Fowl Cay days

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We’re just about to get back on the tiny tiny plane and go back to Nassau after a lovely five days here at Fowl Cay. We spent most every day on our little boat exploring the fabulously beautiful waters of the Exuma island chain. The boat was a very good one. It cruised at about 35 knots to 40 knots without jumping up and down too much. The trick was to learn to read how the water looked because sometimes it became so shallow that we might get the propeller in the sand and sometimes dark spot were rocks and sometimes just patches of grass. We’re not trying to upload pics to Travelblog because there’s just too many – but Kelly has posted them all on Facebook and here’s the link to see them all.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150212650881888.319091.667256887

Some highlights:
Thunderball cavern – just five minutes from here this is a cave that’s half underwater and has a hole in the top where the light comes down through (and occasionally tourists who climb the rock cay and jump through the hole. Happily there weren’t any jumping tourists when we were there – just thousands of beautiful fish. This cave has this name because it was featured in the old James bond movie of the same name.

Swimming pigs – this was the most fun thing for me. On one beach around there there are pigs that come out to the boats to try to get food. They are HUGE and swim in the water up to the boat. One giant spotted one tried to get in the boat, failed, but hung there off the side with her huge maw open waiting for any type of food (in this case it was lettuce, bread and our leftover chicken sandwich. The babies on the shore started out but she and her large friend kep them from getting the food. Kelly took pity on a small baby pink pig and while some other boaters distracted the big ones he waded over to the sher to feed the little one – only to be chased across the beach by the big ones.

Snorkeling –This is a fabulous place to snorkel – whether by the coral reefs and rocks with big coral fans or even right on the sandy beach where you can find a multitude of san dollars and other shells. We snorkeled all over and captured many shells right on the little beach by our cottage. The best shell I found was an oragnish colored spiral shell, but the next morning we noticed little legs sticking out of it and knew someone (probably a hermit crab) was home. So we put it back in the water and a few minutes later it had wandered off. We were relieved we hadn’t hurt it.

Lunch on Nomad – The restaurant in the resort is open to the public at dinner and this place is surrounded by giant luxury yachts. They have a no-host open bar for dinner guests before the dinner is served so we met a lot of people. Two were Vicki and Peter who had a fairly small (41 ft) trawler from Florida. We met them in the bar and then had dinner together and they invited us to lunch a couple of days later onboard their boat – the Nomad. Very interesting folks and the food was superb. They travel all their days. She’s an artist and he’s someone who sold his business and now has enough to live on the boat.

Swimming with the Sharks – I thought this was going to be a scary thing for me to do but on my birthday Kelly convinced me we should go do it. It’s at a marina a few cays up the chain so we went up there, paid to dock the boat. The underside of the dock is home to a large family of nurse sharks. They’re really nice creatures – like big dogs. There was a part submerged dock and one came up onto it while we were getting in the water. It wanted to be petted so we petted it. Shark skin feels kind of like concrete aggregate – tiny pebbles. The rest were lazy – some quite big – hanging out on the bottom under the dock. Kelly swam down to see them but they got scared and got out of his way.

Next stop Nassua and Breezes – an all inclusive resort where we can expect to get pampered in a totally different way.
Love to all

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