Staniel Cay was great, some of our first out-island experiences and meeting the Bahamian people.
Provisioning was interesting and an adventure, there are 3 ‘grocery stores’ and a ‘bakery’. As you walk up Kings Highway, a small one lane road that is used by more golf carts then cars, you walk by Saint Luke’s clinic. Sometimes they are open, sometimes not. The doctor is on the island once a month, otherwise there may be a LPN on-site. The third street on the left is where you turn for bread at the yellow house and then further down the blue house and pink house are the ‘grocery stores’. Those are the directions from the locals, seriously. For the bread, you walk right into a woman’s tiny kitchen and there are loaves of the best bread on the kitchen table. You can order special for the next day, white, wheat, cinnamon raisin and coconut. Just past there are the Blue Convenience Store and Pink Pearl Grocery and are quaint in an out-island way. You get a bag-o-chicken, sometimes it’s drumsticks or sometimes it’s 1/2 a chicken, sometimes it’s wings. It’s all packed in regular zip lock freezer bags, no such things a styrofoam and saran wrap with pretty little labels. BUT, it tastes good even after I’ve hacked the 1/2 chicken into manageable pieces.. You can also find pork chops and ribs in the same type of zip-lock bags. Ground beef, when you can find it, is packed like sausage in tube-like plastic. We haven’t tried that yet:) One thing about shopping, if you don’t hit it the day of or day after mail-boat delivery your out of luck. Fresh produce is gone along with milk and other fresh short-term items. This week, neither Staniel or Blackpoint had a delivery due to a festival at Farmer’s Cay. So far we haven’t had to dip into our reserve of canned meat.
One of the attractions at Staniel Cay is on Big Majors island, piggy beach. They have a few wild pigs that roam the island and will swim out to your dinghy looking for food. There are other younger pigs that live there for a short time. They get to a certain size and then are shipped off to another island for... I guess those pork chops have to come from somewhere. But it’s fun to feed the pigs and watch the people run away. They like lettuce, cabbage and carrots, they don’t like limes. We saw a whole lime floating in the water, I almost picked it up (they’re expensive and we only had 1 on board), but we’re not that desperate.
We also got to snorkel in Thunderball cave. It’s the cave where Sean Connery hides out in the 007 movie, “Thunderball”. After seeing the movie countless times it was fun to see the actual cave. It’s easy to get into the cave at low tide, you swim between these two rocks and it opens into this big cavern that is open at the top. When the sun is at the right position sunlight pours in and everything sparkles. Once again, the fish expect to be fed. I didn’t have any food this time, but they didn’t seem to mind and still swam all around us. One thing they do suggest, go at slack tide. That’s when the tide is not going out or coming in, basically no current. We went before low tide and had a fair amount of current going through the cave. Good thing we are good swimmers and needed the exercise.
Not to repeat myself, but we’ve met even more great people. Whenever we went into the Staniel Cay Yacht Club for lunch we met new people. The locals had a barbeque to support the all ages school. Most of the cruisers came out for hamburgers, chicken and the best darn macaroni and cheese ever. Yes, I put my WW to the side that afternoon and thoroughly enjoyed the mac and cheese. Apparently this is another item the Bahamians are known for, yummy. That night a bunch of cruisers met on one of the beaches for sundowners. We met more people, exchanged more boat cards and hope to see them again as we continue our adventure.
Well, we’re off to Blackpoint on Great Guana Cay. They have cheap laundry that’s on par with the states. I haven’t done laundry since we left Port Lucaya over 3 weeks ago. They have laundry, a small store, hair cuts, carrot cake, showers and rooms for rent. Lots of things in one small place.