Arriving at Nassau airport I am greeted by my driver, limo company owner Romeo Farrington, who inquires in a deep Bahamian voice as to the comfort of my flight as he leads me to a white Lincoln. Looking at the vehicle I am tempted for a moment to stick a Caymanian flag on it, just to see what it would be like to be chauffeured like the Governor of the Cayman Islands.
Driving along the resorts of Cable Beach, which Romeo explains got its name from the deep sea telecommunication network cables that enter the island at this point, we manage to cover a multitude of topics from church to gambling to Bahamian politics.
It turns out Romeo is 75 years old with eight children and 13 grandchildren. He does not drink and even if he was allowed to gamble, which Bahamians are not, he would not. It becomes immediately clear that Romeo is old school, in the most positive way possible.
The Graycliff hotel, my destination, sits in the centre of Nassau on West Hill Street, just across from Government House. It was built in the 1720s by buccaneer John Howard Graysmith, who terrorised passing ships in the Spanish Main with his schooner Graywolf and made a fortune in the process.
Entering the exclusive boutique hotel, it seems that time has stopped. Combining the charm of a colonial mansion with all the amenities of modern life, I feel myself visibly slowing down, as I walk through the plush interiors. A gentleman just walks, but never runs, I am thinking.
Each of the 20 rooms and cottage suites is vast in this pearl of Nassau, with its lush gardens, and the first, and beautifully hand painted, swimming pool of the Bahamas. Later I am to find out that the hotel carries one of the largest wine collections in the world and with more than 200,000 bottles certainly the most sizeable one in the Caribbean. It also features the only five-star restaurant on New Providence, a Brazilian steak house and, to complement the fine wines, its own Graycliff cigar factory.
As I descend the stairs from my room I hear a soft jazz tune from the lounge and bar area that is dominated by a grand piano. Equipped with a complimentary champagne cocktail I get comfortable in a leather arm chair only to realise that it is my driver and guide Romeo, who is on the microphone crooning in a mellow timbre. Accompanied by a lady on the piano, who, he explains later, was his pianist for a while when they used to perform at the Hilton Hotel.
“Jazz is my favourite music and Nat King Cole is my favourite singer,” says Romeo. It turns out Nat King Cole was also once one of his customers a long time ago. Romeo’s client list in fact contains many celebrities.
Sean Connery is not at all like his grumpy reputation, he assures me. “He would sit in the front and hardly say a word to his family in the back, because he is busy talking to me.”
You have to treat celebrities like normal people, he says. “We in the Bahamas don’t overburden celebrities,” he explains, giving Sidney Poitier, the Bahamian born actor as an example. “When he is on island people say ‘Hi’ to him, but they have their own business to attend to.” They don’t harass him for autographs, he says over an exquisite dinner of grouper filet in Dijonnaise sauce and filet mignon at the Graycliff restaurant.
It explains perhaps why so many Hollywood and other celebrities choose the Bahamas as their home from home. Gated communities and exclusive resorts are abundant on New Providence and, joined by a bridge, its sister Paradise Island, but there is also a wide choice of all inclusive and other resorts.
Nassau itself is home to a cruise ship port that accommodates several cruise ships each day and is located only one block away from Bay Street, Nassau’s main shopping street. The high end shops and boutiques downtown are set in contrast to the tree-lined streets with its horse-drawn carriage tours, policemen in starched uniforms and pith helmets and historic government buildings.
All this is overlooked by two forts. Fort Charlotte and Fort Fincastle were built to protect the capital by Lord Dunmore in 1789 and 1793. Although the forts have never seen a battle, the guided tours give an interesting illustration of the hardships of a soldier’s life at the time.
At the foot of Fort Fincastle visitors find the Queens staircase, 65 steps that were hand-chiselled and carved out of the rock by slaves, Romeo tells me. The steps served as a protected route to and from the fort in case the town came under attack.
As we are leaving Fort Charlotte one of the women that sell T-shirts and other souvenirs sees my camera and shouts: “Why don’t you take a picture of me.”
“Of course I will,” I say and take aim. “What’s your name?” I ask as she comes out of her store shack, hands on her rather wide hips, and throws a pose. “I am Big Mama. Men call me Sexy Mama,” she chuckles, flashing a gold tooth.
I bet they do, I am thinking. Romeo and I are still laughing as we get back to the car. Just outside Nassau we pass Arawa Cay, with dozens of food stands and small restaurants and according to my guide an excellent place to have lunch, mainly in the form of fresh fish and in particular the ubiquitous conch in all its varieties.
A good time to visit Nassau is in December when the country’s Junkanoo takes to the streets. Although similar to other carnival festivals in the Caribbean it has quite different roots, explains Arlene Nash-Ferguson from the Educulture Junkanoo Museum.
“The festival was started by Africans in the Bahamas who, under British rule, had three days holiday at Christmas time. And so in the Bahamas they stole away under the cover of night to reclaim their heritage,” she says. As a result over the years Junkanoo has continued as a night festival.
The slaves used all sorts of indigenous materials for their costumes from shells and seaweed to feathers and straw-work, says Arlene as she leads me around the showroom with costumes from different eras, including the Bahamas very own version of “Sponge Bob”, a costume made entirely from sea sponge.
Junkanoo is still held on Christmas night at midnight and has become a spectacular parade and costume competition. “Bahamians can’t think of Christmas without Junkanoo,” Arlene notes. A second Junkanoo parade takes place on New Year’s day.
Today all of the costumes are made of paper, in months of painstaking work, in the African tradition of layering.
“We don’t have any concrete evidence but I found it always very significant that by law slaves were not allowed to read or write,” Arlene says, “but paper became the medium of costuming, which to me was a mark of defiance.”
She shows me a photo of her impressive costume made from over two dozen pieces that use cardboard as the base material on which paper strips are layered and painted together with aluminum rod sticks that extend the costume way over her head and to the sides.
While in many other former British territories festivals are diminishing, Junkanoo in the Bahamas is actually growing. And much of that is due to the work of Arlene, which during my visit occupies a small army of primary school children with costume making, bells, rattles, drums and other noisy instruments that have replaced the traditional goat skin drums and cow bells.
“If you have a Bahamian child and you say Junkanoo, you’re in trouble,” she says with a booming laugh.
Over an obligatory conch salad at the Poop Deck restaurant in the marina I observe a “mail boat” launch for what the locals call the “family islands” or out islands.
Sandra Fox and her husband Kenneth from the People to People programme that hooks visitors up with local hosts to learn more about Bahamian culture during an entertaining evening tell me each of the family islands has its own unique characteristics from blue holes for diving to game fishing, agriculture and wildlife.
The mail boats are used to take supplies and passengers to the islands and make for a longer but nice way to travel, says Kenneth, as each trip is often seen as a homecoming and can take the form of a family picnic accompanied by music and singing.
“I always think I have a favourite island,” Romeo chimes in, “and then I go somewhere and find one that is even more beautiful and different.” In addition to the fifteen main islands the Bahamas comprise nearly 700 islands. Nassau is therefore an ideal hub for “island hopping”, either by mail boat, fast ferry or plane, to get the most out of one’s Bahamas experience.
Before leaving for the airport Romeo takes me for a short trip to the Atlantis resort with its famous casino and an atmosphere that could not be any more different from the old-world style of the Graycliff. A reception more akin to New York’s Grand Central Station, glass walls that contain a Caribbean fish and shark aquarium and a water park make the Atlantis a totally different kind of holiday experience.
Not far from the imposing red structure of the hotel that can be seen from practically anywhere in Nassau, Romeo takes me to an old structure for which he helped to build the steps when he was a young man and stone mason. The twelfth century old cloisters, he tells me, was taken stone by stone from France and rebuilt on Paradise Island. Although I find the idea completely preposterous, the Augustine monastery nonetheless looks magnificent and makes for an unforgettable setting. The terraces of the Versailles Gardens below are today mainly used for weddings for people with the right kind of money.
“Who is your favourite celebrity client then?” I ask Romeo shortly before my departure.
“If I could choose to drive one of them I would drive Perry Como,” he says, reminiscing days gone by. “He used to sit in the passenger seat of the car and say: OK Romeo, you sing one and I sing one.”
“I could retire,” he says, “but so many of my clients ask for me personally.” I am not surprised.
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