Winter Begone

Happy me--I spent a week with my family in the Bahamas for break. It wasn't a very wired trip so I didn't post for the duration but I did take a lot of photos. I will share a few with a tale or two now and maybe more as the week progresses.



To begin with, we stayed on a small (10 mile long) island in the Abacos, called Great Guana Cay. Initially I thought "Guana" was the same as "Guano" which seemed a bad start but actually Guana is a name of a lizard. Although we did see a couple of small lizards, they weren't the highlight of our trip. As might be expected that was the beach! I'm a bit of a gourmand for beaches but this was pretty special. The sand was as soft and fine as anywhere I've walked on and the water was so many shades of blue that I wouldn't know words for them. The camera definitely doesn't do it justice.



It is still winter in the Bahamas so temperatures varied from chilly, with a stiff wind, to balmy, sleeping with the windows open. After being home in Chicago for 4 days I especially miss the windows open part. I get cold easily so the one day we took a boat trip to a snorkeling preserve I actually wore a short wet suit and still found it cold. My memory of my last trip to the Bahamas (my honeymoon 22 years ago) was much warmer weather and water but of course that was in September.
The island was quiet--only 150 or so permanent residents and not too many tourists when we were there--and only accessible by ferry. Mostly residents walk or drive around in golf carts. We rented a cart one day and the kids had fun driving it. We tried to explore that day to both ends of the island but found that each is occupied by an exclusive club and is closed to the public. One end apparently houses a number of celebrities, we heard tell of Martha Stewart and Matt Damon. Apparently riffraff such as ourselves are not invited.