Brown Like Bread: Compliments of Little Farmers

The velvet of the dusty deep blue couch sticks to my sweaty thighs. It is reminiscent of something from Downton Abbey and yet here we sit in 35 Celcius in a tiny yacht club in the Bahamas. The condensation from my Bud Light drips into my lap and trickles down onto the worn velvet. Beside me, Roosevelt Nixon leans back, chatting freely. His laugh lines are deep and his kind eyes at ease. He has welcomed us here, into the hodge podge sprawl of his domain, the bright red building built on the rocks at the northern tip of Little Farmer’s Cay. 

We are not marina guests. Just passers by, we emerged from our sweltering walk across the partially paved roads, roads lined with tamarind and sapodilla trees, past his tiny derelict outdoor basketball court, and appeared – disheveled, sweating and in need of cold drinks. Mr Nixon was obliging. He literally abandoned his errands, getting out of his running car, to invite us in.

In fact, since we zoomed into the little harbor this morning in our dinghies, we have been greeted and welcomed and embraced and befriended by each and every resident of this island. Google tells me that the population is 66 and by the end of the day we have met over half of those.

First, Captain Conch at the dinghy dock who took our lines, helped us up and told us he’s a descendant of Somalia. After the small chat he offered to introduce us to Simon and Jeffery, and began bashing a machete on the dock to call the turtles. Minutes later, in the crystal clear water below, he literally had turtles and colourful box fish eating out of his hand. A family of tourists arrived in a speed boat and paid to join in the feeding while we looked on in awe. We felt like tourists for the first time in a long time. In fact, we felt part of something bigger, having now been isolated to our little tribe of four on the two boats once again for nearly weeks without other human contact.

We wandered off the dock on a little high. All smiles, we passed the tiny souvenir shop waving and promising to visit on our way back, and the emerald green one room post office, boarded up and so tiny it warranted a photo. 

Just then, from out behind a bush, rambled a tall, emaciated man with only a few long teeth. Leaving his yard work behind, he called out “Warm roasted peanuts!” “Come and get. Come and see!” Though none of us were hankering for unsalted peanuts in the heat of the day, we couldn’t resist his quirky charm. Gingerly traversing the tiny path by his cabin, nearly tripping over the blind dog, we came upon his peanut cauldron. Most of them over-roasted, bordering on burnt, and then wrapped carefully in small paper bags. He was proud to offer free samples. Grinning ear to ear, his handful of teeth finding it difficult to stay inside his lips, he explained “I grow herbs! Here is Spanish thyme. Smell!” “This is tamarind. Let me open one for you. Taste! You can use it for steak sauce or on fish. You can take some!”. “Come and meet my goat called Billy!”. 

Apparently a wild dog had killed the female and Darren was saving up to buy a new one. With peanut sales most likely. So at this stage, we knew we were in for at least a couple bags of peanuts. And then he threw in some fresh lemon grass too. In the end, he asked only $2 per bag of nuts and we thought wow, it’s gonna take a long time to get that new goat at this rate. We bought the nuts and added a tip for all his info and enthusiasm.

We moved on down the dusty road to our loose destination – the yacht club. Cooling down in the bar there, flanked by boxes of windows to be installed and random sparse furniture (including the royal blue velvet couch), we listened to Roosevelt’s stories of his descendants. Apparently Nixon was a British loyalist who fled the US in the late 1880’s and like many in his position, was offered any island in the Exumas by the British. He took a slave wife, and the population of Little Farmer’s Cay was underway. Roosevelt says he carved off the entire northern end of the island as his own and now it holds a private airstrip as well as some homes and his yacht club. He’s not doing too badly…

But we wanted to arrange for supper somewhere and had our hearts set on a place in town called Ocean Cabin. So we headed back toward the ‘centre’ of town – the little harbor. Their sign is ‘world famous’ in the cruiser Bahama world. We took the obligatory pic. 

But inside, despite the inviting décor, we must have met Ernestine on a bad day. She seemed annoyed by our presence as she huffed and sighed and rolled her eyes. We left and found ourselves down the road in the far less prestigious establishment of Brenda’s – called Kenya’s Deli. It consisted of an outdoor concrete slab with one long bench facing the street and four chairs. The perfect number for us.

Later that evening, lined up as we were on Brenda’s table, our ‘2 Buck Chuck’ wine on hand, we contemplated the beauty of humanity. The Baptist Deacon with sciatica who can still wind her generous waist looked after us. “How you all so nice and brown?! Brown like bread!” she exclaimed. She rubbed my arm and admired our tans. We shared our wine and talked about traveling. The village drunk, her nephew having arrived and intrigued by our presence, she kept at bay at the edge of the platform, chiding him and gently begged him away.

Full bellied we found ourselves on a twilight stroll and came upon J.R., village sculptor and enthusiastic small farmer. He dragged us through his yard at the top of his 68 year old lungs, shouting gregariously about his pomegranate tree and the many varieties of sapodilla. His wood carvings, all with the same broad nosed indignation, peered at us from their display board as we followed him around dutifully. And then the aloe – the magical cure! He stood above the slighty brown crop and explained he eats it every day. He smokes, yet the tar can’t stick to his lungs… and he offered some for Al’s itchy ankle. Before we knew it he had torn a prickly shoot, chewed off the end and smeared the slimy substance all over Al’s leg. And as if he’d willed the Gods himself to show us the power, the rash disappeared.  We pried ourselves away and wandered on a bit further, but the experience will not soon leave us.

Indeed, this is the other side of cruising that keeps us going. There are the isolated bays with white sand and peaceful lapping waves that inspire us, but then there is this. The imperfect vulnerability of strangers who open their lives to you. The lopsided grins and helpful hands. The friendly tour guides and little farmers. These experiences are as beautiful as gazing over a turquoise sea. They restore our faith in people and society and remind us what it all should be about.

“We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.”

Days like these...

If there is no breeze, not a breath of wind on a sun-baked Exuma day, is there any air at all?

The wall gadget that survived our lightning strike tells me it’s 35 celcius. The digital man is smiling, stiffly standing in sunglasses, a t-shirt and shorts. He thinks it’s safe to assume it’s gonna be a hot one out there. But I know this already. Sweat trickles down my back. My front. Well all around really. And then I just step outside into this world. The stillness and the beauty overcome me.

Is it not all a turquoise mirage created by a fabulous artist with perfectionist tendencies? The innumerable blues along the water, the slightly too imaginative cloud formations. It all points to a world in a frame, not to be disturbed by the reckless movements of the human animal.

Indeed, on days like these, with no one else to share the beauty, to verify its existence or ours within it, I need to pinch myself.

Yes, our boat is still crippled after the lightning strike of lottery winning odds. We are well on our way back to fix it all up. The journey toward Nassau first to hopefully replace the main electronics, and then either straight back to the US or slowly, to replace the rest.

But thoughts like this have no place here. Insurance coverage? Groceries? Document printing, scanning and e-mailing? What? Does not compute.

Paddle boarding along with an outgoing tide, through the glorious silence of the mangroves – yes! Swimming through the mouth of the river with the rushing tide out into the ocean – yes again. Baby lemon sharks come to see us as well, no problem. 

This is Shroud Cay, northern Exumas. We’ve been here before. So has every expat from Nassau on a Saturday afternoon, appearing in droves as they do, in a whir of manmade noise and engine power. Beers at the ready, picnic baskets, children shrieking. But never mind. We need someone to pinch us. This place really is. We can sneak away to random secret beaches by dinghy, our footsteps breaking the crust on pristine white sand. 

And at night when the sun has burned out, a fiery orange at the horizon, and completed it’s nightly performance of pinks and purples, we can see the haze of light from Nassau. 30 miles away, 30 million lifetimes away. And gone are the power boats, back to the dirty streets and air conditioned houses, and we are here alone.

The season is winding down. The cruisers are heading north, back to Florida, to the Carolinas, some all the way to Canada for the summer. Leaving a paradise that we cling to for a few last days. Responsibilities, practicalities loom over there where the haze of light beckons. Here only heat, and colour, and showering with sharks.

A few weeks ago, in the aftermath of our strike I was talking to a fellow cruiser in George Town about it – he raised his eyebrows at our luck and asked me “Have you ever thought of buying an RV?” with a smirk. Got to admit, people might think we’d be safer.

But safety doesn’t get you here. It doesn’t take you to places like these:

View from one of our hikes

The bubbly pool - north end of Compass Cay

Exploring with the dinghy around the south of Warderick Wells

View of our boats from Hog Island

An impending storm

The ocean mouth from north end of Hawksbill Cay

Hello from Hawksbill!

 And so it's all got me thinking. Pondering. Appreciating the choices, all the choices, that have brought us to where we are today. Lightning strikes and all. Though this is a corny, common cliche saying, it just fits so well:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Glorious silence, neon toys and canned food - The Exuma reality

I’m squinting at the tiny mangrove roots, marveling that they push up through the mushy white sand. Sun bakes my dry corn-husk hair and exposed limbs. The tide is rapidly flowing out through rivers to the sea, leaving our dinghy exposed on the ever growing beach. We are like castaways. Salt caked and leather brown. Our small bottle of water is empty. 

JW and I sit in silence in the sand on this uninhabited island in the Exumas. Tiny resilient seeds and crispy dry leaves whisper as they tumble along the sand, at home in this harsh environment. The only other sounds are far off airplanes and distant speed boats. They try to encroach, to remind us that this reality is small and confined. But it’s ours. And it is wild and it’s free.

It could be a Saturday or a Tuesday. Shiloh is anchored out in the unprotected bay, a huge ocean swell slapping her from side to side. We’ve escaped to the shore for some peace from the incessant rolling. 

We’ve been in the Exumas for 6 weeks. We left the last town two weeks ago. The last ‘proper’ grocery store about 4 weeks ago. We’ve run out of beers and cokes and snacks. Same with eggs and bread. Haven’t seen a fresh vegetable in a while. We are in the land of the scarce.

The Bahamas Telecom network forgot about the northern Exumas as well. But we’ve managed to devise a makeshift system for getting an Internet signal once every few days. Our iphone is double wrapped in ziplock bags, then tied to a keychain float and hoisted up the mast. If we are lucky it finds weak reception and we scramble to answer emails, check in on facebook. Say hello to the real world. And then we sink back into the salty, sun soaked world of islands we love so much.

This is the land of shifting sand that creates works of art daily. Swirls of electric turquoise, emerald green, soft teal, creamy beige. And if you can hike to any vantage point above, the rewards are awe and amazement and a humbling so profound. It floors me daily. This is natural beauty unmatched. White tropic birds with their long ribbon tails swirl above, turning blue over the water with the reflection of the sea, and back to white over land. 

Each island offers something unique – hikes to ancient ruins, bubbling pools to play in between the ocean and rocks.

Earlier today we took kayaks and the SUP and paddled a dense and still mangrove river out to the ocean on an outgoing tide.  

Some days the silence is broken – pierced by the wild whirling jet skis of the mega yacht crowd. From any shoreline you might see, anchored out in the deeper waters, a colossal white or silver multi-million dollar, crew-run floating funhouse for the rich. In this place where nature is king and money is useless, it is a jarring sight. And the huge tenders with their massive outboard engines cut through the waters with disregard, shuttling the privileged owners and guests to-and-fro. Some take over a beach with elaborate umbrella systems, blankets, baskets, neon pink and green beach toys that bob around at the water’s edge, claiming their territory. 

Today it is a convoy of power boats, here to break the silence. Down from Nassau for the weekend; kids, beers, bright toys. The breathtaking beach at the end of the mangrove river is overtaken by bikinis and bellies and exuberant chatter. The decibel level is too high for us. We haven’t been in a crowd forever it seems.

They are friendly enough, one guy in a Blue Jays baseball cap sipping a Labatt Blue he’s brought all the way from Canada. “It’s snowing back home!” he tells me, as his little pink two year old, clad in full body sun-shade armour and a wide brimmed hat that covers his whole face, plays happily in the sand. I can barely hear him. My mind does not compute. Snow? Holiday makers with Canadian beer? It seems absurd. I thought we were castaways in our own little world. I think I wished it so.

But this world, free and wild as it is, must be shared. It must come to an end even for us. One day soon our canned goods will run out too. We will need to make a bank transfer or talk on a phone. My backpack/purse will have to be transformed from a sandy vessel for water, sea shells and sun block, to wallets and cell phones. The real world will call to us and we will have to answer.

But for now intense sun. Salt. Sand. Silence.