Today we started off early-leaving the small artificial cruiser island. I learned how to steer the boat, we motored all day with the wind on our nose. Now we are anchored off of Cat Island.
We dinghied ashore and rented a car, going grocery shopping and just driving around on the one road. We hiked up to the highest point in the Bahamas- 63 meters- to the ruins of Fra Jerome’s retirement monastery. It was darling, almost miniature scaled with a bell tower and all. This gave us a beautiful view of Cat Island- which was a bit mis-leading- it looks so green and lush from way up here but in reality, it quite depressing down on ground level. There are lots of ruins and half built homes and not that many people in general. But the Hermitage was beautiful!
(Check back on another day for images- our internet is slow here!)
Then we drove all the way down to the most southern tip of the Island, passing through New Bight, Old Bight and beyond. This area is very poor, even though the items in the grocery store are expensive. We headed to Hawk’s Nest Marina and Resort. Off the main road we took a right turn at this small wooden sign which read, Hawk’s Nest, 8 miles. Then we took a left on to a pot hole ridden dirt road, passing many second homes of must be whites, called Cat House and Kitty Koop. We even saw a Heliport, blahblah. We got to a small area but couldn’t tell if it was the resort so we kept driving, stopping to look both ways across the runway of the private jet lane. Then all the way to the - what they’d like to call- Marina. We walked up into this smoky bar with a pool table called Sharkies- thankfully this wasn’t our restaurant. We headed back across the runway to the parking lot and spotted the restaurant. The waitress met us, we had called in advance to order our food, tell us we could make ourselves a drink at the honor bar. Lucky Ivy has experince in bar tending that made me a pina colada and Runyon a strong Gin and Tonic with lime. We sat and watched Doctor Zhivago on the giant screen TV, munching on pop corn. Soon our supper was ready and we ate and were merry.
We headed out just as the last signs of day light were fading away. The dirt road seemed shorter but no less filled with pot holes. We took a small detour into someone’s front yard when we missed our left turn (no stop signs or T end road signs here!). But we made it back to the beach where our dinghy sat. We only had Runyon’s iPhone light to guide us out into the dark water with our dinghy filled with groceries. Even with a crescent moon, and the sky full of stars, we had a hard time finding the boat since we had forgotten to turn on the anchor light. Crazy thing was- we could see to the sand on the bottom of the sea- the water here is so clear! All exhausted, we unloaded the dinghy in a flash to escape the swarming mosquitos- they hurt when they bite! Another happy birthday!
No comments:
Post a Comment