Thursday, October 06, 2016

Riding an ATV through the Bahamas (Carnival cruise ship excursion)


I've got another general cruise video in the pipeline, but the first video I've put together from my recent vacation is this POV of my ATV ride through Clifton Park in the Bahamas (near Nassau). This was a Carnival-booked shore excursion, although the same ride is available through other cruises and other lines. I'm sure you can even book it separately, if you happen to be flying to the Bahamas.

This ride was intense. I wasn't expecting it. I somehow thought it'd be a fun, fast but leisurely ride at 40mph through the Bahamian wilderness. And some of it was that, but a lot of it was really difficult off-road trails that were seriously off-road, I mean just a bunch of rocks and tree branches and walls to climb over, all while balancing on this 500 pound machine beneath you and trying to keep it from overturning. (One of my most dreaded instructions over our radios was "now get ready to climb the rock wall", which we heard about 20 times.) A lot of that didn't make it into this video, because it was nothing but a bunch of blurry shaking. As long as this video is, the total ride was about 90 minutes.

My wife and I were both drenched in sweat by the end of it all. But believe it or not, it was still really fun! My wife said it was the "wildest thing" she's ever done. (That's her in front of me, btw - I think she looks really cute on an ATV!) It was obviously really beautiful - I hope I captured some of that in the video.

We did have a photo op above one of the beaches (you can see a cut there around the first third of the video) and then we had actual beach time after the ride was over. I left that stuff out because it'd probably be a pretty boring video, and also I didn't shoot any of it. But the beach was really quiet and private, and my wife said it had the best water she's ever experienced. (I didn't go in - wasn't dressed for it.)


This was also my first-ever attempt at using a chest mount I'd just bought for my phone, and I really didn't have an opportunity for a practice run, nor could I even see what I was recording as I was riding. This was all in the blind with my phone strapped to my chest. Unfortunately, early on the phone flipped down without me knowing and also switched off, so a lot of the early trails are missing from the video. Apologies that some of the footage is a little too focused on my own machine - that was me leaning forward, which was unavoidable. I just feel lucky I didn't end up face down in a ditch! Still, I feel like it got better as things went on and overall I'm happy with the result.

I've got another video coming soon - it'll be more of a relaxing overview of life on a cruise ship. So wait for that.

About This Blog

This is increasingly not a blog about Alphabet City, New York. I used to live in the East Village and work on Avenue B, but I no longer do. Why don't I change the name if I'm writing about Japan and video games and guitars? Because New Yorkers are well-rounded people with varied interests, and mine have gone increasingly off the rails over the years. And I don't feel like changing the name. I do still write about New York City sometimes.

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