When I last left you we had only been in Nassau a day or two
and, though we had traveled around a little, we really hadn’t explored downtown
Nassau. On Tuesday the 22d we caught a bus downtown (at $1.25 per person) and
FINALLY discovered places where we might want to take my mother and sister, who
were coming to visit on Wednesday. Now don’t get me wrong, we really wanted to
take them out into the Exumas so they could see the real Bahamas, but we also
wanted them to have an opportunity to see the touristy section of Nassau
because they were, well, tourists. Moreover, we are slave to the weather and
the winds looked like they might be acting up a bit on Thursday and Friday.
So, to make sure we had something for them to do for their
days in Nassau, we went downtown and discovered, among other things, the Straw
Market. For those of you who have never been to Nassau, the straw market used
to consist of several dozen (a hundred?) ladies who made things from straw to
sell to the tourists. There were straw baskets, straw hats, straw thises and
straw thats. Now, however, the market consists of several hundred ladies
selling some of the same straw goods, plus T-shirts, wooden figurines, shopping
bags, purses, shot glasses, etc, etc. It is on e of those places where the
average Bahamian can benefit materially from the tourist trade and the average
tourist can benefit from the competition among vendors. Just a little further
down the street, of course, were T-shirt shops, the ubiquitous diamond stores
and Gucci, Armani, Versace, Fendi and a plethora of other designers.
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| A scene from the Nassau Pirate's Museum. And if you aren't kind to the chef, this is apparently the table on Traveling Soul! AARGH! |
On Wednesday evening my mother and sister arrived and on
Thursday we went downtown. We started with the Pirate Museum AARGH! (According
to Ann, you have to say AARGH! every time you refer to pirates or piracy. It’s
a law, or something like that.) The museum consisted primarily of twenty or so
life-sized displays showing pirates in and around Nassau. It also had a number
of “true or false” placards testing your knowledge of the pirate (ARRGH!) age.
I learned a number of things about pirates like the democracy on board pirate
ships (they frequently voted for their captain) and the code of conduct
(frequently written and the crew forced to sign – or go somewhere else).
Anyway, it was fun for all. We then ate lunch – and had cracked conch, conch
fritters, French fries and grouper fingers. I think everyone liked the cracked
conch the best (hurray for the taste buds of my family!!), followed by
fritters, fingers and fries in order.
After lunch we went to the aforementioned straw market. Everybody looked and looked and looked
(except me, of course, I am not much of a shopper). After lunch we took a taxi
back to the marina to decide what to do the following day.
On Friday we took a taxi to Paradise Island. Paradise Island
is difficult to describe. It is kind of a Bahamian Las Vegas. It has a casino,
a bunch of hotels, several townhouse developments, some huge houses and a
marina. True, there is only one casino, but the place is just – how can I put
this – just glitzy; glitzy like Vegas. The big difference between Vegas and
Paradise Island is that in Vegas you can walk around and see many of the
attractions for free. All they really want you to do is to gamble. In Paradise
Island, you need a pass of some kind to see anything but the casino itself, lobbies of the various hotels and
some of the higher end shops. It was amazing; we walked for about half-an-hour
and didn’t see anything other than hotel lobbies and a few slot machines. It
was really disappointing. Anyway, after walking around for a while and not
seeing anything interesting we decided to head back to the boat and plan the
next few days. Paradise Island gets a big ZERO in my book.
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| Some of the beautiful sea creatures for sale near the Straw Market in downtown Nassau |
On Saturday, we headed out. It was a bit challenging getting
out of the slip. We were at the end of the pier, bow in, with several boats to
our stern that were perpendicular to us with their bows lined up with our port
side. In other words, I didn’t have too much room to port or I would run into
one of the other boats. We did, however, have room to starboard. So, I backed
out with a slight angle towards starboard until I got a little maneuvering
room, then spun the boat around (you can do that with two engines – you put one
in forward and the other in reverse – and you can almost spin in your own
length). We put in some fuel and we were off.
It wasn’t THAT bad out. It was probably 2-3 feet waves with
the occasional 4 footer. Everyone handled it well, reading and absorbing the
sights all the way. It was about a 4 ½ trip to Normans Cay, our first stop. We
got in about 2:00. The anchorage I had chosen was kind of the southwest side of
the cay and was plenty large enough for a bunch of boats. When we arrived there
were about ten. I saw the perfect place to anchor but there was already a
trawler there. Oh well, there were several other spots that looked inviting. As I suspect you already
know, within 30 minutes of us anchoring and settling in, the trawler left my
preferred spot. Oh well, we kind of hung around the rest of the day. Dinner
that night was – what else? – steak and lobster. It was scrumptuous.
On Sunday we downloaded the dinghy, and I have to tell you
it is a lot easier than the Whaler was. About 11:00, Ann Kathy and I set off.
Mom stayed on the boat as the wind was blowing and it was a bit choppy even in
the anchorage. I think she wasn’t quite sure of how smart it was for her to
climb down the ladder onto the swim platform and into the dinghy while boat was
moving around the way it was. I must say, though, that dinghy riding was about
the only thing Mom didn’t want to do; she was up for almost everything else. I
only hope I am as strong, agile and spry when I am 82 years old.
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| The Peg-Legged Mike and the Regular-legged Ann on Norman's Cay. My sister has all the best pictures. maybe we can get them from her when she gets back to Colorado |
We landed on a beautiful sandy beach near the Norman Cay
Villas and walked inland for a little bit. Normans Cay had been the
headquarters and main transshipment point for Carlos Lehder, one of the really
bad druggies to come out of South America.
The small airstrip on the island had handled about 15 planeloads worth
of drugs per day until the Bahamian authorities (at the urging of the US)
raided the island, captured Lehder and extradited him to the US. His bullet
riddled house is still there, though we didn’t get to see it this time; I was
still in my “walking boot.” Anyway, one of the reasons I had chosen Normans Cay for our first foray into the
Exumas was to go to the little bar and grill, McDuff’s. As we should have guessed, McDuff’s was closed
for renovation. They told us that the restaurant and the island’s four villas
would be back in business by the end of February. Now, I have seen renovations
in progress before. If those villas are ready by the end of Feb I will eat my
hat. However, all was not lost as the real reason Kathy wanted to come to the
island was so she could be photographed in the water, swimming. On that score,
mission accomplished.
We took one more dinghy trip later that afternoon and found a
shipwreck. Given the remains, it appeared to have been a pretty good sized
wooden boat, maybe 50 feet in length. The bow still existed as did some lines
attached to the bow. But most of the rest of the boat was in pieces scattered
along the coast. Whenever I see a wreck like that I have to wonder how long it
has been there and what were the circumstances of her sinking.
On Monday we uploaded the dinghy and decided to go to
Highbourne Cay. Highbourne is about 5-6 miles north of Normans and would put us
a little closer to Nassau when we had to leave the following day. Moreover, I
had heard there was a little restaurant on the island that we could visit. It
was a nice trip there, only about an hour or so, and we anchored without
incident. Shortly after anchoring, though, I heard on the radio that the
Highbourne Cay restaurant was closed on Monday. Hmmm, I am beginning to
wonder: Is this a conspiracy?? Anyway, Highbourne
is a private island that has a resort
housing community, in addition to a kind of marina resort. They had a nice
general store that had some real touristy items plus some grocery store stuff.
Kind of an odd assortment of goods, but it seems to work for them.
We walked over to the Atlantic side of the island and found
another long beach. On this one the sand was much finer than it had been on
Normans and was almost as nice as the sand at Treasure Cay in the Abacos. I
don’t know how long it was, certainly well over a mile and as far as you could
see there was no one; perfectly empty. Moreover, there didn’t seem to be any
trash. We aren’t sure whether that is because the resort people pick it up
regularly or because there just isn’t any. Anyway, it was cool seeing a beach
in such good condition.
While at Highbourne, Ann and Kathy took a walk out to the
end of a dock at the urging of another visitor. There were eight very good
sized nurse sharks. (I can’t say any more about them as Ann is accusing me of
taking “her stuff.” So to prevent mutinous conditions aboard Traveling Soul, I am going to stop and
simply say that Ann will tell you more about the sharks below.)
We left fairly early Tuesday morning for Nassau as Kathy
wanted to go back to the Straw Market to buy some things she didn’t get around
to the first time. We got in around 1:30 and the three ladies were gone within
minutes. Mom and Kathy came back with little gifts for themselves, everyone in
their families and (it seemed) everyone else they would ever know! They left the following morning and,
surprisingly, everything they had purchased fit into their baggage!
Okay, there is one
issue I have left out of the discussion. I know you gearheads and pessimists
were waiting for me to tell you what broke during the trip. Well, here it is:
our inverter went belly-up. About three days into the trip, the aft cabin
circuit breaker flipped. Then we found one of the surge protectors had burnt
out. Shortly after that, we found that two fans no longer worked. Then we
discovered that the stereo receiver and TV no longer functioned. At the same time all this was happening, I
noticed that we seemed to be using more electricity and that the batteries
didn’t fully charge after 5 hours of charging. I was perplexed. After we got
back to the marina I delved into the problem and found that our inverter, which
was supposed to produce 120 volts from our 12 volt batteries, was in fact producing
180 volts!! No wonder our equipment was burning out and no wonder the batteries
were always low.
I called an electrician and he told me what I didn’t want to
know; that our inverter couldn’t be fixed. I then called Xantrex, the maker of
the inverter, and am now waiting for them to tell me whether they will honor
their warranty. If they do, they will send the inverter Fedex and we should get
it on Saturday or Monday (allowing for Customs bureaucracies, etc.) If they do
not honor their warranty, I will buy a different brand of inverter from my
friend and repair-guru Rick and hope to get that by Monday as well – though I
may have to have someone help me put it in.
NOTE: For those of you who don’t know, the inverter takes 12 volts
Direct Current coming out of a battery and turns it into the 120 volts AC
needed to run regular electrical appliances. So, without the inverter, our
refrigerator (and other key appliances like coffee pot) won’t work.
Anyway, as long as we do not have an inverter we are stuck
in the marina. Now being stuck in a marina we spend about $120. For everyday we
are at anchor we spend, well, about $10 in diesel fuel. You can see why we
would rather be “on the hook” as they say. Well, I want to get this on the way
before my daily subscription to the internet portal ends, so we’ll keep you
posted on the inverter and see you later.
ANN’S NOTES: After
reading Michael`s part of the blog a
thought just passed in my head. We seem
to always be “on the hook” and there are two very different kinds of “hooks”…the
expensive one that cost us many boat units and the nice one that lets us just
float on the water in one place and relax.
My thoughts so far on Nassau and the Exumas, is that I need
to give them more time to grow on me. The people are so very friendly…down town
Nassau is ok…lots of big boat cruise people with fanny packs and the smell of
sun block and mixed rum drinks. The marina is nice, again friendly people, nice
pool and good location for shopping and such. We have met just a few fellow
cruises and that is fun. I am just not sure yet if I like this area of the
Bahamas … I will keep an open mind and see what the universe has in store for
me.
The visit with Barbara and Kathy was wonderful. Kathy likes
to find out what is around the next corner and she did her fair share of
exploring. Barbara just wanted to know why we are living on a boat and thought
she’d try a little of that for herself … plus the opportunity to be with her
two children is something a mother cannot pass up.
I will have to agree with Michael`s comment on the Atlantis
resort. Unless you are staying at the resort you can`t even use the front
entrance to get in … you have to use the door that goes into the casino and then
walk to the lobby that way. That just sort of makes you feel unwelcome right
away…in order to just look around at the pools and gardens you need to pay to
take a tour…or get a $120 per person day pass. That is just crazy…now that
being said…I will most likely pay that fee when Caylin and Gavin come to visit…they
do have lots of cool things for kids to do.
This morning I took a few taxi rides to get all the stuff
the spike in our inverter blew out. I bought a new fan for the guest room … aka
the mermaid room. A new 19 inch flat
screen…down three inches from our 22 inch one because I could not find a 22
inch one on the island…believe me I looked. I did find a receiver and the man from the
store came to the marina to make sure that it fit. YUP, you guessed it, the
receiver was 0.3 inches too long and 0.1 inches too high. He did take the
broken TV and receiver and said he could fix them. We shall see…
Since Michael already gave you the wildlife count…I will
have to confirm that these guys were BIG…
Traveling Soul….OUT
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