Tuesday, November 03, 2009
P.S. I'm pretty sure we also crossed the Tropic of Cancer on our drive, but I'm not sure when, because there wasn't a sign.
Posted at 11:30:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Posted at 11:25:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Huge exploration day today! Rented a crazy car (couldn't get the key out of the ignition, so had to leave it in... no one to steal anything around here, anyway) and drove on the one Road up and down the island. Each town only had a few buildings, and it was hard to tell the difference between abandoned shacks and active businesses! It reminded us of the East End of Grand Cayman (but even less populated), and my fav place on Mamalahoa Highway, Ushijima Store. :-) We hardly saw any people.
Went to the post office (it was in a complex with other brightly-colored government buildings, like the police station and tiny concrete one-high-up-window-with-bars prison), a gas station (got local beef and chicken patties at the mini-mart! beef is yummiest! found out they're yellow because of corn), 2 grocery stores (made Oshima Store look fancy!) (got fruit, nuts, drinks, and yogurt to go with my patties, for our lunch), and liquor store (there are lots of those). I got some great Bahamian coins for my foreign coin collection. My favorite are the pennies--they have starfish on them! Pulled over to a pretty little beach on the Caribbean side of the road for our picnic under a tree, and washed the grapes in the ocean. Nice and salty. :-) Ting + local patties = yum! The ocean was so calm.
After our picnic we drove to Guana Cay and snorkeled out to the little island, where we hand-fed its curly-tailed iguana residents with bananas that we bought at the grocery store and transported out in the goody bag. (They might have been plantains by mistake, though, because they were kind of hard compared to normal bananas!) The Stella Maris lady told us about it. As soon as we climbed out of the water onto the cay, all these little curly-tailed guys ran over to us looking for treats. None would eat right out of our hands, but one licked my fingers. They were super-cute, brown and very scaly. Unfortunately, Dean forgot to put batteries in the underwater camera, so no curly-tail photos! They looked like this, though. The snorkel itself was kind of boring, although Dean saw some Queen Conchs. I didn't, because there was a huge cross current, so I was concentrating on getting to the cay. I just saw lots of turtle grass! :-) I swam really fast and got there tons before he did, but then I realized it wasn't because I was such a strong swimmer... it was actually because he was looking at stuff. Heh. [He found me a nice intact heart urchin shell and I managed to get it all the way to North Carolina without smashing it, and gave it to my mom!] It was really really bright on the cay, so we didn't stay too long, even though we did have our Crocs for exploring around.
After Guana Cay, we tracked down Dean's Blue Hole, which is the world's deepest underwater sinkhole, at 663 ft. They hold free diving competitions there. There was a floating platform set up in the blue hole section, but otherwise it was hard to see where the hole was, from the shore. Lucky for us, three young guys came up and started jumping in it, so we could see how the water dropped right off from shallow to deep. We didn't go in, since it was getting cooler and we were all dried off. (Plus, there probably isn't that much too see, even though it's super-cool. Freediving = scary and amaaaaaaaazing.)
On the way back, we went to Chez Pierre restaurant, which was at the end of super-long super-dark single-lane dirt road. It was impossible to tell if it was the real road/driveway or a dead-end nothing to nowhere. But, we finally arrived, and Pierre himself welcomed us. We had reservations (you NEED reservations to go to Chez Pierre!), and took our seats on the screened-in porch along with the one other couple that was dining. It reminded us of a combination of Miss Vivine's kitchen and Caffe Coco. The food was Italian, and excellent.
Got a good sleep last night, finally. It's very comfortable-feeling here.
Monday, November 02, 2009
I forgot to mention the best things: the kitchen (MUST TAKE PICTURES!) and the fact that the hot and cold water are backwards, just like at the cottage!
Posted at 11:44:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
We went swimming in our private pool in the dark!! Even I did it, even though I'm a coldness wimp. I didn't get all the way wet since my hair would never dry if I did, but I went on the underwater tea party tables. Dean measured with his dive watch and said it's 81 degrees and 7 feet deep in the deepest part. The moon is full and is really really bright and shiny and white and clear.
Posted at 5:21:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Sipping a complimentary welcome pina colada (virgin; don't want a real one this early!) and getting blown by an island breeze. It's INSANELY casual here! We can't quite wrap our brains around it. Everything is by loose verbal agreement, even diving (no forms to fill out, and they didn't even want to see our C-cards!), and there aren't even any locks on the doors. You can give valuable stuff (passports, money, etc.) to the front desk and they'll put it in their safe.
Our place ("Dolphin House", aka "Haus Delphin") is gigantic, but pretty basic, so it's kind of like The Cottage, if it was at least 4x huger, with 2 bathrooms, 4 bedrooms, its own private pool, and the ocean lake-distance away! (But the same # of mosquitoes.) My favorite part is the crazy long and stretchy galley-style kitchen with weird old appliances (it does have a microwave, though) and fixtures. The bathrooms are also really cool and interesting!
[Edit: Here's some photos I took the next morning: 1) the view from our patio (our private pool, and the Atlantic ocean) B) Dolphin House from the back, and 3) Dolphin House from the front (I love that sky-blue lockless front door!).]
12:15 - Took off from FXE about nooner. Sky, sky, sky & ocean, ocean, ocean, with dark patterns--shadows of clouds. So much blue. Leaving Ft. Lauderdale, so many houses, with canals and boats in between! Weird.
Posted at 12:15:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
12:30 - Bimini on the right. Tiny lighthouse island on the left. Pretty stretch of turquoise strewn through the water below. !!! Wow! My guidebook says "Some say these islands were once part of the road system of the Lost Continent of Atlantis!" We're in the tip of the Bermuda Triangle right now. I hope we get out alive!
1:05 - Andros on my side! Incredible deep turquoise blue, impossible to capture in photos. The water's so clear, you can see straight down to the bottom (from 7,000 ft up!). Lucky for me, the boa constrictors in the mangroves are on the other side of the island.
1:25 - Nassau on the left! Me: "What's it look like?" Dean: "All built up on the edges; not so much in the middle."
1:35 - Oh noooooooo! "Lost satellite reception"--Dean says it's because of the Bermuda Triangle!
2:30 - Long Island in sight!
3:10 - Cleared customs at Stella Maris! Easy.
[Here's Dean and Tango when we landed on Long Island (the nice airport lady met us with a cart for our luggage) (it was hot!!), and a shot of the cool customs/immigration building. It had a one-room office with the customs guy behind a counter, to stamp our passports.]
Banyan Air Service is nice!!! It's huge and fancy. They even gave Tango a red carpet, and three chocks (one for each foot)!
Posted at 10:46:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
[Here's a picture, with Dean checking the fuel. Also, here's my Guide to our Sky Trip Luggage! :-)]
Jet Runway Cafe is really nice, too! Cappuccino with good foam, and I ordered "The Full Tank" breakfast.
Wow--it's huge! 2 big fluffy Pancakes with real maple syrup, small bowl of grits, 2 big thick slabs of ham, and 3 eggs over easy (!!). We also shared a yogurt parfait with granola, yog, and fresh berries. I never understood the appeal of yogurt + cereal before, but this was actually good.
I didn't finish every scrap but I did a good job. It's a lot easier to eat a Reasonable-Sized breakfast here than at the crummy MD buffet with cold rubber-like French toast that I could barely saw through with the ultra-bendy plastic fork.
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Posted at 11:41:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Diverted to West Palm Beach to be safe. Lots of big jets and lots of FUEL.
Checked into hotel in Fort Lauderdale around 11:30. Took off about 11am in Maryland, so I guess that was around 12 hours from MD to Ft. L. Not bad. It's warm here in Florida!
I wolfed my New Smyrna Beach dinner: shrimp cocktail and Dano's-style fresh catch sandwich (no grouper today at The Grouper). It was good and I was hungry! Poor Tango didn't get fed, though: the FBO was evilly closed at 6:30, even though their AOPA-posted hours claimed they'd be open until 9. Dean thinks we can make it to Ft. Lauderdale on the gas we have left, since the winds are good. We have about 2 hours of fuel left and 1.5 hours is the prediction for Ft. L; you're supposed to have 1/2 hour reserve, so that's right at limits. He's burning the right tank first, and then when he has to switch over to the left one he'll decide if we can make it. Otherwise, we can divert to Palm Beach International. It's exactly the opposite from usual when we're on one of these trips... the restaurant was open but the fuel was not!!
Posted at 8:36:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
It was chilly in Florence, SC! Colder than Maryland. It's a lot warmer up here above the clouds with the sun shining on my shoulder. I was all zzzzzzzzzz on the first leg of our journey today, after about 1 hour of sleep Friday night and maybe 4 hours last night... I was totally insomniacal in MD, for some reason, although I wasn't tossing and turning or anything and had fairly restful lying-there-not-sleeping sessions. (Yesterday I kept forgetting that I hadn't slept the night before, which says a lot. Also I kept forgetting that I had a mask on.) As soon as we stopped in Florence for fuel I got all perked up though, and I feel alert and chipper now! Also, I had a Snickers bar from the vending machine (since Snickers really satisfies), but I perked even before that. The only time I ever eat Snickers is when we stop at a fuel place with no real restaurant during a long Tango journey, but it's just perfect then! Anyway, being all zzz was nice on the first leg, because I just mmmmed up in the clouds, enjoying the turbulence, staring out at grey-white blankness or closing my eyes, or paging through a mindless mag.
Posted at 3:39:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
I'm typing this entry in Notepad on my Netbook while flying along. No Internet up here. I like long Tango journeys... they're fun. There wasn't much to see between Maryland and SC because of all the clouds, but when we descended to land I could see how all the trees were green and it didn't look like fall at all, even though it sure felt like it. Next stop is New Smyrna Beach, FL. The Grouper restaurant.
My newly-invented Tango Travel outfit is perfect for transitioning between different climates. T-shirt, skirt, and suede toast shoes, plus or minus camel tights and taupe bamboo arm warmers, zippy cardigan and cashmere arm warmers. I had both arm warmers on at the same time before (bamboo ones under my sweater, and cashmere ones on top) and they worked great together! If it's hot when we get to Florida, all I have to do is take off the peripherals.
It's 4:10 and we're flying over Charleston's airport right now! It's very green down there. Lots of undeveloped land in South Carolina.
My voice is hoarse from talking so much (and loud enough, over the noise) at T.G.I. Fridays's last night with Diane. :-) I think we hung out talking for about 2 1/2 hours! It was very silly, we ordered drinks and the waitress needed to see IDs, but I didn't have mine with me, so Diane just said, "She's my sister," and they accepted hers for both of us! How exactly does that work?? Haha. Then when we were waiting for them to bring us the bill, Diane kept noticing various people from the wedding walking by outside (!), and then eventually saw the back of Sam, at a table in rear of the restaurant. We intentionally walked by on the way out, and it was Sam and June and a whole stretchy table of their pals, having a big after-party at the exact same restaurant we'd been chatting away at for hours.
[Edit, 11/15: Editing this to post now, and I'm just going through the photos from this flight for the first time. They are breathtaking! Didn't want to do any as in-post illustrations because they need to be BIG! Here are my favorites: one, two, three, four, five.]
