The first time I traveled to the Bahamas, mon, was on June 4, 1984. I boarded an old Delta Airlines L-1011 in Atlanta and took off on my first "tropical" excursion. At the time Nassau was the furthest south I had ever traveled (has that changed!).
On deplaning in Nassau I walked into the customs and immigration area of the old airport terminal. As I moved from the plane to the building I could hear a band inside the arrivals area playing a song. It was Buster Poindexter's incomparable "Hot Hot Hot." Although the song is actually Puerto Rican salsa it made a huge impression on my hugely impressionable virgin traveler mind.
I have now traveled to the Bahamas 51 times since that first timid hop across the Gulf Stream a quarter century ago. Each time but one, when I landed in Bimini (where they barely had a building let alone a band!) this song has been playing somewhere near the customs and immigration area on whatever island I had made first landfall.
While watching weather roll in off the Gulf this afternoon I've developed an incurable urge to get back to the Bahamas, mon. This time I want to travel to Andros - an island that the US Drug Enforcement Administration specifically forbade us from visiting in the mid-1980s. There was this small issue of us with radio telemetry equipment and binoculars that made the narcs think we might be a target for a less-than-friendly reception. So I never went.
Now I want to and I thought this song would help reinforce that thought. And you might enjoy it also.
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