Today was the beginning taste of exactly what we came to the
Bahamas for. And what we hope will be a “normal routine” for the next 8 weeks
of our stay. We got up, with no alarm
clock, to 69 degree air temps and a refreshing 15 knot breeze. Our big goal for
the day were to get our marina wi-fi secured and make sure our Bahama SIM card worked
in one of our iPhones. Both were a success so we did a bit of email and on-line
work stuff till 10:30. Our next plan was to go visit a nearby beach that
supposedly has the largest sand dollars in the Bahamas.
On our way to the beach, we rode our folding bikes to the
local settlement town of New PLymouth, to look for a post office. I was
hoping for a FedEx or UPS office, as I wanted the letter to get to my customer quickly.
New Province has maybe 50 homes and business scattered about in truly classical
Bahamian styles, with houses in pink, green, yellow, blue colors with white
trimming and picket fences. Not a supper touristy town, just a real place for
locals and visitors alike.
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| Not sure about the Xmas lights in late February |
Here we begin to get a taste of island time and life. Slow
down my friend. The only FedEx office is
in Marsh Harbor, 25 miles away, by boat. The nice ladies at the post office
offered to put it in the Bahamian mail system, but said it would take a week,
maybe two, to get it to my customer. The customer is in Fort Lauderdale, only
200 miles away. The postal lady was confident it would get there in 2 weeks,
but couldn’t be sure about anything less than a week. Can you say, a different pace of life? We peaked
in a few shops and picked up a cool looking beach towel that had the Bahama
flag on it. They have some interesting conch shell jewelry for sale but the
prices were out of our budget range. Lucky for me, Cheri is not a big jewelry
person anyway.
We rode about 1.5 miles out of town to a sandy road and
headed toward the beach. We had to ask directions and were told, “go left by
the softball field.” We did and found ourselves at an intersection in a
residential area, but luckily the sign said “Beach Dat Way”.
We road/walked our
bikes down a short gravel/sand road and when we turned the corner, we saw the
beach. The beach was about 1 mile long and 40-50 feet wide and there was only
one other person on the beach, almost one half mile away. A truly deserted
beach with NO FOOT PRINTS but ours. And the water was 50 shades of blue. It was
JUST LIKE THE POSTCARDS. We looked at each other and said “Wow.”
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| One person, way way down there at the end. |
We spent an hour or so wading in the water, about 68-72
degrees, looking for shells and meandering down the beach. We kept saying to
each other, “Now, THIS is living the dream.”
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| Nobody to the left, either. |
After our beach visit we rode our bikes to the other side of
the 3 mile long island, seeing various homes and beaches and brush/tree areas. The “roads” are a mix of concrete, gravel,
sand and rocks. So riding our bikes was half “off roading” and half street
riding. For an area of mostly flat islands, we managed to find most of the
local hills, we were hungry and thirsty after a hour ride. We made it to one of
the “must go to” bar/restaurants, the Bluff House for a meal and drinks.
After resting and refueling, it was getting toward 4:00 and
we needed to head back to the boat. The sunset is at 6:15 but in the tropics it
gets dark quickly, so by 6:40 it is dark already. We made it back to the boat
by 5:30 and took stock of our shelling efforts. Not too bad for our first day.
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