Getting Internet in the Bahamas

In the Bahamas, you can either get internet access on your phone by paying an exorbitant amount of $10 per day for 500MB or you can get a BTC (BalTeCo, Bahamas Telephone Company) SIM card and access internet like a local would. 

BTC stores are all over the Bahamas and usually in walking distance from any port of entry. Once you have a SIM card, you will need to do these steps to get and to renew internet on your phone. 

First, you need to have money on your account. To do this, you can either call BTC and add funds to your account, but this is a very slow and ineffective way. The other way is to download and install the BTC app and register your account with it. 

In the App, there is a menu called BTC Top Up, where you can add money to your account with a credit card. Once you have money in the account, you can then follow these steps to convert your money into data.  

FYI, the best value plan costs $35 + 7.5% tax, so you should add $38 to your account when you Top Up. 

The first step is to call *203#  

This will take you to the BTC menu option where you can carry out all changes to your account and convert money into products. 

When you hit send, this screen will pop up. I speak English, so I selected option 1. 

Option 1 shows you what plan you currently have. 

Option 2 is voice and data, but if you have WhatsApp, then you can make calls over the internet and won't need to spend extra money on voice plans. 

Option 3 is just data. 

Select Option 3. 

Now it gives you the choice of the different data plans available. Option 5 has the best value of dollars per gigabyte, and costs $35 + 7.5% tax, so a bit under $38. 

Select option 5. 

Press 1, and you have now selected your new data plan.

The call will now terminate and you will not have internet. You now need to turn off and restart your phone. When your phone turns on, you will receive a text message from BTC letting you know that you have renewed your data plan and that you need to restart your phone to activate it. You now have internet access! 

The BTC App's Quick Top Up requires internet access to work, so it is wise to keep money in your account so that if you run out of data, all you need to do is dial *203# to add more data. If you find yourself without money in your account and no internet access, you will have to wait until you get to a BTC store or try the long process of waiting on hold for the next available BTC representative to add funds to your account for you. 

With that you are all set to enjoy internet access while in the Bahamas! 

Food Prices in Nassau, New Providence, Bahamas

They say that food prices are higher in the Bahamas, and it's true. Nassau is known for having the best prices on foods, as it is the biggest city and has more volume of imports coming to it. While the prices are cheaper than other places, the prices are still higher than stateside prices.  

Take a look at these two receipts from different grocery stores. 

Taxes here are 7.5%, so the price that is already higher is about to climb even more! It is very easy to spend way more than $100 on a small grocery run, making it very expensive to provision for a long trip here without destroying your cruising budget. 

Ocean Acidification and Coral Bleaching

For years, an epidemic has been sweeping around the world, threatening the survival of a pivotal ocean ecosystem. As carbon dioxide levels climb in the atmosphere, the levels of carbonic acid also climbed in the ocean waters. Increasing levels of carbonic acid lead to a lowering of the oceans pH, and causes the water to become more acidic. This change in pH affects all living organisms in the water, which depend on a rather basic pH of 8.2. Current ocean pH is around 8.1, which might not sound like a big difference, but it is! 

Enzymes in fish, for example, are pH dependent, and operate best at around 8.2. This slight change in pH means that many systems now have to work harder to survive or can't survive at all! Corals are one such organism that suffered severe casualties as the pH dropped. 

Corals are tiny polyps that live on a calcium carbonate structure. As they grow, they deposit more calcium carbonate beneath them and this "grows" the coral. The true life only lives on the surface of it, and if the water quality is not correct, the polyps will die, leaving behind the white skeleton of the structure behind. 

Corals all over the world were bleaching and dying and it was a critical fear that the entire ocean ecosystem may collapse! Thankfully, there has been a lot of research in ways to bring corals back to life, by selectively breeding stronger and more resistant strains of corals, and then re-seeding these back onto reefs.  

You can see the large white patches of this coral reef. These are areas that have bleached away, but you can see the new growth of corals on top of the dead structures, these are corals that are recovering!

Large structures that were once completely covered with corals, had become barren wastelands, but now seem to be making a comeback, at least in this small reef in the Berry Islands.

Seeing corals bounce back gives hope that the oceans will evolve and survive, keeping life on this planet going.

Snails

Nature is full of majestic wonder. On this simple rock located by the waters edge, we found a rainbow of patterns and colors clustered together.

These snails, while they appear to be very similar, all have slightly different shells that just make this rock glisten with beauty in the sun. Sometimes you just need to slow down and appreciate the little things that are right before your eyes!

Rock Stacks

Originally, these stacks of rocks were created by local fishermen to indicate places that have good fishing. Tourists saw these stacks of rocks and thought it would be fun to recreate them, causing tourists to then build many arbitrary rock stacks. So many rock stacks have been created on the beaches of the world that they are no longer useable as a fishing marker because you just don't know if it is a "real" rock stack or a "tourist" rock stack. 

That being said, we came across this rock stack on White Cay in the Berry Islands, Bahamas. Obviously this was created by a tourist as it is atop a cliff that overlooks powerful breaking waves. There is no way a fish would be successfully pulled through the surf and up the cliff without working its way off the hook!

Never the less, this rock stack served a different purpose. While created by a tourist, it has taken on a new meaning. Instead of marking a good fishing spot, it now marks a good viewing spot. If it were not for the rock stack, we may not have climbed up to the top of this rocky outcropping to view the splendor that was all around us!