The weather report indicated that the wind would not be too bad until later in the day so we decided to go check out the cave we heard was close by. It's about three miles up the road but everyone told us it's really safe to hitchhike here and that everyone did it. So we took the dinghy to the main town dock, headed up to the road, and, forgive me Mom, Bill put his thumb out for the first car that came by. Of course they stopped. They were two guys from the United Kingdom vacationing in Eleuthera and had no idea where the cave was. They were very nice though and we had a nice chat for just a couple of minutes until we saw a sign that said Hatchet Bay Caves. We thanked them and got out and walked toward the cave.

We had only brought our headlamps for this outing, figuring we would just be checking it out and would bring back the real gear later if the cave warranted it. We were really pleased to see that it is a full fledged cave. Bill and I are used to going into wild caves in West Virginia. It's been a while since we've been in one since the boat has taken all our time and energy for the past year. Surprisingly it is a beautiful cave, if you can look past the graffiti that is everywhere inside. Bill took lots of pictures and we put them in our Photo Gallery. Go take a look. Bill wrote the commentary this time!

We spent about an hour exploring the cave and then headed back out to the road. We wanted to see if we could find the road to this other pond that was nearby. Before we got very far though a pickup truck drove by and stopped and asked us if we'd like a ride to town. You can't say no to an offer like that so we climbed in the back of the pickup truck and had a nice ride back to town.

It would have been a perfect trip if we hadn't run into a man in a uniform by the town dock who asked us if we were from a boat in the pond. We told him we were anchored, not on a mooring. He had a form he wanted us to fill out and $30 for an annual fee for using the anchorage, whether we were on a mooring or not. Bill hadn't even brought his wallet with us, and he knew the moorings were free, so he told the guy he didn't have $30 and we walked past him and went back to our boat. We have no idea what that was about. We called another cruiser we had met in the anchorage who has been here for a while and asked him what he knew about that. He had no idea. It just irritated us and put a damper on our nice morning.

We are still waiting for the heavy winds to come. Maybe it won't be so bad after all. We are definitely in a very protected anchorage so maybe we won't even notice!