Carnival Conquest Cruise--Freeport, Grand Bahama Island

For this port, I arranged for a cab driver (named Queenie) and her daughter to drive the 20 of us to Gold Rock Beach for the day.

This beach is absolutely pristine, secluded, and beautiful.  It's part of the Lucaya National Park.

First we made a quick stop to Ben's Cave in the park.  This was a cool little cave for the kids to see bats.

Then we went across the street to hike through this mangrove forest and wetlands...

and at the end, this was our reward--

It literally takes your breath away.

The only thing is that you have to time your visit well because the beach is only there at low tide.  Once the tide comes in, the water is up to the mangroves and the dead, knocked-down trees in front of them.  The dead trees on the shore are from previous hurricanes, but they really add to the scenery and make it look more rugged and more beautiful.  (This is actually where parts of "Pirates of the Caribbean" was filmed!)

Luckily, the stars aligned and low tide for that day was right around the time we got there.  When the tide goes out, it leaves beautiful ripples in the soft sand.  The water is light blue and light green...and just the right temperature.  It was heavenly!

Eli spent the majority of the time in the water, being held by random uncles and Ah-Gong.

Elina was having an off-day with the waves, so she and I spent a lot of time beachcombing.  I really wanted to find a starfish, but we didn't have any luck.  We still found lots of neat things in the sand though...a sand dollar, little crabs, beautiful iridescent shells, and coral-like rocks in funny shapes.

Evie loved walking around, playing in the water, and eating sand.  Yum!

We also took some silly pictures while we were there.  Love the jumping pics!

What a wonderful day at a beautiful beach with the family!

(After the beach, we also did a little shopping in Port Lucaya, but we weren't really in the mood to shop at that point because it was so hot and we were kinda drained from being in the sun.  Although we had some yummy conch salad! What a great day!)