Well, the wind machine has finally shut down! Today was delightfully warm, with temps in the 80’s and winds light and variable. Hoo-ray! After 3 weeks of cursing the winds, we are simply thrilled to be experiencing such beautiful weather.
We spent some time this morning walking the dogs along the beach, the only place in the park where they’re allowed, and they must be leashed. Molly burns her energy off swimming, she enjoys swimming along with us, and is slowly learning not to try to climb our backs when she comes up on us! She is a strong swimmer, I can barely keep ahead of her with fins, and without fins, it’s nearly impossible to match her speed. She dogs it to keep pace. (groan….)
Later in the morning we took to one of the trails on the island, lots of wildlife here, and the natural beauty is unique to the area.
It’ s more arid than we anticipated, with lots of scrub woody vegetation, some with delicate flowers like the mosquito bush pictured here. It is rugged walking, the limestone rock is very uneven, and most unforgiving to a misplaced step. Walking must be slow and deliberate or risk leaving some skin behind! The trails are well-marked, and the information from the park describes the trail and the typical walk time.
Afternoon brough slack tide about 2-ish, so we gathered some snorkel gear and headed out in the dink to stop off at some coral heads and other points of interest. The park provides yellow dinghy mooring bouys at various locations, very handy to simply tie up the dink, jump over the side and drift around over the coral heads. Some were very busy with aquatic life, most were not more than 5-8 ft. deep since we were at low tide. At the one spot, a lone barracuda shadowed us as we made a circle from the
dink around and back over the coral head. A bit disconcerting to be stalked, but they are really just nosey. A slow turn toward them and they mosey off. Still, at’s some intimidating jaws there!
Despite water temps in the upper 70’s, it doesn’t take too much time in the water to lose some heat, so we returned to the mooring field. A short pass over some of the area proved to be the most variety of fish we had seen, with two very large rays making their way across the deep part of the channel, they must have been close to 5 ft. across! We returned to the boat and finished the afternoon having a good swim with the dogs, finishing up with Molly’s requisite roll in the sand with the bath to follow. She doesn’t seem to mind the bath, or her rinse which consists of picking her up and heaving her into the water, with me following right behind to rub out the shampoo and the rest of the sand!
We finished up the day joining other cruisers for an impromptu happy hour on the beach, meeting and sharing stories. We’re the odd man out with the only trawler here in the mooring field, but we’re becoming accustomed to that, and despite our oddball status, we were able to blend in well enough!
Tomorrow will be more snorkeling, probably with wetsuits for a bit longer time in the water. We’re holding off on any scuba until we are at a location where we can have tanks filled, probably at Staniel Cay & the Thunderball Grotto.
That’s the latest from the Exumas!
