I again awoke early to spend time with the sunrise with my coffee - the bay was very calm, like a lake, the mini morning doves were cooing, the full moon was glowing at 5am, just a gorgeous way to welcome the day! When Mike finally got up, we took the two-person kayak out for a spin, with the intention of maybe going to Levi Island and doing some handline fishing. The wind whipped up so quickly and the bay that had been smooth as glass an hour earlier was now white capped and difficult to paddle in. So...that didnt last long. Mid-morning we left the house to find Poponi Beach and Tippy's Restaurant on Banks Road. Every time we headed to a new beach I was excited but kept that excitement in check just in case the beach was full of seaweed or dirty, or the water was too rough - whatever. But just like every time so far, this beach was AMAZING! That first glimpse over the dunes really was breathtaking, even with an overcast sky! We walked to the right of Tippy's, past all the limestone and found a sandy area to get in the water. It was a little rough but it was fine for snorkeling. There were some nice coral heads and schools of smaller fish, enough so that Mike decided to go back and get his GoPro from the car. Usually I don't like to be alone snorkeling but I was following around a group of juvenile surgeonfish as they rubbed against the sandy bottom. They hardly even noticed I was there and we swam together for awhile. I realized we had gone a little deeper and something caught my eye along the surface about 30 feet away...something shiny and long...ARRGGHHH - a very large barracuda was watching me! I tend to not be afraid of most things underwater, but there is something unnerving about a 4 foot long barracuda watching you with his jaw opening and closing. I didn't stick around long enough to see what he wanted and hightailed it to shore, about the time Mike had returned. Of course when he went out he didnt see the 'cuda anywhere, figures! From there we set off for an adventure down south, deciding Crown Point was our goal. Here's a map of the are we went to - the pin is about where we parked and where most of the following pics were taken. Look at how cool that area looks on the satellite! This really was the coolest place! The drive took us past some lovely hidden villas, then as the road got more desolate, the scenery changed to a creepy swamp area with tons of rusted out cars and so much trash! The amount of dumped waste in Eleuthera really was sad, but anyway...the road became more and more treacherous as went drove, about 10 minutes worth of slow driving. Then we saw the inlet cut of water right up to the road. Out of nowhere, the sky opened up to reveal a huge lake-like body of water with stripes of colors I'd never seen in nature! Half Sound! In the distance crashing waves were audible, but there was no way to see them. The wind whipped across the water and the sun made is so very hot in the openness. As we got out of the truck a bird dive-bombed us as we walked past what must have been a nest of offspring, which just added to the weirdness of this place. Not a single person anywhere to be seen. Actually, I don't think we saw ANYONE, either on the road or here at the sound for about three hours straight, which just added to the freakishness of it. Because it was midday, the sun beat down on us pretty hard so we climbed back into the AC and ate some wrap sandwiches for lunch. The goal originally was to drive out to Crown Point but it was just really a long way so we headed back to the Queens Highway and Rock Sound. After a long time driving on dirt roads, we got back on the Queens Highway and on to Rock Sound where we got gas at The Market. We stopped at a church on the bay with a lovely view. Turning right out of this church parking lot was the ONE and only time Mike had a teensy issue with driving on the other side of the street and other side of the car (besides the 9 times he turned on the wipers instead of the turn signal). There might have almost been a collision with a pickup truck full of guys but its all turned out OK. We took a little drive around the Ocean Hole, which was so odd...like a big giant pit that you'd otherwise think was a little round swamp. Since I'd read so much about it, I knew it somehow connected to the ocean, that friendly tropical fish lived in it and you could swim there, but at that moment I just wasn't interested in getting out of the AC. I was getting a lousy headache and kind of wanted to be done with driving for the day, but we were on a mission. Next stop was the Eleuthera Institute, an education center for marine biology I had read about. We could have scheduled a tour but we didnt have much time, so we gave ourselves a little self-tour, which the staff there wasn't too excited about, but we did anyway. They had lots of experiments going on, fish, sharks and algae in tanks , shade sails covering hydroponic gardens with herbs and greens, bicycles everywhere for the staff, and signs for a neat program of theirs - a lionfish collection program for local fishermen where they would pay a comparable fee to any lionfish brough there. Unfortunately, the institute was far at the tip of the southwest corner of the island and it seemed like not a lot of fishermen were there. Anyway, a cool program to get those nasty lionfish out of the water! There was a group of girls using a hand crank grinder to grind fish parts and collect the "juice". This cat was trying to help himself to the fish parts until they finally shooed him away!
After this stop, I was getting overheated and headache-y. We arrived at our final destination, Cape Eleuthera Marina where we had scheduled a trip. So from here, I'm not going to go into details about what we were doing, suffice to say, we paid money for a very specific tour and what we ended up with was absolutely not what we wanted. I was really disappointed and so sick from the headache I already had. So when it was time to climb back into the truck I was so glad to be on our way home. The worst part was that we missed the Friday Night Fish Fry in GH and I was hoping to meetup with some fellow vacationers from Trip Advisor. Booooooo. In the end, lessons learned. Mike and I really do have terrible luck with excursions on vacations, including 3 issues on our trip to the Turks & Caicos. Sigh. The reward at the end of the day was the lovely full moon back at Caribbean Blue, which I enjoyed from the shower and passed out in bed. Mike might have stayed up late drinking rum punch and cooking cracked conch!
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August 2015
Mike & SarahWe love to travel, cook, eat, own a home and make stuff. |