Bahamas II: Delicious Coca Cola

Gravity works differently in the Bahamas.

As I say time and again, I am not a big caffeine drinker. In fact, I do my best to stay away from the stuff as it just makes my stupid go faster. I think there was a time in my life where I would drink a two liter of Mountain Dew and have super powers, flying over buildings and vibrating so fast that I could walk through walls. Or at least I just felt super powered, maybe I was wrong and that was why I had no friends.

But caffeine makes me jittery, now. I went and saw "Quarantine" today and purposefully drank a large Coke just to make me extra jittery for the movie. I don't scare easy, though certainly easier than I used to. Good movie, by the way. Logical, surprising, dreadful, believable. Except the night vision part. I hate when people use cameras to see in the dark with the night vision setting, as anyone knows who has done this the screen gives off light making the cameraperson the only visible thing in the room. But that's it. My only complaint.

Anyways, my wife and I did a Bahamas nature tour and were then dropped off at Fort Charlotte. Fort Charlotte is a pretty neat old fort, full of graffiti from the neat old days when graffiti was good. Back when you spent eight hours carving your full name into a wall of stone, making sure the serif's were in place. That was class. These kids nowadays and their imitation graffiti culture, feh. Swish swish and your done.

Those damn kids and their 1914 vandalism.

After looking at the fort we walked down to a "fish fry" near a beach. A "fish fry" is a strip of restaurants with lots of alcohol and fish, and that's about it. We found a place that came highly recommended and both ordered grilled stuff, my wife some fish and I some shrimp and conch. Grilled, I found out, meant "put a bunch of stuff in a tinfoil bag and cook it till it becomes soup". Grilling, in my book, means putting the thing on a hot set of prison bars so it gets burned strips on it. Then you flip it and do it again. Not so in the Bahamas.

But there was a good part to this visit. The Coca Cola. For whatever reason I ordered a Coke - I was tired and thought it would help me get up to speed. A can came out, I poured it, my wife had some and her eyes lit up. Seeing her finding pleasure in something I did what I always do, I snatched it away for myself.

Sucrose = Doesn't suck.

The Coke was heaven. I drifted on a cloud of joy. It was real, sugary Coca Cola. Not corn syrup, but sucrose. It was a dream. A DREAM.

I've lost my notes from that meal, I'm embarrassed to say, but I can remember a few key differences this sugared Coke had from our domestic Coke. Aside from the delicious sweetness, that is.

First off, the color was different. Our Coke has a lot of red in it when you hold it up to the light, this does not. It was just cola colored, a jarring thing once you realize what your looking at. Has Coke always been reddish in the US?

Second, the bubbles in the Bahamian Coke are larger. This may have been a function of the plastic cup I was drinking from, but I'm not certain. The bubbles adhered to the side were huge. HUGE.

Between us, we chugged down three more Coca Colas before we left, each better than the last. I swear to God, if your average American traveled enough to get foreign Coke things would change. They'd riot if the company was to serve that swill they give us. Down with corn syrup, my friends. Down with corn syrup.