Island Life As a Visitor – Day 6

Today we have settled into our island life as a visitor.  It shouldn’t have taken us this long to get in our groove, but this time it did.  I think the whole luggage escapade threw us off our game.

Another windy, stormy day greeted us.  Coffee photos were taken quickly, praying the cup wouldn’t be blown away. We didn’t want to waste any of our good coffee that had finally arrived.

This morning I decided to try my hand at making johnny cake.  The owners gifted us with a Bahamian cookbook, so I had to make something. I did add a twist to it, put in coconut rum soaked raisins.  I was so happy when it turned out yummy!.

Next up was breakfast, french toast sticks with local bread.

Over breakfast the plan was made for at least the morning, go up south to the end of the island.  Our first stop was Fords Landing.  One of the first things we learned in the Bahamas was to know when tides were happening.  Our arrival at Fords would happen between low and high tide, so shelling would be better.

We continued on to Gordons, but first we become distracted by the ducks in a pond in Mortimers.

Finally we made it to the end of the road, to Gordons beach.  My favorite beach on this island.  Part of the reason we stayed up south this time was to be closer to this beach.  We also purchased our Suniela canopy for this beach.

We spent a little over an hour here, beach walking, swimming and snacking.  As we left, the gray skies came over and rain dumped on us as we sat in the car.

Our next stop was PitBull’s place for a beer.  Sadly the only cold beer he had was Guinness, because he was just restocking the fridge, after the liquor stores were closed for a few days due to holidays.  Everyone drank him out of beer.  He did comp us a lovely fresh conch salad.  Funny a year ago we were on the other end of the island and were given conch salad.  Guess Dec. 27 is the day we find free conch salad on this island!

While there we had an interesting conversation with another patron on the state of U.S. politics.  Mike hit me to keep my mouth shut and not inform the man on how really it is.

After Pitbull’s we stopped at an abandoned church, just one of many on this island.  It seemed to be the church where the swallowtails and money moths go to die.

On the way back to the house we encountered more goats and even a pig, true island life.

Once at the house, we had leftovers for lunch. After lunch we headed out to a store to purchase more butter. On our way back we stopped at Dean’s Blue Hole.  We stayed in this area last April.  The winds were the strongest we have ever seen here and you couldn’t even tell there was a blue hole here.

We had one more beach to check out, across from Deans, by Lloyd’s Bar.  Turnbull beach is a lovely little area, but more rain was approaching, so we didn’t stay long.

And the rain came and came and came.  When we arrived back at the rental Mike had to push out the water from the screened porch, island life.

The remainder of our afternoon and evening was watching rain come in, running to shut doors and windows, making pizza for dinner, cleaning shells, playing with my watercolors, opening windows and doors when the rain stopped and having dinner.

We found over the years how to handle island life. It requires flexibility, ingenuity and a go with the flow attitude. It also helps to smile, wave and learn to listen to the locals. Maybe some year we will be lucky enough to be an island resident somewhere, we’ve been practicing island life since 2004.