• Bring cash. Lots and lots of cash.
• There are two types of tourists in the Bahamas: twenty-something single folk with stripper boobs, perma-tan and shoes more expensive than your car, accompanied by sketchy-looking guys who fit the “mini-truck” owning demographic, and
  fifty-something folks who just brought the 45-foot ketch in from Grand Bahama.

• The good folks who live year-round on the islands, while surrounded by some of the lushest, most pristine ecology in the world, treat it like toilet paper in a public restroom.
• Kalik beer is weaker than Corona with less taste.
• Be prepared for Key Lime Pie. The other dessert selections will not be available.
• Embrace your love of butter and deep-fried food. Or bring lots of Balance Bars.
• No amount of Kalik will make me like Jimmy Buffet.
• Reggae sounds good when it’s performed live by the guy who stumbles around Main Street talking to himself.
• One hundred foot visibility at fifty feet underwater is breathtaking.
• Putting on a wet wetsuit after lunch in five-foot swells is breathtaking in a different sense of the word.
• Landing your plane in the water every day has got to be one of the coolest jobs ever.
• Conch fritters are suspiciously close to the consistency of beef jerky.

My first dive was in 25 feet of water at a shallow area called Rainbow Reef, which is swarming with schools of juvenile fish. I made a leap of faith into the water with 50+ pounds of gear strapped to my back, and followed the group down underwater. All worries vanished as I got closer to the reef and took in the sight of hundreds of fish swaying gently in the current, dappled with light through the wave patterns above. Swimming up the reef, we found a barracuda nestled in a low spot, his belly full; a sleeping nurse shark who did not like flash bulbs; a green moray eel sitting idly in his hole, tasting the water around him like a man puffing on a pipe; and an agitated soldierfish who did not appreciate my proximity to his algae farm.