QUASI-LOCAL

Back to the land of the everlasting fragrant flowering frangipani.
Don't forget to double-click on the photos to enlarge them.



Flying high above the Florida coastline we look down on Cape Canaveral and see the runway where the space shuttle lands. The sky is clear, the weather promises to be good for a crossing of the Gulf Stream and as we approach Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, the reef strewn waters appear below. just when we had got used to the beautiful air-conditioning of the flight we are back out in the 90 degree heat and the 100 percent humidity.



Our second flight to Treasure Cay arrives five minutes after the last ferry leaves, and rather than having to spend the night on the 'boon-docks' we call them up on a taxi's VHF radio and charter the ferry to come back and get us. We won't mention the cost of this exercise....................... , but we do arrive at Green Turtle Cay to be able to sleep on board SVEA for the night. Everything is the way we left it. All the tourists are now gone. There are only the locals left. We are not tourists. We are a special group. We are 'QUASI-LOCALS'. The locals have gotten to know us, so the greetings are warmer and the smiles more genuine. They want to know if we have bought a house on the island. Kind of feels like it. We bring SVEA to the fuel dock and find a woman preparing 'cracked conch'. Not sure where the 'cracked' part comes from, but I suspect the way she beats the living daylights out of the conch, that her wrist, the table, the pounder or the table legs will eventually crack, hence the name 'cracked conch'. Tastes great when lightly fried. The pelican hopes to score when things go flying with all that pounding..............



Now that the tourist season is over, we see lots of other things, like this speed trap. A cop car making sure the golf carts don't do more that 5 miles per hour. Speaking of which, we find the sublime and the ridiculous on the road at Green Turtle. One of the young guys working in the boat yard has bought himself this GT Mustang, a real muscle car, which he should be able to wind up in the only hundred yard straight section on the island. Our guess is that he should be able to do at least 15 mph, and the whole island will hear it. On the other hand, we found this hermit crab trying to cross the road........ very, very, very slowly. Turns out he only had one leg. Perhaps he lost the other one trying to cross it. The queen put him back near the water's edge, which hopefully is where he(she) wanted to go. It was hard to tell. Having one leg and a heavy shell makes you go in circles.




The two different faces of the Bahamas. The one on the left is Johnny Kool, formerly Haitian, now Bahamian, sort of.............................. and on the right is Miss Babbs, the owner of 'Pineapples', the pool-side restaurant and bar, shown in the photo alongside. She also owns the fuel dock, cottages and various other assets. Formerly American and now Bahamian, sort of............................ The fact that they both have that cute little gap in their teeth does not mean that they are related to each other in any way.......................