Mike in the Wild

Every stop on a Caribbean cruise is an opportunity to explore a new island's unique culture and history.   The region's human story began with native peoples settling the wide-flung archipelagos in pre-Colombian times and continued more recently with Europeans settling them with colonists and African slaves.  And today many of us are able to visit these tropical gems via a short stay off a ship or on a longer lucky vacation, adding our own cultural dynamic as modern tourists. But beyond the gift shops and tiki bars, resorts and restaurants, there is a natural history story on a geological timeline of continental shifts, volcanic eruptions and coral reef formations.  Before man's footprint altered the landscape, a wide range of unique flora and fauna evolved on these islands.  The underwater life that lives just offshore in the shallows might have been less permanently altered by the millennia-long encroachment by humans.  At least I'd like to think th...

I am not a thrill seeker.  I eschew zip lining; I'd rather hide in a blind in the same treetops to actually see the birds that others speedily glide past.  As a child I avoided roller coasters in favor of Ferris wheels where I could enjoy the scenery from a bird's eye view and at a very human pace.  So I'm wondering how I reached a point on my 55th birthday where I deliberately chose to swim with sharks.  Most of the Bahamas lie above the Tropic of Cancer but it still has a mild winter climate that is more tropical than temperate.  Nowhere is this more evident than out on the coral reefs that encircle the nation's more than seven hundred islands and cays.  Diving and snorkeling, not to mention sport fishing, are a mainstay of its important tourist economy.   So on a stop in Nassau on New Providence Island during my birthday cruise I was eager to snorkel on a teeming and picturesque reef. Stuart Cove's Dive Bahamas offers fully escorted dives a...