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Club Med Columbus Isle, San Salvador, Bahamas

This is San Salvador's very busy airport, about 2 minutes away from Club Med. They're really high tech, and aren't even worried that the Y2K bug will delay the single flight a day...They've checked, and their pencils are compliant.

This is San Salvador's very busy airport, about 2 minutes away from Club Med. They're really high tech, and aren't even worried that the Y2K bug will delay the single flight a day...They've checked, and their pencils are compliant.
We really liked the attention to detail with the decoration. Here you see our room number. The walls were all painted in very cool ways. The triangle thing is a light.
Our room. We finally got smart and remembered to take the picture when we first got there - while it was still neat!
Our balcony. We're not sure what happened to this photo. We assure you that it was level. It's hard to see in this photo, but that is the ocean past the palm trees. Not so rough to wake up to.
See, we told you that balcony was level. And it had a beautiful wooden folding door in front of the sliding glass doors. Here's half of it (so you can see the detail). We loved the little touches like this.
The courtyard behind our room. The whole grounds were planted with lots of different trees and flowering plants, some with name tags. We were really impressed with the landscaping, and how well kept up everything was. They seemed to be giving something a fresh coat of paint everyday.
The paths were decorated with mosaics. This was one of our favourites.
The main building had a large balcony running along the outside of it, with room to sit and eat outside one of the restaurants. This is one of the archways on the balcony.
More of the cool decorations. This time we're in the "Sea Centre", where scuba and snorkling are based, and also the second and third restaurants (which look out over the ocean).
More of the "Sea Centre".
We really liked this guy. We're looking out across the Sea Centre balcony now, towards the ocean. The stairs lead up to two restaurants.
The view from the restaurant balcony - very artistically taken through the railings - don't you think? Wow, life was rough. Views like this can make it hard to concentrate on dinner.
Of course, the views inside weren't so bad, either. The main restaurant on Friday night. Yes, those are piles of chocolate covered strawberries. And the other desserts were equally to die for. Club Med is a French company, and it certainly shows in their selection of desserts, bread (our favourites were chocolate, and white chocolate) and cheese. Vive la France! We also thought these were cool chairs. The sun, moon and stars motif is part of the Columbus Isle logo. They chose it because this is supposed to be the first place that Columbus touched down in the new world, and he got there using the sun, moon and stars to navigate.
With all that French cooking, it was a good thing that there's also a lot to do. This is a view from the snorkel/dive boat dock, along the beach. They have 3.5 miles of beach front, and a maximum of 400 guests. So you're really not crowded. The small building is the sailing shack. We took sailing and windsurfing lessons from there. Way at the other end of the beach is the waterskiing raft. They actually got us up and doing it!
Hurray! I can sail! Thanks to a 30 min. private lesson with Thomas, we were off on our own and having a blast. You can see the guesthouses in the background. We liked how it kind of faded into the scene, instead of being some really tall, obvious hotel.
You can see how busy the water was... Wow, life was stressful.
Trying desperately to stay up... After an hour long private lesson (with a VERY patient teacher) we finally decided that maybe this isn't our sport.
Time to try snorkeling...
Ahh...much better. There's no where to fall when you're snorkling. We think this is a damsel fish. It's the striped thing. We swear it's a lot more obvious when you're actually there. Club Med's snorkling boat goes out twice a day to 6 or 7 different spots. We went 4 times, and loved it. The boat and the equipment were both clean, the staff was enthusiastic and helpful and the fish were everywhere.
More fish. We know the one on the right is a parrot fish. The coral wasn't as cool as we've seen on other trips, but the fish were. We often felt like we were swimming through an aquarium, there were so many of them. We even saw a nurse shark! The water was very calm, which was really nice and relaxing. We felt very secure, because the staff was so competant, and we knew we were being watched.
Cool, eh?
Another parrot fish. They're Ian's favourite.
It's a bit hard to make him out against the white sand, but this is a Sergeant Major. And we didn't take this snorkling! There were several large chunks of coral right off the beach. (At low tide, this guy's home is partly out of the water). And there are fish all around them. They tickle.
These are the awesome people who taught us to waterski. We both actually managed to get up, and stay up. What we didn't manage to do was take a picture. Which we're very bitter about. Here's part of the staff show instead. Those are Club Med's diving/snorkling boats in the background.
Those are Club Med's flags.
Here's how they do laundry at Club Med. The dive boats in the background again. Not exactly crowded.
The big ping pong tournament. Ian is playing the eventual winner.
Our second day there, we took a sunset cruise. The staff were really nice, the boat ride was awesome, and the photographer on board snapped the shot that's now on our front page. Our photos, unfortunately, didn't live up to that one. We did, however, get other chances to take pictures of sunsets at Club Med, as you'll see in a minute. Here's Ian, relaxing.
The sun...
...sets...
on another perfect day.