Warderick Wells, Bahamas

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Well our bad, it's been so long that we forgot we went to Waderick Wells Cay before Norman's Cay, so you'll have to wait for the Shark and Drug Lord stories. Waderick Wells has it's own history although it's very vague as the facts were never recorded. We wrote in a previous post that Warderick Wells is part of the Exuma National Park and you are not allowed to anchor. They do supply mooring balls so we had a comfortable stay not worrying about the anchor.

The water was beautiful and the island was crisscrossed by walking trails. Because the island is limestone there are many holes, caverns and interesting rock formations.

One trail led us to a loyalist ruin from the 1700's. A waist-high wall spanned the island from east to west on two sides of the ruins. We speculated that it kept the loyalists animals on his property, such as pigs and cows. Unfortunately, as I said before, there is no written history on the island so they rely on the property records and passed down stories.

We found a pirate's lair on the other side of the island but we didn't bring our camera :( The lair had a fresh supply of water from natural wells and the pirates would congregate there. The pirates often brought seeds from other countries they had visited. It is thought that either inadvertenly or maybe on purpose the seeds found there way into the ground around these wells bringing new plants to the island. They hid their ship between Warderick Wells and Hog Cay, an anchorage that would have kept them out of sight and protected from any ocean swells.

Our best sighting was that of the the endangered rodent, the Hutia, it is protected and indigenous to the island. It's about the size of an adult cat and looks like a cross between a hamster and rat. (The picture is courtesy of MSN we didn't have the camera.) They are nocturnal so we were lucky we saw even one-- we saw two hanging out under dead palm branches. They weren't particularly scared of us as we watched them scavenge through the brush. We also discovered these curly tailed lizards. There were lots of them and half of them were missing that cute little curly tail.

The beaches were amazing and we explored as many as we could. We became animal activists on this island saving one octopus that had stranded himself and many baby conchs that we thought were stranded at low tide. Hope we didn't throw them into deadly territory. The waters were filled with critters too. I saw the biggest lobster I have ever seen....EVER. It was in a rock cave and spanned the whole rock with it's head at one end and it's tail at the other. It looked like the creature Alien...for real! Along with saving wildlife, there was also a group of 5 motor boats that came in one evening having a difficult time picking up their moorings. We jumped in our dinghy and helped one boat having the worst time and after that the other boats were waving us over, saying pleaseeeee, everybody moored safe and sound that night.

Waderick Wells Cay is also said to be haunted by the tormented spirits from a ship filled with monks that shipwrecked on the island. They say you can hear them sing late at night....

Well obviously we haven't found work yet or we probable wouldn't have the time to update the web. The heat outside also pushes me to find inside projects, like how about updating the web. It's supposed to rain heavely this weekend, so guess what, I will probable be updating the web :))))) Hope your well and enjoying our stories, cheers Mike and Kim on Ka'imi.