Posted by: travadmin on Nov 02, 2003 – 08:33 PM
outislands Over the years Ive spent a fair bit of time on beaches. I think of it as work. And its a tough life of course, being a Caribbean beach correspondent: counting the grains of sand, testing the soporific quality of hammocks, strategically testing water-sports and generally floundering around in the sea…
And the Bahamas are a tough assignment as they go. There are reckoned to be seven hundred islands, some of them no more than a sandbar that disappears at high tide -nothing but beach. They sit splintered over 100,000 square miles of strikingly blue sea on a bank of blinding white sand. Between them, the Bahamas probably have more sand than the rest of the Caribbean islands put together.
Cat Island is one of the distant and dozy Bahamian out-islands, or the Family Islands as they are known in the sexy jargon of modern marketing. For all the sand, the place is barely developed; it is only Nassau and the islands closer to the States that have been developed. The places to stay on Cat Island can be counted on one hand, and there is a natural West Indian charm that is lost to most Caribbean islands nowadays. I flew in by pint-sized plane and then bounced along the gravel road to Fernandez Bay Village in a latter-day Bahamian sedan; a deck chair in the back of a rickety old pick-up. In seconds I was down on the beach, luxuriating in the last of the days sun and beginning my rigorous series of tests.
West-facing, Fernandez Bay beach is on the protected side of the island, a superb, gently curving half-moon of sand a couple of miles long. The waves broke in lethargic flops and meandered forward in fingers of white froth. Miniature ground doves twittered along the sand, their heads pecking uncomfortably back and forth like clockwork gone haywire. Casuarina pines backed the entire length of the beach, hiding the few rustic cottages and villas; in the breeze the wispy branches made a tiny, electric hiss like aeroplane air-conditioning.
Every pristine landscape has its evocative quality, and most has timelessness and grandeur. But the Bahamas, with its views over electric blue water to the slightly curved sea horizon (and of course the sunsets), also engenders a feeling of ease and contentment. It wasnt always so. For many years this was a dangerous frontier land, where pirates roved and merchantmen ventured at their peril. I wondered if the pirates ever saw beauty in this landscape, or if they simply read it as a nexus of currents and winds.
Cat Island was actually named after a pirate, a Captain Catt, who apparently would hide out here when not sailing in search of prizes. The Bahamas were an ideal cruising ground because of their proximity to the States and to the main shipping routes to Europe. Later, the islands were used as a smuggling stopover for arms in the civil war and for bootleg alcohol during Prohibition. During the eighties, the islands were used as a transshipment point, this time for drugs en route from South America, and Cat Island saw some of the trade, as a number of unfeasibly smart houses testify.
It seems that I was not the only one to be brought out in contemplation by the calm and serenity of the island. On the highest point of Cat Island, Mt Alvernia, at a princely 206 ft, actually the highest point in the Bahamas too, there is a monastery, built by a reclusive British monk, one Father Jerome. It looks huge as you approach it, but when you make it up the calvary steps cut out of the rock, you find that the bell tower is barely twenty feet high and that the cloister has just six tiny arches.
Even the most rigorous study of a single beach becomes a little limiting after a while. The Family Islands have plenty of variety, though, which makes island-hopping a good option. Flying is also the best opportunity to see the Bahamas most stunning feature, the sea, from another angle. The islands, which are made of sedimentary limestone encrusted with limestone coral, both ideal for erosion into high-grade sand, sit on a shallow, sandy bottomed shelf – baja-mar actually means shallow sea. The strength of the sunlight and the clarity of the water reflect an amazing colour of blue, so strong as to be surreal.
Flying has its hazards, though. Cumulus clouds may look serene, but they are alarmingly turbulent inside, as I discovered when we had to fly into a couple of them. It felt as though the plane was being dangled on some diabolic string, tweaked from above just to tease us. Jumping out of planes is one thing: it brings a bit of an adrenaline rush, but at least youre active. Sitting strapped into the cockpit while you bounce off clouds is another thing altogether. I could actually feel the adrenaline scratching the inside of my veins.
I half suspect that pilots quite enjoy this sort of thing, but I was quite relieved to touch down in North Eleuthera without incident. From here I caught the small ferry across to Harbour Island, a shard of coral limestone just off the mainland, and to my next object of study, Pink Sands beach.
Pink Sands Beach, called so after the crustacea that are dissolved in the sands – and it does actually look pink – could not be more different from Fernandez Bay. It is on the windward side of the island and so the full force of the Atlantic winds and waves sweeps in against it, pushing up a thirty-yard breadth of sand. Offshore, breakers swelled in the whitecaps and then crashed in the shallow water, strong enough to body surf for twenty yards. Backed by a sandy cliff on which all the houses and hotels hide from the winds in their luxurious gardens, Pink Sands is three miles long and there is barely anybody on it. I soon settled in for some rigorous study, busying myself with my alternately prone and prostrate experiments.
The islands themselves are also very different. Harbour Island has had a lively local community for centuries. Eleuthera was the first island in the Bahamas to be settled, by the company of Eleutherian Adventurers, who also came for religious peace of mind, escaping persecution in Bermuda. Its offshoot Harbour Island is small and pretty, with timber-frame houses set in neat gardens. A theme of pastel pink and green runs through the islands shutters and window frames. Somehow, the standard mode of transport, the golf buggy – everyone zips around in them – comes with a suitable edge of irony. It is only the robust community of ‘Brilanders’ that stops it teetering on the edge of the twee.
It was odd to see conch being prepared outside a local restaurant. These odd creatures, which contribute quite a bit to the colour to Pink Sands, have to be cut out of their shells, with a hole near the top of their spiral. Poor things are just a lump of muscle with a claw, heaving barely consciously in a pile of moving flesh before they are unceremoniously hung on the washing line to dry.
Harbour Island is a friendly place, and in true West Indian tradition, the islanders wave and say hello to anyone they meet, whether they know them or not. It seemed natural enough to join in, but at one point I was so carried away that I nearly drove into the ditch. Crash in a golf cart? Now that would be embarrassing. Back to the beach, I decided, for some final facedown trials.
Oh, it wasnt all studied inactivity on the beach. I did actually discover an interesting fact about beaches. I was out snorkeling and saw a parrotfish that kept head-butting the corals. A dive master later explained that in fact it was racing in and taking bites out of the polyps, which it then crunched up, sifting them for nutrition. Then they spit out the gritty remains, perfect grains of sand, which wash up on your favourite beach.
Note: Commentary by James Henderson from:
http://www.travelintelligence.net/