Thursday, April 30, 2009

Day 235

We were up first thing in the morning to take a ferry over to Eleuthera and get the rental car to tour the island for the day with Karen and Denis. Eleuthera is one of the most east islands in the Bahamas and is HUGE. It’s 110miles long and has quite a lot of vegetation. They farm the in the north part of the island, but not as we think of farming. The terrain is rough and there is very little top soil. Here they grow all sorts of citric trees. We found out from a local that several years ago a hurricane that flattened everything on the island had destroyed all of the trees and just now are the new trees producing fruit.

As we were driving down the road all that was visible in the north were walls of thick rough looking native Bahamian bushes. Every once and a while you would get a glimpse of what looked like rows of fruit trees and maybe a house just off the road but it seemed to be like driving down the 401 back home. Then out of nowhere we would be in the middle of a town.

As we ventured south we went over hills and the rock was cut away for the road. It kind of reminded me of being up near the Georgian Bay. Just as we were looking at the more barren landscape we came to the glass window, a must see on Eleuthera. We had heard of this spot and were told that it was where the island almost split in two in about a 80’ gap. There was a bridge to continue down the road but you need to take some time and look at the sight here. Here the sound and the ocean met and directly under the bridge was a line that divided night and day. We were at first sceptical but as we neared the bridge we could see what he had been talking about. The ocean was whitecaping as far as the eye could see and beating the cliff sending spray up everywhere. The sound was a beautiful turquoise mill pond. The ocean was the colour of dark navy velvet and looked so forbidding and nasty where the sound was a marbled of all shades of light blue and clear as glass. It was night and day. Here as we looked out across the ocean it hit me that there was nothing across the deep boiling water until Africa.

We moved on and found a little town and did a walk about. We looked in little shops and the boys got anxious to go. We moved on and drove for another while, most of the way having a nice view of the banks and then suddenly we were back into what looked like the farm area on the north end. We saw several silos and we tried to guess what they were for but Papa found in a guide book that they were rain silos...now what a rain silo does I’m not sure.

We found a cave and did a detour to go see it. This cave was smaller (well what we saw of it) then others we have visited but every available inch of the walls and ceiling was covered in graffiti. Denis had the only flashlight and him and I ventured farther into the cave than the rest of the group. We found stairs heading down into what we think would be another chamber but we decided with our footwear and dying flashlight that it wasn’t a good idea to go farther. But first I had to take a pick of what was spray painted above the hole down.

We drove through several more little towns and decided it was time for lunch. We were all talking about food while we were between towns and we noticed a sign advertising an ocean view lunch and we decided to check it out. We found a little Italian oasis in the middle of nowhere. I couldn’t tell you the name of it but it’s located on alabaster bay and served a lunch menu that was more than enough for dinner and we aren’t sure how in the Bahamas they can support their menu. They offered bow tie pasta in a black truffle sauce any type of pasta you could dream of, foccacia bread with salami and an Italian cheese, and a variety of other foods that I probably couldn’t pronounce if my life depended on it.

While there we met up with some cruisers that Karen and Denis were acquainted with and we had heard in Georgetown. They told us that the beach the restaurant was on had tons of milk conch shells. After we ate we walked the beach and there were more shells then we could have imagined. We filled a grocery bag with shells and had a good time walking in and out of the warm water. We saw starfish and for the first time in the Bahamas I saw tiny jellyfish.

Back on the road we wanted to get farther south so we drove for a while deciding that we didn’t have enough time to stop and shop in every little town. We made it a little farther south than Rock Sound and saw the ocean hole. This hole is as deep as the ocean, is almost a perfectly round circle and is inland quite a ways from the sound and the ocean. While we were sitting looking at the fish in this bottomless hole an ol’ local came by and was chatting with us about the hole as he broke up stale buns and threw them to the fish and birds. He told us that there use to be rainbow parrot fish in the hole and they kept the sides clean and free of growth but they had all died out and the locals are going to try and repopulate it. He said that in the hole right now there are 5 turtles and several thousand fish. We only saw grey snappers. When it was time to move on we thanked him and said by and headed back to the van. On our way back we noticed several cotton plants and went over to take a look.

Back on the road we tried to find another cave that was mentioned in the guide book but we ended up giving up and heading north on our way home. We made a stop at a grocery store and picked up a few items and then boogied on home...until we all decided that we should have ice cream x]. We stopped off at an ice cream place and went in and were very disappointed to hear that she was out until thurs when the mail boat comes in. She told us that if we wanted the gas station sells ice cream bars. We went just a little down the road and bought drumsticks and headed back the rest of the way north. We arrived at James Bay and called Knight Rider to come pick us up around 7:30 and we headed back to our boats.

Back on the butt we watched Pirates of the Caribbean lmao and Papa decided it wasn’t as horrible as he thought :P.

Niki

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