On day 4 of our chill-out holiday , we were down for breakfast at about 9am. It was our usual location at Kanoo for buffet style breakfast so I had a mix of fruit and cheeses.

Once we’d eaten we headed back to our room to put on the usual suncream/swimwear and went down to the beach. We’d decided today to go to Discovery Island, where hotel guests can access the eastern side of the island, known as Sandals Barefoot Cay. Access is via Sandals’ own boat which takes around 4 – 5 minutes across a small body of aquamarine waters. The first two boat shuttles were particularly busy so we waited until about 10:45 before getting near the front of the queue for the next boat.

It was a pleasant wait on the boardwalk and we even saw a family of stingrays swimming past. I managed to capture a bit of video footage of them heading east. We eventually got on the boat and we were off.

Caribbean music was playing in the background but then it stopped as we slowed down on the approach to the island. The pilot told us that we can only access the eastern side of the island. The west side is owned by Royal Caribbean cruises and their passengers are able to only access that side. We were told that Michael Jackson used to own the whole island but I couldn’t find any information after researching it, so will leave it at that.

We got off the boat and headed towards the beach area. It was already busy, with all the sun beds being taken, but that didn’t bother us. Instead we decided to go for lunch whilst it was quiet in the restaurant, called Aralia House. The menu offered ribs, burgers, seafood and quesadillas. We sat on a hi-top outside and were soon served our food. JC had ribs and I had quesadillas. You will see from the link below that the island is tiny, so you can walk from north to south in less than a minute. After lunch we decided to explore what we could of the island. We saw one of the separate rocky areas and worked out, from pictures we’ve seen, that it was where The Beatles were filmed whilst singing tracks for their film “Help”.

https://www.sandals.com/royal-bahamian/private-island/

We headed further north and east, passing the hotel’s separate outdoor spa, where you could have a massage or other spa treatments whilst listening to the tranquil ocean lapping over the rocks. In the distance we could see the Atlantis hotel on another island, called Paradise Island.

We then headed back towards the south part of Barefoot Cay and just took in the natural surroundings and gardens. We sat at the bar for a quick drink and then realised that there was a boat almost about to leave, earlier than scheduled. As we’d seen what we had wanted to see on the island, we hopped on.

Five minutes later and we were back on Sandals’ private area of Cable Beach and found our sun loungers. It was quite a lazy afternoon and time for more chilling out. We saw birds such as the laughing gull (they weren’t laughing when we saw them) and groups of sandpipers.

The highlight of the afternoon was watching two Atlantic ghost crabs playing hide and seek on the beach. The larger crab was in fact burrowing itself into a hole whilst dragging sand out with its claws. I found out that they can actually dig down as far as four feet. The smaller crab moved fast and it was hard to spot as it mingled in with the colour of the sand.

We had agreed that late afternoon would be spent in the gym doing a bit of a run. However, our plans were scuppered when we saw our hospitality staff Logesh and Dominique. Just near our hotel room we saw some of the other staff setting up a long table with lots of wine glasses on it. Before we knew it, Dominique had booked us onto a wine tasting session in less than an hour’s time. So much for my run…

Anyway, the wine tasting was a very relaxed affair. We sat amongst people from Tampa Bay in Florida, Montreal in Canada, Boston USA and Nassau itself. We tasted some of the wines on offer at the resort which are available in our room too. It was time well spent with some different people.

We went back to the room and decided to have a glass of champagne from the bottle that had been in our room since we arrived. We sat on our outdoor balcony just taking it all in.

Our evening meal was booked at Kanoo, where we have been having our buffet breakfast every day. In the evening it turns in to an a la carte menu with Caribbean dishes on offer. I had tropical salad for my starter, followed by curried chicken and rice, then a slice of dragon stout cheesecake. It was so quiet there that we had been served our three courses in less than an hour. The food was great there.

We then went for a walk around the resort complex, just enjoying the evening and taking photos of the waxing crescent moon, before heading back for an early night and good sleep.