Explorations and Discoveries

The marina was advertised as having laundry. It turns out that the machines are the ones in the room behind the kitchen of the house here. The charge? $30.

Thursday morning I spent handwashing all our clothes and bedding. It involved quite a lot of water, so wasn’t a huge savings, but it was good for my soul. With Django decked out in miles of line and flapping laundry, looking very much like a floating member of a trailer park, we set of to walk to Port Nelson and search for WW’s glasses.

It was a lovely walk and we saw interesting plants, butterflies, and fish (these were in brackish streams running from salt pans to the sea). We found the Last Chance Market. It was closed, so we wandered on for a bit, past the pretty little church.

The lovely Anglican church in Port Nelson

A fellow we’d asked about the glasses was coming our way and told us the store was open, so we popped in and had a lovely shop. Supplies are limited, but we managed to get some chicken, “breakfast links”, more limes, and an assortment of odds and ends we needed. WW carried the bags back and I walked along the beach, watching for wandering glasses. No luck. WW tried again after lunch. They are most thoroughly gone.

The next day, WW schlepped 5-gallon jerry cans of diesel fuel to Django. No pump here. He filled her tanks and then refilled the cans. We are hoping to leave for the Dominican Republic in the next couple of days. That’s a three-day run and we’ll need the fuel as it will, again, be into the wind. However, the wind is supposed to be quite gentle. After lunch we took a nice long walk along a dirt road that went nowhere. Saw lots of big locusts and a huge spider. On the way back, we spotted an American kestrel. A very pretty bird. For dinner I tried something adventurous: papaya and garlic soup. It was actually very good.

Today, I cleaned the galley cupboards, the entire head, and all Django’s floors. Then we and Peggy and Jeff rented a golf cart for half the day ($30) and went exploring. The most amazing find was a beach, clear over on the other side of the cay, about a mile long of pristine white sand, with wild Atlantic breakers pounding on the reefs about a half mile out that protect it.

Jeff, WW and I on the amazing Atlantic beach

There was a rocky spur near where we parked and I wanted to climb it. I wandered over and realized it was coral and I didn’t have my shoes. Rather than get them, I climbed very very carefully. I discovered the second floor. Literally. There was another beach above the first, with stone accreted from the seawater. It was an extraordinary place. The others made let’s go signals, but I ducked out of sight so they followed and were pleased they had.

The second storey beach

Oh, saw lots of birds. A number of great egrets, an osprey with a kill, more kestrels, a couple of flocks of smooth-billed anis (a wild parrot), and lots of ground doves and collared doves. WW and Peggy spotted something they described, I hunted for a look-alike, and they agreed was a pearly-eyed thrasher (I only allowed them that one because it is common in the south Bahamas).