So, forget my snarky remark up there; it really is
unbelievably gorgeous here. Yesterday,
we went over to one of the beaches here and found a trail that goes to a blue
hole on land. I've only seen the blue
hole in the water that we saw outside Great Harbour Key, but it was right there
IN the water.
Up we trudged through a tight trail of mangroves and
pines and probably poisonwood (I squeezed in as much as possible to avoid
touching any leaves!) and it felt weird climbing up as we did. A trail veered off, but we figured that was
to somewhere lower, so we kept going.
Elliott was ahead of us and we could hear his gasp when he laid eyes on
this blue hole. Wow, it was big!
Looked like a quarry hole, but these are
natural. We could see over the ledge
that there was a better place to get in the water, though people do jump from
that height. You need to have good
trajectory, though, because there is a ledge out from the regular ledge. We found another side trail and it wound around
and down and all of a sudden it felt like we were in Luray Caverns, except not
underground and with only three walls.
Very cool. We even found a deeper
cave which Gary crawled into; I had hoped for bats, but no such luck.
The water was very clear and the guys got in
immediately; Gary did a cannonball and
Elliott did a beautiful dive. I acted as
official photographer. Gary had wanted to
find a cache but had forgotten to bring the coordinates; he said he may come
over again later.
While we were there, we were visited by a nice
couple from Ohio and who were sailing a lovely tri-maran named Take Wing. It's a fold-up and can be trailered
anywhere. We had a nice chat and before
leaving, they took photos of us and I took a few of them to send along later
when I had an internet connection.
We stayed for a while on the beach and noticed a
really crazy looking boat in the harbor named Mirage. From one side, it looks like an old-fashioned
steamer boat from back in the day; as you travel around it, there's a big ama
(outrigger) on that side that totally doesn't seem to go with the boat
design. But it is a touristy boat, not a
huge one, and we found out that the couple who runs the business is from
Washington State and they run out of the marina we had just left. The couple from Ohio got a tour of it and
said they came away surprised at how clean the boat was and how roomy.
So, on the way back to the boat, we decided to do
some exploring and took a turn into another protected and shallow bay with a
water trail through the mangroves beckoning us to discover whatever was waiting
for us. With a baby barracuda as our
guide, we paddled slowly into the canal.
There were definitely a few places that were tight, but we squeezed
through handily. We went on and on and
on and I made the executive decision that it was time to turn around and get
back to the boat for dinner. Oh, but we
hadn't thought that one through quite well; it seems we had quite the current
fighting us as we tried to paddle back through to the bay. We had to use the paddles to push or pull
with our hands against the mangrove roots to keep the boat moving forward; we
were like Rose and Charlie from The African Queen, but thankfully without the
stinging bugs and malaria and the German Army.
And the baby barracuda had stuck with us and let us go peacefully.
We made it back all in good time and saw a few
trigger fish dashing around. The sunset
was grand and the night's sleep was mostly deep. The almost full moon kept it bright enough to
see the beauty of our surroundings late into the night.
The guys did go back to the blue hole and they found
the cache. They came back to my beach
camp dripping wet and happy. Elliott
continued his career as an animal whisperer when he was able to get one of
these wild curly-tailed lizards to eat out of his hand. Later, one of them just held onto his finger
with his claws. He named one Zar and the
other Dee.
We all go in the water at one point, with Elliott
going off snorkeling on his own. He came
back and told us he saw many sea stars and a SHARK. He's not sure what kind it was, but that was
enough to get me out of the water. We
were in shallow water and I didn't think they would come in that close. Oh boy.
We head out tomorrow for an all-day run up to the
Abacos. We may not have good wind, but
we have a motor and will probably sail even in light wind. I hope we get there in good daylight to make anchor. We will be staying in the Abacos for the next
month or so, visiting and making ready to make the long trip home via the Gulf
Stream.
Tonight's sunset and sky were stupendous! Gary had some jazz on the radio and Elliott
was dancing up and down the deck playing air trumpet. He makes me laugh so much; I'm glad he's here
with us.
No comments:
Post a Comment