Iguana-fest
23 December 2018 | Allen's Cays, Exuma Islands, Bahamas
A practical day yesterday, enjoying the comfortable facilities at Palm Cay Marina; and then off today at first light to cross to the Exumas. The crossing takes you over a very shallow area littered with coral heads, so you have to pick your route between the reefs with some care and then keep a lookout on the bow in one particularly tricky area. We crossed without incident and had the bonus of a really dreamy reach all the way.
The Exumas are a very long, skinny island chain. The water to the east is about a mile deep; the water to the west is about 4m deep. When the tide rises the eastern sea floods in through the gaps between the islands. The water is so clear you can pretty well always see the bottom when sailing: white sand, greyish rocks, jet-black coral heads. In fact you can see everything lying on the bottom as well, which makes anchoring simpler. The islands are really low lying and you have to get quite close to them before they pop up on the horizon.
We have come first to Allen's Cay, which is really a small scattering of coral islands. The neat thing about these islands is the iguanas, indigenous to these islands and everywhere to be seen. We must look these up when we get a chance - unless one of our lovely readers could have a Google and let us know. They seem to be a particular evolution of iguana that exists on these islands; reddish coloured and relatively small. They are not like others we have seen before, down in the West Indies.
We also seem to have found ourselves on the charter boat circuit â�" something that's happened before in various parts of the world. Here, the charter yachts come out of New Providence (Nassau), and 30 miles on this is usually their first night's stop. We must find where they usually go on night two and avoid, but suspect we will be bumping into them all the way down to Staniel Cay, where most one week charters end. There are quite a few superyachts in the area too. Thankfully, they are usually too big to get into the anchorages we like and so need to stand well off, buzzing their passengers ashore on their high speed ribs.
We are likely to have very limited phone and internet access for a while now, so this blog may become a bit sporadic. In case we don't manage another post soon â�" here's wishing our readers a very merry Christmas. Bye for now.