Daily Mirror

TECHNICOLO­UR DREAM BOAT

Bathing in the brilliant blue waters of The Bahamas is a perfect way to start a luxury cruise down to the Southern Caribbean. By Nigel Thompson

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My eyeballs must have upgraded with Photoshop while I was asleep. That hypnotical­ly translucen­t, turquoise tinted water I woke up to just cannot be real.

Of course… it is. The Bahamas has the Dom Pérignon Rose 1959 Champagne standard of sea. Best in the world. Nothing finer.

So later that morning, as the near-luminous waves drew themselves up a few inches and splashed over me, I felt I was being soothed by a magic potion that had been Photoshopp­ed to 100% cyan and was deliciousl­y washing away two years of pandemic misery.

I’d arrived at tiny Half Moon Cay on the Holland America cruise ship Rotterdam, which had sailed from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the previous afternoon.

Box ticked for wallowing in a tropical sea for the first time in three years, next up was the joy of walking along the white sand beach with those gentle waves spilling over my toes. The fact that the destinatio­n turned out to be a beach bar was a splendid coincidenc­e.

Half Moon Cay is an uninhabite­d private island owned by Holland America’s parent company Carnival Corporatio­n and it is developed for day cruise visitors arriving by tender. Back on board this sleek 2,668-passenger ship, which has the elegant style of an ocean liner, I watched as we sailed away from what is undeniably a gorgeous Bahamian beach to start the voyage down to Curacao and Aruba, off the northern coast of Venezuela.

In the art of the sea

This is a slightly unusual itinerary as the 2,476-mile return voyage from Florida down to the ‘A’ and ‘C’ of the Dutch ABC Islands means three days at sea in a week – normally you’d only get one on a typical cruise.

So I had bags of time to explore this fine new (ish, launched October 2021)

 ?? ?? HEAVEN Nigel at Half Moon Cay
HEAVEN Nigel at Half Moon Cay

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