Later in the day Joan & Brigid & I walked into Alice Town to get some bread from the bread man. I think his name was Charles. He bakes it and sells it out of his house & as we got there he was just taking it out of the oven - what timing! As we walked into his house the aroma was incredible!!! I carried my hot loaf through town and managed to not rip into it! Joan said his was better than the bread ladies and after tasting it (I waited until I got it back to the boat) - I had to agree. At $4/loaf I wished that I'd bought two. It wasn't as sweet as the bread ladies but still had a slight sweetness to it. It made an excellent BLT for dinner! Hmmm - I got a little ahead of myself...

Along the way we saw a man by the water-cleaning conch so I had to stop by and chat with him to see what he was doing and how he was doing it. He showed me how to punch a hole in the shell to loosen the critter from the shell. He'd already done quite a crop of them and was in the process of cutting the conch up to package for the restaurants and locals. It looked like he pretty much cut everything away except for a section of white muscle. I asked if I could touch it - yes. It felt really firm. He said in order to eat it you had to bruise it first. I didn't quite understand what he was saying (his Bahamian accent) but he made this pounding motion with his hand and said something about a hammer with teeth and I got it (tenderizing it by beating it). He said it makes a fine salad, or fritters and something else... I couldn't believe the pile of conch shells that he had but he had a 5 gallon bucket already packed with conch on ice and was working on another 2 buckets.