Shopping Exuma Style

Shopping Exuma Style   …   Thursday 28 March 2013

We heard this morning that the mail boat had indeed arrived at Staniel Cay last night and so we jumped in the dinghy and headed to land. Would the produce have been unloaded yet? Would there be any left by the time we arrived? If we had to fight over the last lettuce would we win? I can tell you it was a "nail biter"! The general store turned out to be a cross between marine store and grocery, and happily on one side there were boxes of fresh produce for sale. We filled a couple of hand baskets with pineapple, melon, apples, oranges, lettuce, cauliflower, onions and spinach, and in contrast to our normal behaviour, we never once checked the price. This was gold and the price no longer seemed important. We managed to get all that we needed, but our impression was that the shop could be sold out by lunchtime and then presumably close up until the next boat arrived in a weeks time. Whilst in the store we heard a VHF radio announcement to all cruisers in Black Point harbor (where we anchored a few days ago) saying that the the mail ship had failed to deliver the supplies for their grocery and they didn't know when the next ship would be in. They wanted to alert the visiting boaters to avoid making an unnecessary trip. I guess we got lucky in Staniel Cay! 

Having stashed away our groceries, we raised anchor and in convoy with "Serendipity", travelled around to Sampson Cay about 5 miles to the north. We were impressed (shocked) by the number and size of mega-powerboats (100ft+) in this area. Some may have owners aboard, but many appear to be charter boats. We've seen crew scuttling around in the their tenders, setting up picnics, cocktail parties and volleyball nets on the beach. Some of the boats even have water-slides from their top decks into the sea. I can't imagine what it would cost to stay on one of these. Several of the islands in the Exumas are privately owned by the rich and famous, with imposing properties in gorgeous surroundings. In contrast, we wonder how many Bahamians get to own or even visit these beautiful areas of their country? It's hard to square away the incredible wealth of the tourists (including ourselves) and property owners with the relative poverty of the local people. 

Our plans are to spend the next few days working our way up the Exumas chain and then cross over the "Yellow Bank" to Nassau where we will meet up with at least one friend and possibly two, who will join us for the passage back to Florida. More on that to follow. It's likely that we will be out of email / internet contact until we reach Nassau sometime early / middle of next week.

p.s the instructions on our current internet site suggested the following to address slow network issues: step 1 - click screen, step 2 - take a swig of Kalik (local beer), step 3 - repeat steps 1 and 2 until internet speed seems really fast.

Mike

24 12.389 N, 76 28.675 W

This is the dock where we tied up for the "General Isles" grocery store - not your average supermarket parking lot

Another fantastic sunset - today at Sampson Cay