Touring Great Exuma Island

This morning Doug rented a car and we toured Great Exuma Island. Our rental car had the steering wheel on the right hand side. Doug did a fine job of driving on the left hand side of the road and avoiding the potholes on the edge of the road. First, we went south to Georgetown. After walking around Georgetown and visiting a few of the shops we got back in the car and continued south to Little Exuma Island. To get from Great Exuma to Little Exuma you have to drive over a short one lane bridge. Fortunately, no vehicles were coming the other way at that moment! After we crossed over the Tropic of Cancer we stopped and ate an early lunch at Santana’s. The food was delicious traditional Bahamian food. Doug, Laura and George ordered ribs and I ordered grouper. We all had sides of cole slaw, peas & rice and corn. Before lunch, though, we bought baked goods at Mom’s Bakery next door. After lunch Laura noticed what looked like sharks swimming back and forth near Santana’s. It was interesting to watch them as long as we were safely on shore. On the way back we stopped at the Stone Beacon, also called the Salt Beacon. It was erected hundreds of years ago to mark, for ships, the location of a salt pond. Salt was a valuable commodity in trade. Slaves were used to farm the salt and it was grueling work. Later on Bahamian families would farm the salt. Walls that marked off the areas they farmed are still visible.

On our way back through Georgetown we shopped for fresh foods at Exuma Market (none available), Smitty’s (bought lettuce, yay!) and Prime Island meat (cheese, hot dogs and an onion).

After dropping the food at the boat we continued north to Exuma Point Restaurant and Bar. What a lovely place in a gorgeous location. We met the owner, Maryanne Rolle, and she is a lovely as her place. Maryanne was featured in the Netflix documentary, Fyre, which we all watched the other night. The documentary is about the ill-fated Fyre Festival which was to take place here on Great Exuma, right next to our marina. The story is too long to tell here but if you are interested I would recommend the documentary. Maryanne lost $50,000 of her life savings providing food for the workers and festival participants. Hundreds of Bahamians were hired to do construction for festival for weeks and were never paid. I am happy to say that the organizer, Billy McFarland, is going to jail for wire fraud. Maryanne said in the documentary that she doesn’t like to talk about what happened but agreed to appear in the documentary as a warning to others. Be careful when apparently rich people show up making promises. I didn’t mention to her that we had just seen the documentary. We were all still full from lunch so we just had a drink at Exuma Point. We asked the bartender about sharks and she said yes, they do swim near the restaurant and they like scraps from meat. She also told us they are not the docile nurse sharks we have seen in other places, but the more aggressive lemon sharks. After our drinks we walked out on the dock and, sure enough, there were sharks swimming around.

We had a fun and interesting day but, sadly, it was time to return to the marina so that Doug and Laura could collect their luggage and drive the rental car to the airport. The week went by so fast and we hated to see them go.