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I (Aaron) took a quick trip over to Long Island to visit my niece Nicole and nephew Dillon and their mom Maria who is a native of Long Island. Maria has many brothers and sisters living near each other resulting in a strong family-based village.
We immediately went to Dean's Blue Hole for some swimming and cliff jumping. It turns out this is the deepest blue hole in the world and really quite amazing to swim over so close to shore. Maria made us some local fish for dinner and we finished the night player cards.
The next day when the children were at school I went to the blue hole to watch the 2010 Vertical Blue dive competition where I witnessed William successfully make a world-record dive. He was underwater for four minutes and eleven seconds. There is an interesting video explaining the event. This was a very unique event that I felt pretty lucky to stumble upon during my short visit. Even better Maria's brother Sean was serving up fresh Conch Salads and Conch burgers which fed the crowd after the competition was over.
After school we grabbed a couple of kayaks and headed out to the blue hole again for swimming, jumping and paddling. Another night of bahama food and card playing and the short trip ended too quickly. I regretted not staying longer because I was having loads of fun playing with the kids, but I was there long enough to be very happy that they have such a strong extended family unit living so close...a rare situation in the world that I know.
Back in Nassau Carol and I were able to spend the last day having some fun. We took a ferry to downtown Nassau which is tourist central to say the least, but saw some movie star's homes like Nicholas Cage. We rode the slides and the tubes in the water park at Atlantis and finished the night with a great dinner. A great trip in itself and even better when joined with our trip to Cuba.
