Today we had the opportunity to explore one of the largest caves, if not the largest one in the Bahamas, we scouted out a future rental and found a beach that had some shade.
Our morning started with coffee at Turtle Cove before our first appointment at 9 a.m.
Our appointment was with Leonard Cartwright to explore his cave known as Hamilton’s Cave. We spent about an hour, that flew by, exploring the cave, learning the history and finding out about the five species of bats (we only saw 3)that call the cave home. He did advise when looking up do NOT open your mouth. We chuckled but he said last week a woman didn’t heed his advice and her mouth was filled with bat urine, ewwww yuck.
It was worth the $30.00 fee for two of us. It was an amazing experience and I’m glad we stopped at his open door yesterday and took a chance. Leonard said as a child this was his playground, even though his mother told him not to! Scientists come up from the University of Florida to study the cave and its inhabitants. This is a well protected area and one that you need him to guide you in and about.
After the excitement of exploration, we returned to the cottage, to gather our lunch and snorkel gear for out next adventure of the day. Our next excursion had us looking at a Christmas time rental across from Clem’s Cay, at Lochabar Bay. We had to wade out into the bay to get a good feel for the location and on the way we found sand dollar heaven. It got to the point of where Mike had to tell me “No More”, we can’t transport all of them home safely. I do admit to having a sand dollar problem. We got a bit of a snorkel in and then lunched on peanut butter and guava sandwiches, all the while discussing rental options and becoming a bit sun burned.
It was only 12:30ish p.m. so we had time to go to another spot. We needed shade and Galloway Beach was a perfect location to watch the water while sitting in the shade.
After an hour we packed up to head back to the cottage. We spent the rest of the afternoon, looking at rentals online (fingers crossed we get the one we asked for), booking airfare and well I napped, Mike did all the other stuff.
Evening dinner was leftover enchiladas and dessert was dilly fruit followed by coconut lime bars. As our evening ended we watched lightning through a cloud over the water in a dramatic fashion for a while, a great way to end our day of exploration.
CTHikergal Travels 
Cool caves, but I must admit that I would have been scared.. beautiful beach pics! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for reading. Oddly I am usually scared of stuff like this, but for some reason I was really calm, I think the kind spirit of Leonard made me totally relax and not freak out. When I get home I’ll post the video on fb of the sounds the bats make. My connection is to slow to do it here.