The Bahamas

In September, for Labor Day weekend (and my birthday) I decided to meet up with my buddy Dave. He was in DC for training, having finished his first tour with the State Department in China and was learning Estonian to head there next. The midpoint between DC and Guayaquil is more or less Miami, but I'd been there and Dave was looking to go to a country he'd never been to before. We did some searching, comparing flight possibilities, costs, etc and decided on the Bahamas. So we booked the Airbnb and flights.

(this is the view from the beach at the edge of the complex we stayed in)

The trip was amazing. We stayed in a very nice Airbnb house in Nassau, on Cable Beach. You could walk 50 yards to a small little strip of beach, only accessible from the complex the house was in. The waves were calm, the water warm, it was a great place for Dave and I to catch up. Mostly I was glad to finally chat with him all about consular work, the job which I had done for six months, and he had for two years in Shenyang, China. It was great bouncing ideas off of Dave, getting his advice, and thinking of a million solutions we had to the problems we saw in consular affairs, albeit knowing the bureaucracy and risk aversion of the State Department would ensure none of them came to fruition. 

We took the ferry to Paradise Island, chilled on the big, nice, public beach there. The ferry was fun too, as the driver pointed out which humongous house was owned by which celebrity. We enjoyed tropical drinks out of a coconut. The sand really is white and the water aqua blue. We also hit up the art museum and a rum distillery, which was a very pleasant time. We had pretty good meals, had a dinner out with the British banker from whom we rented the Airbnb. It was a great trip, there's a reason that so many people visit the Bahamas-truly gorgeous, and a well run tourist sector.  A very relaxing and enjoyable trip.