Postcard from Bahamas – Still no luggage, but lots of help

NASSAU, Bahamas – When all else fails, ask a local.

A cab driver named Brenda, who listened as I explained my situation Thursday morning – my luggage was somewhere between Buffalo and Nassau (maybe at Buffalo Niagara International Airport? Maybe at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport?) and recommended a local women’s clothier off the beaten path in Nassau.

I don’t usually go off the beaten path in a foreign country but when I offered to pay her for the cab fare once we arrived, she said to me, “You go in and I’ll wait for you, and I won’t charge you until we get back to your hotel.”

When I went inside, the women at the shop immediately sized me up and grabbed the necessities … and almost everything fit! I asked Brenda where I could get sandals, when I got back into the cab.

“Right across the street. You need strong shoes if you’re doing business here. I’ll wait for you. No extra charge.”

Ten minutes later, I walked out with a new pair of work shoes and Brenda buzzed me back through town – an adventure if there ever is one, to be a passenger while driving through the tight streets of the Bahamas, on the left side of the road!

I thought taking a taxi through Rome was exhilarating. Nassau is right up there for the thrill.

Delta Airlines is still on the clock.

As for the driving in Nassau …

If you want to know how to drive in the Bahamas, here’s a tip: Don’t.

Take a cab anywhere – you might be safer with someone else at the wheel. Otherwise, you’ll be a part of a free-for-all that makes I-90 at rush hour look even more like a parking lot.

Drivers in the Bahamas drive on the left, a la the United Kingdom. The Bahamas were a British Crown Colony until 1973. It’s a young country. But as you zip through the streets of Nassau and New Providence, Nassau’s home island, you’ll get glimpses of holdovers from British rule, like a cricket complex down the street from Junkanoo Beach; the complex is part of the Bahamas Cricket Club.

The Bahamas celebrates its African and Caribbean roots, as well. Bay Street, the main drag through downtown Nassau is still being broken down in the days after Junkanoo – the period between Dec. 26 and New Year’s Eve in which the Bahamas celebrates is Afro-Caribbean roots, as well as its freedom; slavery happened in the Bahamas and other British colonies (including the United States).

There are parades, floats and plenty of parties. There’s also plenty of leftover confetti, metal risers that are in the process of being disassembled, and empty beer bottles that cover the sidewalks the day after the end of Junkanoo. The roar of leaf blowers and garbage haulers was almost as startling as the sound of cruise ship horns and car horns along Bay Street. After all, the streets are a free-for-all!

The Bahamas Bowl will be televised Saturday on ESPN2.

There isn’t a lot of reason to watch television here – who wants to be inside when it’s 77 degrees and sunny? But a quick scan of the channels in a foreign country made me curious – and made me think of Rusty Griswold’s complaint in National Lampoon’s European Vacation (find it on streaming, it’s an American cinema classic) about British television in the London hotel where the Griswolds were staying: “We’ve only got four channels, and no MTV!”

No MTV here – but there are plenty of channels, including BBC, France’s TV5, RAI from Italy, KTLA from California and, yes, ESPN and ESPN2.

But first, a dance-off between Liberty and UB on Thursday afternoon at Atlantis. It won’t be on TV.