BESTIEMOON IN THE BAHAMAS


Don't you love when you make a pact with your best friend and stick to it?

Though it took a while for Morgan to warm up to me (she thought my belly shirts were too scandalous. I would like to point out that it was 2002 and I thought I was Britney Spears) our friendship flourished over our mutual love for Beyoncé and Brit.  A couple years later, we made a plan to take a Ten-Year-Best-Friends-Anniversary Trip, when we'd be *gasp* 23 years old! 

Fast forward to 2012:  OK, so we missed the technical mark by a few months. I'm in LA, she's in NYC.  When I'm free she's busy, when she's free I'm busy. Both of our birthdays passed and we're now 24, but the year is still not over.


The main thing we were looking for on our "honeymoon" was easy, mellow, one-on-one girl time.  We wanted to avoid the whole Atlantis mega-resort vibe, so we rented an adorable little two-person cottage on Eleuthera, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean with a private deck on the beach. Eleuthera is a 110-mile long, skinny island that slices through the big blue rough Atlantic on the east and the calm turquoise Caribbean on the west.  It's known as "Family Island" and most definitely lived up to it's name.  Our rental car was handed over with a handshake ("Just leave the money at my shop in Palmetto. Today, tomorrow, whenever.") The locals we met were nothing but welcoming and kind.  There's lots of diving, snorkeling and surfing to be done, but we mostly just tanned, talked and made up for lost time. For the most part we had the beaches entirely to ourselves.


Our car. We named her Greige, because she's neither grey nor beige.
pink sand, Harbor Island
beaches in every direction on Harbor Island
Atlantic side of Glass Window Bridge
Caribbean side of Glass Window Bridge


TABOGA, PANAMA


Taboga is a great day trip to escape Panama City. It's a colorful little island dotted with restaurants and B&Bs, only a five-dollar and 45-minute ferry ride from the end of the Amador causeway. (Any Angelenos out there, think of it as Panama's Catalina) At low tide, a sandbar connects Taboga to a smaller island, creating an awesome double-sided beach. Fishermen pull up boats full of fresh langostinos and sea snails that you can bring home to eat for dinner, or have prepared for lunch and brought to you right on the sand.

skeleton of a boat
the sandbar at low tide
langostinos
sea snails

The ferry leaves at 8:30 every morning and returns at 4:30pm, which leaves you a nice long day to relax on the beach, or hike to the cross at the top of the mountain.  You can bring a cooler with a nice picnic, but be prepared for quick changes in weather. If you find yourself caught in an afternoon storm like we did, you can easily slip into a restaurant and nibble on some ceviche, fried fish, patacones and yuquitas (fried green plantains and yucca fries) while you wait out the rain.

the sandbar at high tide

PRETTY PARIS

Some pictures taken while strolling through Paris with my GoPro a few weeks back...