Island, Oh Island, Where for art Thou?

I’ve been asked for a more detailed account of our sojourn to the Bahamas.  You may need a bottle of rum to get through it all, but here we go.

Dear friends of ours have family connections on Lubbers Quarters, a smallish (that’s the technical term, it is bigger than a “rock” after all) island in the Abaco (ah-bah-ko) Islands.  Joining with them and several other good friends scattered across the U.S. we rented a house, rented a boat, and found plane tickets that would land us in Marsh Harbor. 

It’s a great feeling to see a crashed airplane as you’re coming into land…  Thankfully our fate was not so tragic.  We landed over The Marls, which to my uneducated eye looked a lot like either a flooded desert or a drained marsh.  I’m really not sure which.

Our boat rental company picked us up (by boat of course) at Marsh Harbor and took us across some very choppy water to Hope Town.  Covered in salt spray and thoroughly shaken and maybe a little stirred, we were given a quick tour of the boat then set loose on the poor people of Hope Town.

Boats don’t go in a straight line very well.  Even if your driver is completely rum free.  Plus touchy throttles and slow tail to nose (stern to bow, sorry, I’ll always be more of a horse person than boat person) response made our going stressful to say the least.  An enormous thanks to whichever member of our team remember that the pro controlled the throttle with tiny knuckle bumps.  By day three, I kind of got the hang of the throttle. 

 

Parking (docking) was a disaster.  Bless our hosts for not rolling on the ground laughing at us.  We had no idea what we were doing or where we were going and after getting into two tight slips that weren’t our own, I’m amazed we didn’t sink our boat right there or at least scuff our prop.  It took a lot of team work, but we finally made into our space on the dock.

Hint: If you have trouble getting parked between the painted lines in a parking lot, boating is not for you...

Things were downhill in a good way from there.  We loaded up the golf carts (the main form of transportation around Lubbers Quarters) and headed to Gone Bananas, a name I found oddly appropriate.  I mean, who in their right mind would fly from a landlocked state to the middle of the ocean and plan to spend a week on an island getting groceries by boat?!?

Groceries by Boat



Gone Bananas was stunning offering all the amenities you could want, minus having the entire island wrapped in mosquito netting.  With access to several beaches, docks, and seemingly endless stretches of wade-able waters we were home free.  We wandered the island, fished, tormented hermit crabs, poked around for sea creatures of every sort and generally just relaxed.

 

Going Fishing

 

 

 

We sampled the local fare at Lubbers Landing and enjoyed the Full Moon party at Cracker P’s.  We also enjoyed a breath taking view and scrumptious dinner with our hosts at Harbor Inn in Hope Town.  In between evenings out, we did our best to catch our dinner and managed to cook-up some amazing Trigger fish (if you can get it skinned, it is like nothing I have ever tasted) and fry some conch.

Dinner party!

Conch Carving

Our snorkeling and diving adventure with Froggies didn’t go quite as planned.  The reefs we explored were not well sheltered and the sea was a bit rough.  One of our group ended up sea sick and another had a nasty salt imbalance issue that pretty well put him on his butt.  Unfortunately, they didn’t miss much.  The Lionfish have been very hard on the reef fish.  We were told that they are rebuilding, but there wasn’t much aquatic life on our adventures.  The divers had a brief run in with a shark and I about head butted a barracuda.  That was the extent of it.

We did take a day to explorer on our own.  Our hosts pointed out a few good spots and gave me careful directions for getting there and back safely.  We swam with the turtles in Tilloo Pond, although all we ever saw were heads poking up out of the water.  The water made us incredibly buoyant, so even though the turtles were hiding we had a delightful time.  We also spent time combing Tilloo Bank for sand dollars, sea biscuits, star fish and conch.

What is this?

In between adventures, we enjoyed thunderstorm after thunderstorm.  It gave everyone a chance to recharge, stay out of the sun and it filled the rain barrels (the only source of water on the island).  For me it was a blessed chance to stay in bed during a thunderstorm.  I love listening to the rain, but my job forces me to work whenever there is bad weather.  Oh how I’ve missed just listening to the rain!

 

So that was our vacation.  We got to spend time with friends we never get to see, do cool things we never get to do, and eat stuff we never get to eat.  There may have been a fair bit of rum drinking among some of the party members as well.  It was just what a vacation should be and everyone arrived home safe and sound.  Now it’s back to normal life, driving cars instead of boats, waking up to alarm clocks and living according to someone else’s time schedule.  Ah for island time again, but that’s why they call it vacation.