Holiday Cruise to the Bahamas for Cheap

Since I was a child, my mom has told me stories of her honeymoon with my father in the Bahamas where they paid $25 a week for a beach-front home-stay. I was always enchanted by stories of spending a month surfing in the blue waves, dining with the locals and lounging under the palm trees. These tales sparked my initial urges to travel the world, and I remember asking her, "Mommy, can we go there someday?"

I saw it only fitting, when I finally came through with a promise I had made her several years ago to take her on a cruise, that we go to the Bahamas. Since I was coming home for the Holidays, we made the trip overlap with Thanksgiving vacation-leaving the day after Thanksgiving and returning December 3rd. This is the perfect time of year to escape the chaos and cold of the season.

I shopped around online at all the discount search engines and talked to two travel agents before discovering the cheapest rates on the Carnival Cruise Lines website. I selected the four-night Bahamas cruise on the Monarch of the Sea with the cheapest rate, by far, at only $280 per person. My step-dad, Jeff wanted to come too, so we needed to get two staterooms. The price of a cruise includes your room, all your food and on-board activities, so it doesn't pay to have an odd number of people; it's usually only a fraction of the original rate to add a fourth person, so I invited along my friend, Nathan.

We could have paid a few hundred or even a thousand dollars more to upgrade to an ocean-view suite on a larger ship. Instead, we opted for a shorter, less flamboyant excursion with interior staterooms. In the words of my mother, "I'm not going on a cruise to hang out in the room. As long as there's a pool deck and a bar, I don't think we need a balcony or an ice-skating rink."

The weather was balmy and turned to stormy as we boarded the boat from Port Canaveral, Florida. The pool on board was too chilly to dip, so we toured the boat making friends with all the bartenders.

We learned to go for the top shelf liquor since it costs the same as well stuff and only a dollar more than beer. Asking the bartender to add an extra shot to your drink in exchange for tip pays off as well. We found quantity, not quality when it the food; you can find something to eat on a cruise at all hours of the day, but the flavor is mediocre and the service is moderate.

After we blew through $50 on Black Jack in the casino (where the drinks were definitely not free), we checked out the night club. The itinerary listed, "Dance Party from Midnight-Until," but few people were dancing and the DJ's selection wasn't helping. The parents went to bed and we roamed the ship meeting the other wandering night-owls looking for something to do. All the bars had shut down at 2 AM. The discounted and duty-free bottles for sale in the gift shop were not available until the end of the cruise, so we made our own private party in the room.

It was impossible to know what time it was when we woke up in the dark, quiet cabin. I called guest services who informed me that we had landed in Coco Cay hours ago. We got beach-ready and took a ferry to the Royal Caribbean private island destination.

We walked with the family to find a more secluded spot to swim in the pristine waters. Passing around the only pair of goggles, we spotted some iridescent fish and wild stingrays. The weather was breezy but as warm as we could hope for this time of year. The private island is far from authentic with steep prices at the gift shacks and professional photographers offering to take your photo. The cruise line provided a delicious barbecue lunch buffet, a groovin' steel drum band and coco locos in a souvenir cup for $7.

That evening was formal night on the ship. We donned our most fabulous attire and posed for pictures for an hour before enjoying a more satisfying meal than the previous night. The nightclub went off a little harder that night as well after several partiers harassed the DJ to play something danceable.

After hours of dancing a few hours of sleep were in order, but we didn't get many before we disembarked for Nassau. We met up with the parents and were herded through an open-aired mall where nicely-dressed Bohemian men were peddling various vacation packages and excursions. We opted for the scooter rentals so we could explore the island on our own and visit the more exclusive beaches. The scooters cost only $45 each for five hours, plus a $35 deposit.

We got on the scooters to find loose seats, a broken muffler strap, malfunctioning turn signals and faulty wiring. Driving on the "wrong" side of the road compounded the challenge. We were pulling out of one of the many discount liquor stores where my step-dad, Jeff pulled out on to the right side of the road as he normally would. The twisting road revealed an old box truck hurling around a corner. He quickly remembered the rules of the road and corrected the path just in time to give everyone an invigorating experience. The faulty equipment, fear, diesel fumes and traffic were worth all the pure vacation moments, cruising around the island with the warm wind on our skin and the crystal blue backdrop of the Caribbean.

We made it to the end of Cable Beach, discovering bats in a small cave and lounging on the beach along the way before our scooter finally gave out. A passing local let us borrow her cell phone to call our scooter company, J&S Scooters, whose services I would advise to avoid in the future. We were stranded there, on the most exquisite beach, forced to lounge and play for an hour waiting for the replacement scooter. With the mean appetite we had worked up building a sand castle during our wait, we scooted over to the Big Ten Fish Fry for some abundant plates of delicious lobster, conch salad and of course, fried fresh fish.

Watching the sunset from the ship's Jacuzzi was a visceral sight and a romantic way to end the day and kick off our last night on the boat. We were in the mood to party after that but the majority of the ships middle- to older-aged occupants went to bed early. "DJ Sucks" was on the tables again, spinning some shitty salsa. No one felt like nagging tonight so we had a few drinks in the room with a few friends and called it a wrap.

When you plan your own cruise, I recommend checking out the details to make sure your ship will live up to your expectations. Ask about nightlife and know what's included for proper budgeting. The Bahamas has 700 islands, and I'm sure they all merit exploring in greater detail. The real way to visit would be to loaf around among the islands and getting to know the local lifestyle like my mom's original visit. Most of us don't have the freedom to make such an escape, including my mom, so a quick escape from the cold was the perfect reminder of the breathtaking beauty that lies just offshore.