Press "Enter" to skip to content

Drifting

More gratuitous photos of my vacation follow. Follow links for bigger versions, etc. Warning: warm blue water ahead.

The Treasure Cay International Airport; yep, that’s all of it. There’s a 7000 foot runway out back, though, which is plenty to land a 727.

The beach outside our villa again, this time as the sun gets ready to set.

The villa pet, or one of them, anyhow. There were quite a few of these guys. They like cheese.

A little clump of mangroves. These guys are one of the two main ways that islands get bigger in the Bahamas; sand builds up around the plants and eventually becomes marsh. (The other main way is coral. That’s slower.)

The Blue Hole, a freshwater sinkhole a couple of miles from where we stayed. It’s some hundreds of feet deep; I haven’t been able to find any definite measurements and the local legend says nobody’s ever gone all the way down. This kind of formation is a popular kind of diving spot, although there isn’t a ton of diving at this one.

This is Manjack Cay, a mostly deserted island up a little from where we were staying. Gorgeous place. We stopped there for swimming and shelling.

That’s on the way into the beach on Manjack. The water at this point is about ten feet deep, and it’s just as clear as it looks in this picture.

This is a beach on Manjack Cay, as are the next three pictures. By the by, the water out there doesn’t stop till you hit Portugal.

Sea fans are actually coral; you get branches washing up from time to time. That purple color will stay as long as it doesn’t get too much sun.

You don’t normally get clumps of sea biscuits like this. I kind of suspect the recent hurricanes of causing it.

And, finally, a cool little crescent of coral. Most Abaco beaches are stretches of sand punctuated by stretches of coral.

This picture (and the rest of them) are of New Plymouth, the main settlement on Green Turtle Cay.

Most of the Bahamas doesn’t look anything like a New England fishing village, by the by. New Plymouth was settled by British Loyalists fleeing the United States after the Revolutionary War; they were kind of hoping to live the plantation life but it turns out that farming in the Bahamas is not a great way to make a living. It’s been rough ever since.

If you ever land at New Plymouth, you want to take a left off the dock and walk up Bay Street till you get to the Wrecking Tree. Get the conch fritters — they’re incredible. Then take a right on Brooklyn Street and go down about a block till you get to Miss Emily’s Blue Bee Bar. Go in and order a goombay smash. Drift back and forth between the two establishments until it’s time to go home. It’s about as relaxing a way to spend a day as I can imagine.

2 Comments

  1. Bryant says he’ll probably liveblog the Academy Awards. Anyone else?

Leave a Reply to Catie Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *