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May 9-11, Staniel Cay

M: I’ve assigned you to Station “C” Canada.

James Bond: Sir, I’d respectfully request that you change my assignment to Nassau.

M: Is there any other reason, besides your enthusiasm for water sports?

Staniel Cay was amazing.  From the Thunderball Grotto, famous for the scene in the James Bond movie Thunderball, to Pig Beach at Big Majors Spot, we spent most of our time there UNDER the water.  We are VERY enthusiastic about water sports as well, James Bond.  (Not that we don’t also enjoy Canada…)

It was only ten miles from Blackrock Settlement to Staniel Cay.  We had to motor around to find a spot that we liked and ended up anchoring just off Thunderball Cave, which was featured in the James Bond movie, Thunderball.  How exciting!  We were in the water and headed to the cave as soon as we could get our dinghies untied!  We snorkeled and explored the cave and were amazed at the brightly colored fish and coral.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next we dinghied to Big Majors Spot to check out Pig Beach.  I’ll just go ahead and let the pictures tell the story here.

Chris then took a swing into town to rummage up a steak for me, since I was going to fall on my face if I didn’t get some iron in my system.  STAT.  Red meat and fresh greens are hard to get in the Caribbean and the Bahamas, and Iron-enriched cereal is out because we can’t get milk and I won’t wrap my head around UHT milk (Parmalat).  Luckily, he was able to find one steak, but had to pay an arm and a leg for it.  It did the trick though.  I felt better by the next morning…

…which was HOT!  And there were flies EVERYWHERE.  We had a busy morning with schoolwork, cleaning, taking the garbage to the dump, and making/eating scones for breakfast.  We heard that the mailboat had just arrived, which brings food and supplies from Nassau.  Chris and I dinghied to the “store” to buy anything we could get our hands on.  It was slim pickings, but we realized we were lucky.  The regular patrons in the store seemed very excited.  Apparently, the pickings are usually slimmer. 

 

One thing they had plenty of was fly paper.  Chris snuck them in the basket and we ended up in a big philosophical discussion about it while waiting to pay. Somewhere along the line, you may have missed that I am a Buddhist who is trying very, very hard to adhere to the precept of Ahimsa.  (Ahimsa means non-harm.  I am dedicated to not killing anything as well as trying very hard, and sometimes succeeding, to not to harm anyone or anything in any other way.)  I lost the tete a tete, and Chris hung fly strips to catch the flies (I don’t know why, he captured the fly…He swallowed the fly, to catch the …..)  Unfortunately, it also caught Reese’s hair every time she leaned over the saloon cushions to put something in the sink.  She wasn’t a fan of the fly strips either.

After lunch, we snorkeled around an airplane that had crashed in shallow water years ago.  The kids enjoyed it, but I was a little worried about these tiny little jelly fish that were everywhere.  I had never seen anything like them.  They were only about an inch in diameter.  They looked like this picture of a cannonball jellyfish.  In some places, there were a few here and there, and in other spots, there were hundreds of them.  I didn’t know if they stung, and I didn’t really want to find out.

We needed to check out Thunderball Cave again, so back we went.  It was just as amazing the second time.  We saw a giant lobster, took fun pictures, and dared each other to free dive down deep in order to get out of the cave via an underwater opening.

 

After dinner, a little catchup on schoolwork, and playing “nail salon”, Chris and I went over to AG to talk about our itinerary after the Exumas. 

 

 

 

 

 

When we got back, I saw a bug.  It was a weevil.  In our pasta.  When I tell you that I almost moved off the boat that night, I am not even remotely kidding.  There are few blunders as big as getting involved in a land war in Asia (please tell me at least one of you gets that reference). One of them is getting bugs on a boat.  It must be avoided at all costs.

Once bugs are reproducing in the warm, damp, dark recesses of the bilge, it is nearly impossible to politely invite them to leave.  Frankly, crap like this just takes this whole Ahimsa thing to a whole new level of determination and dedication.  So I stayed up almost the whole night, paper towels in hand, taking every food item out of every last cabinet and searching for more weevils.  They are very tiny; about 1/4 the size of a grain of rice.  Once found, I had to try to “capture” them without killing them.  Then I would carry them outside and set them free.  I really hope they can swim, because I wasn’t about to dinghy them ashore!

The next morning brought more of the same: emptying food cabinets, bleaching them, washing them down with vinegar, putting all food into ziplocs and Lock n Lock containers, and throwing out flour and any food that was getting old.  I cleaned the floors and cushions since I had everything torn apart anyway.  Porter read to us while we cleaned, which helped pass the time.

(Update: We did finally get rid of the weevils.  They returned once more before the end of our voyage.  I’ll try to gloss over that part of the story when we get to it so you don’t have to relive this horror again.  Eventually, my resolve weakened and I did kill some of the weevils.  I feel really badly about it.  And I still inspect my flour and pasta like a scientist before I cook with them.  I can’t stop, even though we’ve been on land for over two months.)

So even though our time in Staniel Cay ended in a slight panic, we had an amazing time there.  It was one of those places where, outside of a few dollars for groceries, which weren’t even necessary, we had two straight days of mind-blowing, unique, nature-filled fun without spending money.  And it’s only going to get better as we move through the Exumas!  Next up: Compass Cay and Cambridge Cay!

“One must live the way one thinks, or end up thinking the way one lives.” – Paul Bourget