At the end of our half day, we still felt we had so much to see in the South. We had not seen Hamilton’s caves or the museum. and Gordon’s Beach looked spectacular. We decided to do the museum, take some side roads and go to Gordon’s for lunch to enjoy the beach. Gordon’s is at the southern tip of the island. We called a contact for a cave tour but did not get a response. The caves require a guide.
We made a few side trips just looking at google maps. One was to a place called Blissful Garden but it seemed to be someone’s home. The other was to a road that seemed to go between the water and the mangroves out to a point. There we found the Long Island Bonefishing Lodge, a lovely structure on a point surrounded by mangroves on one side and flats on the other.
The people at the tourism place told us that all roads led to a house or a beach. Unless a place was marked private, you could go there and if anyone had a concern, you should just apologize. No one seemed to be around the lodge so we walked out on a road that is under water at high tide.
Long Island has a public restroom at many crossroads and for the most part, they are very clean and maintained. Those that we visited had lovely murals on the outer walls.
There was a power outage at the museum when we arrived but they let us in anyway. The library is in the same building. The small museum is nice but did not have as much history as I would have liked. There were no pictures of the caves or the Lucayan engravings found there and no chronicle of the many churches or the Blue Hole or local boat building, sailing or fishing. They had a nice replica of a Bahamian hut with the tabby walls and thatched roof, the outdoor kitchen and sleeping mats. It seems so hard to live on the island now, it was amazing to imagine how they lived then. The museum also had some lovely local art.
Our next stop was Gordon’s Beach at the southern tip of the island. it was still about a 40 minute drive from the museum. the roads were good but at times we had to slow or stop for goats.
We passed through small settlements. We made a right turn at the Clarence Town crossroads and soon reached a road that ended at a beach after crossing a bridge over a mangrove lagoon.
The beach was spectacular with white sand the consistency of flour. We went to Gordon’s to have some lunch. It was basic fare, Cracked conch, lobster grouper or chicken. This means fried in a batter, David had chicken, I had conch. It was delicious, chewy but not tough, like fried clam strips. We had coleslaw that was very good, fries and some plantains to take home. The plantains were the best I have had, just enough sweet, good texture, a fine outer crisp but not battered.
Gordon’s was a scene. When we arrived, Leroy was painting murals on the wall beside the stairs. He had penciled an outline and was painting a fish. Such a talent. We complimented his art.
Inside, Ernest the owner, was holding court. The cook was hustling and bustling but Ernest while working, was talking. He ran out of lobster and called someone to bring some. Shortly thereafter, a ziploc bag arrived with lobster tails. A fisherman was looking for some cut bait. Ernest gave him a little baggy of conch scraps. If Ernest was in the kitchen, you could go behind the bar and get a drink out of the cooler. You just had to tell him what you had so he could write it on an old fashioned order pad with a stubby pencil. When it was time to settle up, he added it all up by “using my brain.”
We met a group who comes to Long Island twice a year. We keep hearing the same thing from all we have met. “Once you’ve been here, you will be back.”
Ernest had some good stories. He told the story of the last person to die in the Dean’s Blue Hole. We had heard the story from the women on the beach yesterday but I wanted to hear it from Ernest’s perspective . The last person who died there was a Bahamas fisherman. He was a good swimmer and diver. His mother in law had died and it was the day of her funeral. After services, the family gathered for a celebration of life at the blue hole. At some point the man went down and never came up. The family hired underwater drones to locate the body which was found in the hole but could not be brought up.
Ernest also talks about how they put some sort of ink into the blue hole at one time and found it coming out somewhere far offshore. The whole thing is eerie. And if you haven’t had enough, watch the netflix documentary “The Deepest Breath”, about free divers. A lot of the dives take place at Dean’s Blue Hole.
I learned several things from the movie. Once you reach about 60 feet on a free dive, you no longer float but fall with no effort from the pressure. You have to fight that same pressure to return to the surface.
After lunch, we walked the beautiful beach and swam. We then headed back north in order to get water, return the car and dinghy back to the boat before dark. We had one side trip to look at the ocean side. We headed up several steep hills and then started heading down. We stopped as it looked like the road was leading right into the ocean. We turned around.
We made it back, got gas, got water and took all of our gear to the dinghy. We then headed back to return the car.
We had planned to walk back to the dinghy beach. I asked Alton at the car rental if there was a path we could take to avoid the road and he offered to take us there. He is a very nice man who owns the business. He grew up on Long Island and, after living in Nassau for many years, plans to stay.
We were back on the boat for sunset. A great day.
