Day Five - Plans and Surprises

Day Five

First of all, I want to follow up on our grouper adventure. Krista has been working witchcraft with this grouper. Last night she made a pan-seared blackened grouper with root vegetables, and then, because apparently we don’t need three pounds of grouper in one meal, she just turned the leftovers into a grouper salad with chopped almonds and fresh mango. Amazing. Fresh, light, delicious.  She’s now just concocted something with the leftover mango and way too much rum and has taken her trashy novel to the steamer deck while I compose before we wander down to Sky Beach and wi-fi.

Before I get into today, I want to share an unusual and awesome incident. We’re planners. OK, let me clarify, Krista is a planner. I’m more of an ironically obsessive-compulsive control freak who doesn’t like to acknowledge rules and who plans poorly. This isn’t a great combination, but, Hey! We’re on vacation!

As we mentioned on the blog yesterday, the plan for Wednesday was to hit the big Atlantic-side beaches. Less than an hour after I posted yesterday’s blog, and just after we got home from our visit to the library, the phone rang at the house. Krista and I both froze and stared at the phone. This couldn’t be good. The only people with the number to this house are Krista’s folks, the house/cat sitter/neighbor, the car rental guy, and the owner of the house.  Hello? … What followed was one of those moments you won’t experience on many vacations, anywhere…

It was Kristel from Eleuthera Tours. Oh, right. We gave her our number, too. Kristel mainly wanted to confirm the details for our trip on Thursday to Lighthouse Beach, which caused Krista and I to both exhale and mix a drink, but then Kristel surprised us. She says, “So I see you’re planning to go to the Atlantic beaches tomorrow.” Uh oh.  She’d read our blog. Already. Someone who lives and works here read my amateur ramblings about her home island. Should I be worried? Did I say something offensive? (I’m REALLY good at doing that unintentionally) But no. “The weather forecast still has winds coming from the ocean side tomorrow. You might not want to do any snorkeling on the Atlantic side. If you think the snorkeling at Rainbow was good, you’ll love…..” and she proceeded to name and give directions to beaches that she, a professional guide, thinks would not be affected by the high winds and have some of the best snorkeling on the island.  

Seriously?  Only on Eleuthera. A professional guide calls you up after reading your personal travel blog and offers you advice on where to spend quality time the next day, based on inside knowledge on both the weather and the secret spots on the island. Heck, the place she suggested isn’t even in the coveted “Elusive Beaches of Eleuthera” guidebook.  

Before I continue, I must give Kristel and Donald at Eleuthera Tours another plug: http://www.eleutheratours.com 

Weather on this long, thin island can be variable, to say the least. When we got up this morning, the Atlantic winds and ocean were very calm. With the long drive tomorrow, with the rattletrap Suzuki something-or-other, and with $6.50/ gallon gas, we decided to go with our original plan of hitting the nearby Atlantic beaches.

We began at Twin Coves, which is aptly named, for some sun and snorkeling. 

 I did an exploratory run, and noticed that there were tons of fish, and some cool coral structures, but the visibility wasn’t all that great, especially with some passing storm clouds.  While I waited for Krista to bravely don her snorkel gear, and for the clouds to move away. I had fun watching a couple of bonefish chase what seemed like tens of thousands of small (3-4”) shiny fish, and a sated barracuda just floating contentedly outside of the swarming school.  And as Krista and I started swimming out from the shallows toward the reef, I thought to myself,

“Hmmm. If there are that many bait fish swarming around, you’d think that more predators would be interested, too.”

Ahem.

Tension is a bit high, as Krista is pretty frightened to snorkel, and she’s grabbing on to my swimsuit for dear life. So, we’re not even to the reef yet when something , big, dark, and extremely fast swims right at us from out of the murky green. My first thought is: SHARK! Krista’s first thought is: SHARK! I shout something like “Holy smokes!” through my snorkel. Krista screams and practically rips my swim trunks off. Meanwhile the thing takes a good close look at us, just out of arm’s reach, turns in profile to give us a good look at it, and speeds back off into the turquoise haze.

It was a dolphin. According to Krista, a WILD dolphin. 

Scared the crap out of us, but what a thrill.  Krista made record time back to shore while I stayed out with the camera in a futile attempt to get a picture / video if it came back to see me again.  Although, Krista, from the safety of the shore, was able to watch it porpoising repeatedly just a few feet away from me, somehow I missed it as I was frantically scanning the water to try and take its picture in order to prove that this really did indeed happen.  No such luck --  though a couple other snorkelers saw it, too.

I ventured back out to the reef, but Krista was through with snorkeling for the day, and spent a while on the far less stressful task of gazing into the tide pools on the cay in the middle of the two coves – again filled with fish waiting for high tide.

But both of us were getting a bit sun-baked, so we headed back to our rattletrap Suzuki and went to find lunch. We decided on the Beach House on Club Med Beach / French Leave Beach (an aptly named beach, because when Hurricane Floyd wiped out Club Med, the French left.)   People talk about how Eleuthera has this effect on them that makes them feel like their stress and tension simply melt away when they get here. I have to admit that I hadn’t felt that, yet. Like I said, I relax poorly.  I’ve been excited and awed by the beauty of this place, and I’m sleeping well, but I wouldn’t say “melty.”

That was, until I sat down at the Beach House bar. 

This place is tropical perfection – situated in the shade on a stunningly long and beautiful beach (Club Med chose wisely), understated, weathered teak furniture, bottles lining the back shelf, and with some light reggae playing through speakers, something clicked inside of me. I could not remember being more at peace and relaxed than I was when I sat down at that bar.  Just….melty.

And the menu!! Both the tapas menu and the drink menu were extensive and full of fresh, light, and inventive dishes. Michelle does an amazing job. I had conch and lobster fritters with some gorgeous dipping sauce, and Krista had spicy shrimp, and we shared a large plate of  cubed feta, olives, tomatoes, and cucumber hunks drizzled with homemade Greek dressing.  These were our compromises. We wanted everything on the three-plus page menu. We kept it simple and ordered the house rum punch and Kalik beer for our drinks, although Krista was tempted by a drink called “(special time*) with the Captain.” She’d better start calling me “Captain.” (*Sanitized for the reading pleasure of our children.)

Afterward, we walked the length of Club Med beach stopping to swim now and then to cool off, and I took a detour and totally trespassed on the ruins of the old Club Med. I love ruins, whether it be Rome, or Epidaurus, or Eleuthera. COOOOL. Most of the buildings are gone, and the birds and lizards have moved into the abandoned property. But all of the foundations to the club remain, and that means that not only are all of the old marble-edged walkways still there, but so is all of the fancy tile and mosaic flooring, as is the very large pool in the middle of the main complex, looking very much intact and filled with fetid brown water.

PHOTOS (not mine): Club Med Eleuthera Ruins

 I was getting swarmed by the mosquitoes who have also taken residence in the standing water and un-mowed Bermuda grass. The imported coconut palms neglected and heavy with fruit, I knocked down a coconut for Krista (possibly for her to use in defense against wild dolphins), and we headed back to the car, and home for another one of Krista’s amazing meals. We usually share the cooking duties, and I love to cook creatively, but she is being a culinary genius on this trip. I’m happy to step aside for her brilliance.

Interestingly, on an island where beaches vie for supremacy in beauty and serenity, we haven’t really found any that we prefer to our beach here at Hut Point. 

Sure, some are a bit more postcard perfect, and others are somewhat better for swimming, but this beach at Oceanaire is long, beautiful, and EMPTY. In five days, we’ve seen three other people on this beach, and one of them was the person WAY down the way at Sky Beach who is responsible for grooming the beach in front of the resort. All three have been Bahamian. It’s not like we feel like we’re on a deserted island, as we know that there are people within a mile or so diameter. It’s just that we never see them on our long stretch of paradise.

That said, our Lighthouse Beach tour with Eleuthera Tours is tomorrow. This is supposed to be a knock-your-socks-off spectacular beach. So we’ll see. Bring it, Lighthouse.

We’ll report tomorrow night. Thanks for reading.