Alex, hot with a chance of seeing Cats.
Guess what we found on Cat Island?
****
Cat Island looks nothing like a cat, yet there it perches, long and skinny, and meows of the nation's highest point, Mount Alvernia, at 206 feet high. Something we look forward to climbing when we get there, especially given the stone-looking building at the peak that we'd been Googling from afar. The building, known as The Hermitage, is but one of the many stone monasteries built by Father Jerome. Cat Island has long been on our bucket list and this time with the weather showing some promise of favourable and calm winds, we figured there was no better time than Now!
We left Lee Stocking Island shortly after sunrise and coffee and about 7.5 hours later, after the most fabulous sail
EVER, in the best conditions
EVER, we were happily anchored in Old Bight.
"Don't you wish all sailing days were like today?" I mused, as we sat in the cockpit, enjoying the habitual Arrival Beer.
Even though we were fresh air and sailing type of tired, our legs were looking to be stretched, so we talked ourselves into going ashore where we promptly met a few familiar faces from the boats anchored in the bay with us.
And then we met Carl, the oh-so-kind and generous owner of
Rollezzz Resort, who shook our hands with the biggest smile ever, and welcomed us as if we were family (or paying guests!). We all chitchatted for a while in the shade of his open air bar, but it wasn't long before the noseeum's came out to greet us with their monster teeth, and we quickly dinghied back into the protection and comfort of our home, where a pizza dinner had us asleep in no time, our dreams shielded by the black blanket of night pierced with millions of twinkling stars.
The morning showed great promise of a cool morning walk, and we met up with fellow cruisers from
SV CoolCat, SV Good Hope and
SV Two of A Kind as we beached our dinghy.
We all followed the dusty narrow road for a short while, the swampy mangrove ponds on either side of the road he'd hidden troves of fish swimming by,
visited the stone Church at the end of the road, grey and dark and foreboding from the outside,
"Isn't it beautiful?" I whispered out loud as we stepped inside.
We turned right and kept on walking, stopping to admire to sopadilla fruit and flowers. It wasn't long before the smell of freshly made bread forced a stop at Alnor's Bakery,
after all, it's always time for a sweet pick me up, isn't it? We got the pineapple squares, the large and generous piece quickly shared with fingers and crumbs wiped clean, oh so melt in your mouth delicious.
We walked on, noticing and stopping at curiosities,
along the way,
figuring the Cat Islander's certainly had the shopping figured out, right? Non?
We can't imagine there being enough people, never mind children, on this Island to warrant all the school buses we saw,
and more Churches could be seen, disappearingwith time into the overgrowth of bush.
Back at the Resort, we had been invited to Lunch. The MahiMahi generously supplied by the Cruisers, with Carl cheffing it up,
in a curried coconut sauce. Deliciousness after all that walking
and where we met, Rasta, artist and creator of these exquisite looking sculptures that helped decorate the cottages of the resort.
We toured some of the cottages and found them surprisingly modern, very clean, and really beautifully decorated. Carl sure has a gem of a place to rent here at his resort. Not to mention that he welcomes cruisers to come and hang out!
What a wonderful first day of Adventuring,
here on Cat Island. The island might have been named after the pirate, Arthur Catt, but for us, it's a place where we can say we met some very friendly cats.