It was cool today with the wind blowing so we decided it was a good day for a walk. We started up the one road that goes north, but not too far up the road we came to a side path that led towards the beaches on the east side of the island, the Exuma Sound side. So we walked over that way. The path led to a beach and kind of ended, but we kept picking our way up along the shore. The wind was up over 20 knots all day, and from the ENE, so the surf was pretty impressive. This picture is one of the beaches, the rocks behind Bud were probably 15 feet tall, and the waves were spraying over them.

We kept hiking from one beach to the next. In between are headlands of the very sharp eroded rock. It’s hard to get a good picture to show the perspective, but the higher bluffs are 50 feet or so. We finally came to a bluff and beyond it a cove that went back in about a quarter mile. We turned back there. I took a photo of that; again, it’s hard to judge the distances. I was going to take a picture of one of the little cliff edges, cut into holes by the wind and water. Bud had me take Fuzzy and stand below it, so you could get some sense of the size and he took the picture.

It was beautiful and wild. The other notable thing is that the whole area is strewn with plastic. Plastic jugs, plastic rope, all kinds of plastic shoes, flip flops and crocs and sandals, and bits and pieces of things. People had collected some of the plastic flotsam and constructed a beach sculpture, a beach garbage man. It really makes you hate plastic.

When we got back to town we went to the local bar and got drinks. The man who runs it remembered Bud from the other day and asked him if he wanted a glass of water for the dog again. The folks here are really nice.

The east end of this bay is a huge area of shallow flats. It completely dries at low tide. This morning we took Fuzzy there at high tide and had no problem. This evening it was about 2 hours before high tide and we tried to go there again. We got about 200 yards from the beach and the outboard engine hit sand. We each took a paddle and tried to paddle to shore, but we had 20 knots of wind against us. We were making painfully slow progress. Finally it got shallow enough, and Bud got frustrated enough that he just jumped over and pulled us the rest of the way in. His shorts got pretty wet though. After Fuzzy had a romp and we talked to several other couples at the other end of the beach we headed back. Going back was much easier. With the wind helping us we were able to paddle until we got back in the deep water.

This living on the boat thing is not a retirement plan for the lazy!