Another week in paradise

Location: Cambridge Cay, Exumas
Position: N24 18.185 W076 32.418

We finally managed to have a happy hour on the little sandy island – about 25-30 people came and they all considered it a great success. During the party, Mark tried to drum up some help to work on the trail the next morning.

About 9 people showed up the following morning, some with machetes. We then proceeded to whack, clear, and mark the trail. Within hours, dinghies began arriving to check it out. One fellow plotted the track on his GPS and then printed it out on a chart showing the island. We gave this to the park warden for inclusion in future guide maps. We’re thinking about naming the trail “Volunteer Trail” because everyone who has worked on it thus far has been a volunteer. Of course, “Rachel Trail” is also in the running and has a certain ring to it… and the warden suggested “Mark & Julie Trail”. We actually have no idea if they’ll ask us for input on the name or not, but it’s fun to think about.

The day before yesterday the warden told us he’d never seen so many boats in the anchorage. Things really cleared out yesterday, though. About 5 boats at anchor joined 10 boats that were on moorings and headed on. Now there are only 4 boats including us in this beautiful spot. We expect more in the next day or two as another front approaches.

Yesterday the highlight of the day was a trip to Staniel Cay with the warden to pick up some groceries. We were down and back in a couple of hours in his fast little runabout. Staniel has a lovely little community with 3 stores. It is also the home of the Thunderball Grotto – this is the underwater cave that was used in the filming of the James Bond movie “Thunderball” – it’s a “must visit” attraction. We will return to Staniel Cay when we leave here to begin our explorations further south. For now, we’re satisfied that the vegetable bin is again bursting with scrumptious fresh veggies, fruit and fresh milk

We’ve borrowed a friend’s “hookah” (a scuba outfit that uses a pump with a long hose instead of tanks) and are planning a relaxing day scraping barnacles off Rachel’s bottom. We still haven’t decided how long we’ll stay here. We’ll probably find some sweet spot that lies between balancing our strong attraction for this beautiful place and our need to do laundry and reprovision – it’s looking like that might happen sometime around next weekend.

Today we hitched a ride back to park HQ with the warden for a few hours of Internet connectivity before we return to Rachel and get back to the old grind....

Working hard in paradise,