Photo: The sign says it all...

Our April Fool's prank on the girls was to tell them that with the recent cold front, it snowed for the first time ever in the Bahamas (since the last Ice Age, anyway...)! I think they have missed the snow at home so much they were taken in completely by our joke!

We rented a car and toured the island today, and we thoroughly enjoyed our travels. We think Eleuthera is one of the prettiest islands in the Bahamas that we have seen so far. It is ninety miles long and only a few miles wide (often narrower), so we had no problem getting from one end to the other and back again in one day with the car. The small communities that dot the island are quaint and friendly, separated by long stretches of rolling hillside.

Eleuthera was first settled by Europeans in the mid-1600s when a group of 100 settlers (known as the "Eleutheran Adventurers") were shipwrecked on the northern tip of the island, and spent their first two years here living in caves, no doubt hoping for rescue. Eventually, they moved south to the Governor's Harbour area and established what is considered as the first true democracy in the western world, with a sign at Cupid's Cay proclaiming the first parliament there in 1736. Churches are proliferate here, and probably none so pretty as the Methodist Church at Cupid's; perched on the hillside adjacent to and overlooking the bay, it is white with sky-blue shutters and a planked ceiling. There are no glass windows; they open to the outside...one steps inside and feels the cool breezes wafting through, and one cannot help but admire the simple elegance and welcoming atmosphere of the place, and the people we met there were justifiably proud of their church.

Some of the more bizarre sights on the island are the old concrete silos along the road in places, testament to an angus beef farm that once flourished here. The roofs have fallen in on all of them, and most have trees growing out, giving the impression that they have green roofs.

The service station owner we rented the car from suggested a lunch stop at "Tippy's", and there we enjoyed the second-best meal we've had during our voyage so far (the best being at Charlotte's Lane in Shelburne, NS). Tippy's is a small establishment located beach-side at Nix Point on the east coast of Eleuthera, and it offers a gourmet menu at reasonable prices. We enjoyed sweet potato crab cakes, and a smoked chicken/goat cheese/zucchini thin-crust pizza. Although the restaurant is small, it was doing a brisk business, and the service was fast! To top the experience off, we went for a short stroll on the beach and found two hamburger beans, which the girls will soon have polished to a shine!

We pressed on to the southwestern tip of the island at Cape Eleuthera, home of the Cape Eleuthera Insititute, a remarkable school that strives to attain self-sufficiency and offers a model of student-directed administration and education. Apart from the fifty high school students who spend four-month terms there, the institute also provides research facilities for a number of graduate university students. One of these was Lorna, a master's student of marine biology from England doing research on the relationship between sharks and the local bone-fish fisheries, and she gave us a great tour of the school, showing off its aquaculture and hydroponic experiments (they grow lettuce from the nutrients filtered from the freshwater fish tanks), as well as their habitat restoration, bio-fuel production, and pig-farming operations, to name just a few of the interesting projects the school undertakes. Judy came away from the tour inspired, and is no doubt mulling ways to emulate the institute back home.
On the boat side of life, our house batteries are toast, and we are waiting for the supply boat to arrive Tuesday, as the local Napa store will have new ones we can buy. Until then, we are burning oil lamps at night, and charging radio and computer batteries whenever we flash the engine up. The wind generator is thankfully providing enough power to enable us to listen to the weather forecasts on the SSB radio. So, replacing the batteries will be Job #1098....but who's counting?