The Anna Nicole Smith Tour of the Bahamas

The author with Anna Nicole Smith. Illustration by Marc Marthe.

When I found out my friend's parents had agreed to send us on an all-expenses paid Carnival cruise of the Caribbean, I wasn't aware I was actually embarking on the Anna Nicole Smith Tour of the Bahamas.

To me, the trip seemed like the opposite of Anna Nicole: predictable and relaxing. It was the spring of 2012, three months before my college graduation and a year before the the Carnival Dream debacle. (Yes, only two years ago, you could sail the Atlantic Ocean without fear of having to pitch a tent in a sea of your own feces.) Our ship departed from a Maryland port, and our fellow travelers represented Baltimore's finest—for every sorority girl extension-deep in a strawberry daiquiri, there was a Hell's Angel named Tear Drop treating his common-law wife to a vacation after he won the scratch-off lotto.

Most days, when the ship docked at a different port, my friend and I chose to lay out on the beach, but when our boat landed at the Bahamas, we decided to take a tour of the Ardastra Gardens, Zoo, and Conservation Center, which is famous for its show featuring flamingos trained to military march. I'm not kidding. Here's a photo of me with a flamingo who had more discipline than a med student:

Once our tour guide picked us up in his bus, he had no interested in telling us about the zoo or that Nassau had recently received a visit from the Queen of England and Prince Harry. He had only one focus: Anna Nicole Smith and her paternity suit that rocked the Bahamas, bringing the nation's government to its knees.

Our guide's fascination was not unfounded. In November 2006, a US diplomatic cable, which was eventually exposed by WikiLeaks, spared no detail outlining Anna Nicole's effect on the islands:

"Hurricane Anna Nicole," as the cable called her, arrived on the islands in 2006, around the same time she found herself in the middle of a paternity suit that was messy enough to have its own Wikipedia page. Howard Stern (her demented lawyer, svengali, and alleged boyfriend) and Danny, her drug-addicted son, came along for Anna Nicole's wild ride. On September 7, 2006, she gave birth to a baby girl named Dannielynn, and three days later Danny died in the same hospital room where she was recovering from the birth. According to the leaked cable, the respected hospital "came under fire for its treatment" of Danny, but "the criticism of the hospital was nothing compared to the criticism of the Bahamas Coroner's Court." The court never determined a cause of death, but a US pathologist discovered a mix of drugs killed Danny. The US doctor's findings sparked "speculation that the government was protecting Anna Nicole from embarrassment by delaying its findings," the cable said.

This situation became even more chaotic when Anna Nicole died of an accidental overdose on February 7, 2007, at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida. Following her death, several men—including Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt, Zsa Zsa Gabor's crazy prince husband—claimed to be the father of Dannielynn. For our first stop on the tour, our bus driver took us to the Bahamas Supreme Court, where the men fought for custody of the child.

Located in the center of Nassau's somewhat battered tourist capital, the Pepto-Bismol pink, neoclassical courthouse is both beautiful and ridiculous looking, much like Anna Nicole herself. As we photographed ourselves jumping for joy in front the courthouse, drunken tourists milled around us. (The Supreme Court was only a stone's throw from a Senor Frog's.) However, more serious matters once took place inside this building. The men fought over little Dannielynn, the tiny cash cow who was possibly the sole heir of the embattled fortune Anna Nicole stood to inherit from J. Howard Marshall's estate. Ultimately, photographer Larry Birkhead's paternity was proven, and he was allowed to leave the islands with his daughter. Since then, he has pimped out Dannielynn in Guess ads celebrating her mother's career as an iconic Guess jeans model.

Of course, we didn't have time to sympathize for little Dannielynn—next up on the tour was the Bahamian Prime Minister Hubert Alexander Ingraham's house. The president lived in a basic stucco ranch house, with a pretty decent view of the water. According to our guide, the islands' leader was a modest man living in a normal house. (His neighborhood's dentist lived across the street in a larger home.) Our guide took us here to stress the prime minister's lack of corruption, a value Bahamians held dear to their heart after Anna Nicole's tenure on the island. When Anna Nicole first escaped to the islands, she tried to establish residency by bribing Minister of Immigration Shane Gibson with $10,000 and the pleasure of her company. The arrangement worked until photos were released of Anna Nicole and Shane embracing each other. The minister, who according to the WikiLeaks cable was once popular for his "tough" stance on immigration, resigned in disgrace.

Shane's reputation as a star-fucking puppet caused the Progressive Liberal Party, the supposedly populist ruling party of the Bahamas, to lose their next elections. The cable said Anna Nicole left Shane "lying in disarray in her wake," and the cable was right—the Progressive Liberal Party wouldn't return to power until 2012 when Progressive Liberal Party member Perry Christie won the election for prime minister. Through the strength of her own trash celebrity, Anna Nicole effectively upended an entire government.

After our tour (and a brief visit to the bizarre flamingo zoo), we asked the driver where we could visit the beach. He told us to crash the Atlantis, the Bahamas' premiere tourist resort.

"Won't that cost money?" I asked.

He explained that in the Bahamas anyone can own beachfront mansions, but all beaches are public property—the resort could keep us off its giant water slides, but it could not keep us away from its tourist-infested beaches. I imagined this spirit drew Anna Nicole to the Bahamas. Considering Anna was a trailer-trash stripper and single mother who managed to marry a billionaire and conquer the worlds of fashion and reality TV, she must have seen the promise of a country where every person has access to beaches that should be exclusive.

I was thinking about Anna Nicole's legacy in the Bahamas as I doggy-paddled in the beach's bright blue water, when a Biblical-size wave swept me undertow. I was trapped underwater—my life flashed before my eyes, and I assumed I was going to die—but after 30 seconds, a force pushed me towards the surface. Magically, I was unharmed, but as I gasped for air, I realized I had paid a price—my bikini's padding had been swept away to sea. Did Anna Nicole's ghost save me? I wondered. I wasn't sure. Either way, Anna Nicole's legacy will be haunting the Bahamas, and the rest of the world, for years to come.

@The_Sample_Life

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