More Bahamas Mon

As soon as Chris got in the 78*F water, she started kicking bubbles in my face. Just can’t get no respect.

Here’s a cute little Remora, AKA Suckerfish, desperately trying to attach to the bottom of our dinghy. They more normally pick on sharks, rays, whales and turtles for their feeding spots. This guy followed the dinghy back from the reef we were snorkeling on all the way back to Georgia.

Arriving Nassau Harbour after a good 6 hour close reach sail from the Berry Islands; with a nice band of fluffy white clouds to highlight the cruise ships in port behind the lighthouse.

Nassau is not really a big place – although it is home to 70% of the population of the Bahamas. These ships combined probably dropped 9 or 10 thousand tourist into town. Good business if you can get it.

Chris put me on another of her death marches into town. Here she is righteously posing in front of the Anglican Church – just before taking me to a dive bar to ease my knee pain. There was an interesting old plaque on the church wall to the officers and seamen of a British ship who lost the surgeon and a dozen others to Yellow Fever in 1862.

The Green Parrot Pub, pub of choice in downtown Nassau.

I wasn’t about to walk back after our Pub burger and stout, but I was still too proud to take a taxi. That left the Jitney bus. These 40 person busses run all over New Providence Island (where Nassau is). I went online before we left to find a bus map. Dr. Google failed to come up with one. But on one of the sites where someone asked for a bus map the response was “I’ve been looking for one for 25 years. They don’t exist".” So we had to figure out which Jitney to take. We stood at the bus stop for 15 minutes watching the numbered Jitneys stop, each with a list of streets and areas they go near. None of the places listed sounded recognizable. So Chris broke down and walked over to a police officer. This officer – kid maybe – was in uniform, had a gun, a bullet proof vest, a great big smile, dark glasses and came up to Chris’ shoulders. He headed us down the street 2 more blocks to where the “19” jitneys land. The pic above is the 19 Jitney driver, right-hand drive, driving along East Bay St. taking us back to the marina. Not sure it matters that much that they drive on the left here, as most of the streets seem to be one-way.

We weren’t planning on hanging in Nassau for more than a day, but weather wins again. Its supposed to blow in the high 20’s tonight with a front moving through. We thought we’d just hang and see how the weather pans out before moving on to the Exuma island chain. Plus, this way we can get the Internet photos of the snow storm in the US North East.

I borrowed a map so you can get a feel for where these islands are relative to each other. The Berry Islands, our first landfall, are too small to show up on this map. They’re above Andros and below Grand Bahamas, to the right of Bimini. Bimini, on the left, is about 40 miles off of Ft. Lauderdale.

Paul