Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Farmer's Cay, Bahamas

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Back to the Bahamas to finish our updates. We left off in Farmer's Cay where we ducked in to hide from a nasty cold front. Once we hit the docks we had a great time exploring the island. The marina had 6 slips in all. A motor boat named Another Time was the only other boat there waiting out the front. The marina had a restaurant and a few rooms to rent out. We were able to take a shower in one of the rooms for $5 and the food at the restaurant was very good, they even had veggie burgers.


We had a great time with the owners of Another Time Winston and Joanne and there Captain Oscar. They treated us to dinner one night at the restaurant (it was Joanne's Birthday) and gave us charts to the parts of the Bahamas that we didn't have and were unable to purchase in Puerto Rico. It was incredible generousity and we couldn't thank them enough. Winston and Joanne are from Montana where they have a ranch and they along with Captain Oscar left Florida heading for St. Lucia where they have another home. They will keep the boat at their St. Lucia home. Captain Oscar and Winston have been through the Bahamas many times and were able to give us invaluable first hand information about the islands and anchorages we planned to visit. THANK YOU AGAIN WINSTON, JOANNE AND OSCAR!!
We were able to explore the entire island which is 4 miles long but not nearly as wide and has approximately 50 residents. One resident we met, the Conch man, showed us how to get conch out of the shell and clean them. We thought it was pretty cool that we were meeting a local and sharing his day with him while he was teaching us something new. He said we could take pictures and film him while he showed us how he cleaned them. He explained which parts you could eat. His favorites were the eyeballs, saying they were better than viagra. So he finishes up and we say thank you very much we had a great time....then came the bomb..."That will be $5 dollars please for taking my picture." I say "Are YOU kidding me?" "No man I gotta make a living." GREAT....what a lovely experience and thanks for sharing. He did invite us back to the store where he was making some conch salad and we could even taste it. Yaaa how much is that going to cost us? He says nothing....hmmm we'll see....we follow him back and watch him cut the conch and make the salad. He was making it at a local grocery store and the owners of the store's grandkids where they, ooohh so cute. The boys where interested in the conch, the little girl wanted nothing to do with it so went and got a bag of Funyuns from her Grandma. Her brother politely asked if he could have one and she said yes just one...then the little boy got a conch foot from the conch man and preferred that. Mike tried a bite of the conch salad, said it was good and we didn't have to pay any more money. He was the only dissapointing local, everyone else on the island was exceptionally nice. It turns out the conch man lived in New York most of his life, as a postal worker...hmm.

Speaking of postal here is the official Farmer's Cay Post Office, we did have some mail to collect, but have learned when and where to collect it...this was not the spot. See we are trainable, it just takes a little time.





We saw a typical graveyard here, it's great the way the graveyards in all the islands we visited are just there, anywhere. This one also served as a boat yard of sorts. It seems that the Nixon's were a prominent family on the Island.




Another usual thing for the Islands are abandoned houses, we saw several on Farmer's Cay. We asked one local who owned one of the houses and he told us he didn't know but we could probable buy it. We told him we really don't have the money right now. He was a pretty cool guy, he cuts the weeds around the island and had a very long machete with him, he was just walking home for lunch. Some of the houses like this circular house looked like it might not have been finished, or maybe construction ended because of a hurricane, we just don't know. Others were just old and abandoned and looked like they had weathered many a storm just fine, but were neglected in their time.

We loved the local houses, cute and with enough property that you could breath. We also found a basketball net one we've seen on many islands which doesn't take any money just ingenuity. When we get our island home, some day 30 years from now, we will put one of these up for sure. We would put it up on the boat if there was room.



The beaches and the bays were beautiful and the island was very tropical. We had a great time on this island and enjoyed it's beauty and residents. Boy do we wish we were there now!!!!!




Cheers for now, Norman's Cay is the next island we visited. It has a great history of drug lord takeover and lots of sharks, stay tuned. Mike and Kim on Ka'imi




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