Parrots and Miami Vice

I should continue where I left off from my last blog.  Sunday April 11 I went to Dunkin’ Donuts, only a few minutes’ walk away from my hotel and I uploaded my blog, photos, and a video.  For dinner I was hoping to eat at Hard Rock Café, but when I got there, it was already closed—about four hours early!  As a matter of fact, most of the restaurants in the downtown area were closed, so I walked in the other direction to the Fish Fry.  I ate at a different restaurant and had some chicken wings served with fried plantains, and beans and rice.  I had a Miami Vice to drink.  Beans and rice here is very different from beans and rice in Louisiana.  Beans and rice here is basically white rice that has been mixed with a few beans.  It’s a nice combination, too.  I’ve already had Bahamian beans and rice a couple times.  The restaurants in the Fish Fry really know how to do it right!

April 12 I went to the Ardastra Gardens, Zoo, and Conservation Center.  The place was full of birds, various plants, and other animals.  There were lemurs, monkeys, a few boa constrictors, caimans, some wild cats, and others.  The Garden is really well known for its botanical display and the birds, though.  I stayed long enough so that I could feed some of the lory parrots.  These parrots only ate nectar in their natural habitat, so we fed them apples.  They avoided the cores and the skins but would chew up the pulp for the apple juice.  It was really fun to have all those birds around us.  They had something like a petting zoo in the middle of the facility where they had rabbits, goats, chickens, etc.  One of the goats stayed by the fence near me because it wanted a nice, long neck-scratching.  Flamingos were everywhere, mostly sleeping, but some of them were up and about.  Apparently flamingos are trainable, and Ardastra had a show in which they made the flamingos follow commands and socialize with a few members of the audience.


I'm feeding a lory parrot.


A parrot at Ardastra


A duck takes a look at me at Ardastra.


There are some beautiful flowers in the Bahamas.


A meerkat looks at the visitors at Ardastra.

I was also going to go to the Botanical Gardens which were nearly next door, but they closed early during the day.

In the evening I committed to going to Atlantis to see the aquarium on the free tour.  A good share of it is open to the public during the evening hours.  No bus goes across to the island, and it was far enough I wanted to get a ride.  Taxi!  Atlantis has some huge aquarium tanks!  I saw a lot of different kinds of fish.



I had no idea what kinds I was looking at, but when I came to the predator lagoon, I was a bit more familiar with the animals there.  Also, I have to mention that I saw the most gigantic ray I had ever seen in one of those tanks.  The body of it was about as long as a man is tall.  Its wings spread seemingly just as wide.  The dorsal spine extended for close to probably 12 feet behind the body.

Afterward, I finally made it to Hard Rock Café.  It was surprisingly empty!  A couple had been seated ahead of me on the balcony.  When the host came back, he asked if I would be willing to sit with the other couple on their request!  Sure, why not?  The couple was from the United Kingdom and was here because they were part of a wedding.  I ate barbecued brisket, but the meal was so large, there was no way I was going to be able to eat even half of it.  I had to have another Miami Vice to drink.  Those are good.  We talked so long that the waitress told us that she was going to close for the night.  The English couple and I had a good conversation, and then afterward I walked back to my hotel.  One nice thing about being near the downtown area is that I don’t have to hop a bus or a taxi for every little thing.