The car rental place sent over a car as requested. Unfortunately, we couldn't get the Toyota Corolla as wanted, this is the start of Easter break and they said they were out of them. We got a mini van instead. It was $26 more for the day, but it was easy to get all of us, and the car seat, into it. Fuzzy had the third row seat to himself.

We had made reservations yesterday for Santana's Grill Pit, then called and changed them for today. So whatever else we did, we wanted to be there between 4 and 4:30 for early supper. We'd promised Adler we'd find a beach for him, so we started out driving south. We drove all the way to Little Exuma Island. The bridge from Great Exuma to Little Exuma has a 1.5-ton weight limit and a 15 mph speed limit. Driving our 2-ton van over it, you wanted to go a bit faster, so you had some momentum in case it started to crumble under you. (At least that seems to work in the movies.) It was a one-lane bridge and didn't look great, but it held. I was following our progress on our charts, which show most of the roads and are usually the only land maps you can find. I saw a beach at the end of the first left turn on Little Exuma island. That turned out to be a private road, but at the next beach there was a beach access sign and a little road to pull in.

There were actually two beaches there. The first was in a bit of a cove. While Adler was playing in the water I walked out on the iron-shore at the south end of that beach. I saw another beach just to the south. I came back and looked for a way to that beach and found that the lane led around a corner where it became two tire tracks through the grasses leading to the second beach. We all walked over there. This beach faced more directly to the open water and had gentle waves rolling in up a pretty steep sand shore. We all walked along the shore. Bud and I walked to the far end thinking it would be easier for Adler to go in the water there. We were wrong. Waves were coming in from the beach side and from a cut through the iron-shore at that end of the beach. We watched a group of about 4 fish swimming in that bit of current. It seemed they would surely be swept ashore, but they weren't. Jamie and Adler were walking in the sand, but Adler hadn't tried even walking at the edge of the water because of the waves. Grandpa took his hand and they walked out to the edge of the waves. Little by little Adler and Grandpa went further in. Finally, Adler was laughing and letting the waves push him around. He let go of Grandpa's hand. Once he even got rolled over by a wave in the very shallow water. He came up laughing. Grandpa was never more than a step away because the waves there had dug a deep edge right along the beach. It looked like an adult would go from knee deep to waist deep in one big step. Grandpa made sure Adler didn't try that step!

After he swam Adler had to roll in the sand until he was completely sandy. So we walked over to the beach in the cove and Jamie stripped him and washed sand off him and his bathing suit. Then we sat in a little pavilion they had there and Adler had a snack while he dried off some. I had to wash Fuzzy, too, as he'd been wading again. We all packed back into the car and drove on down the road. We soon came to Santana's but it was way before our reservations so we kept on going. We soon ran out of road. Checking the chart again I saw roads on the southern tip of the island, one of which got quite close to the end. We headed back and found the turn off. It was a dirt road, more like a lane. It got quite narrow and brushy. It got so bad we folded the outside mirrors in. Bud finally decided we'd better turn back before we damaged the van, so he backed up until he got back to a spot wide enough to do a nine or ten-point turn. Then we headed back to the main road. By now Adler was getting sleepy. A couple of more miles on the main road and he was asleep. We drove back north on Little Exuma Island until we came to that bridge, not wanting to press our luck, Bud turned around before we crossed it. We decided to go to another little beach access road and stop and let Adler sleep. The next one past where we'd swum didn't have a road back far enough to even see the beach so we ended up back at the place we'd been earlier.

Adler slept for about an hour and we headed back down to Santana's. We were still a bit early so we tried to take a back road, but that quickly changed into two tracks through the brush, so it was back to the main road again. We got to the restaurant right on time. Now this was a restaurant that we had heard was one of the best in the Bahamas. The restaurant consisted of a shack with open sides and counter seating, with a few tables outside. We sat at a counter, as there wasn't a table in the shade. The only items on the menu today were cracked lobster, cracked conch or cracked chicken, and all were served with rice and pigeon peas, cole slaw and sliced beets. We adults all ordered the lobster; Adler wasn't hungry so Jamie was going to share hers. There was a lovely little beach just behind the restaurant and while we were there a boat and a couple of jet skis pulled up and about ten people came up to eat. Happily we had reservations, so even though we'd been piddling around and hadn't sat down yet, our orders were taken first. Jamie and Adler wandered down to the beach while we were waiting. Adler would really have preferred to be swimming, instead of eating, but he let us get through our meal without too much of a fuss. It was pretty good, but not what we'd hoped. We did see the famous picture album with pictures of Johnny Depp from a Pirates of the Caribbean shoot that happened in the area.

After we ate we set out in search of another beach. Jamie asked that we just head back to the marina, so when Adler was done swimming she could take him directly into the showers and get him cleaned up before he was too tired to move. That's what we did and it generally worked out. Everyone is asleep now, and I'm trying to get the blog up-to-date before I head off to sleep, too.