.

We went to a place called Egg Island. We lit a fire and had hobo dinners and roasted marshmallows – then we went back to our home/boat and had a good night’s sleep.

After we went to Egg Island, we went to Eleuthera. We had pizza…it was pretty good. We hitchhiked for the first time. It was fun! We also went to a big cave where we went down WAY deep – although it got pretty low and we had to crawl on our hands and knees so we went back. It was really hot down there and at one point we turned off all our lights for a bit and it was sooo dark. Then we turned them on and kept on going. When we got out of the cave it felt really nice outside because it was so hot in the cave.

We saw lots of goats and I got 10 feet away from one. There were twin baby goats (called kids) – they were so cute! They just roamed free all over the place. It was kind of weird but also cool. There are also chickens and sheep that roam free. There were little chicks running all over the place!

We went to a beach where there were big waves. A big wave crashed over me and I was being dragged in the sand. Then I felt something pokey in my shorts! It kept poking me and poking me in the hip…I thought it was a sea urchin or a jellyfish. But then, when I ran out of the water screaming “Ouch, ouch!”, I looked in my pants and there was a little fish with its pokey fins! We ate it for supper…just kidding! It was only two inches long.

We went out to sail from Eleuthera, but the waves were too big, so we had to stop at a marina. When we got there, I got a ne0 w pair of flip flops, because one of my other ones fell overboard. Then there were people cleaning fish and throwing parts of fish in the water. There were three big Bull Sharks and about a dozen nurse sharks all going for the scraps of fish. A little while later, some marine biologists came to see the sharks. They had a big fish head on a hook and they were throwing it in. They were trying to get the Bull Sharks with a hook and they had buoys on the end of a rope that the hook was attached to. When the Bull Shark would grab the bait on the hook, then they would throw the buoys in and they would jump in a boat and go and follow it. They let us come in their boat too! They were trying to catch the shark so they could put tags on it/tracking devices. They put two on her dorsal fin and one beside her stomach. They had to do surgery! I got to see a real, live shark surgery! After the stitches were done, I got to touch the shark’s stomach. It feels like sandpaper.

I will try to blog more. Bye for now – love Rachel.