Turning north

 At Staniel Cay our good friend Sharon joins us. She'll be staying until we're back in the US. No worries about pickup and dropoff schedules! 

After a few days buddy boating with S/V Spitfire from Big Majors to Black Point to Little Farmers Cay, we make the big decision that we're tired of fighting into the southeast wind along an island chain that stretches to the southeast. We're enticed to sail another difficult day SE to the popular harbor at Georgetown, but we'll leave it for some other year. Sailing downwind is sooo much easier. We later hear from Spitfire that they had a very rough two days to Georgetown. Glad we didn't. 

Back to Black Point, and we hang out with some local women while they weave long strips from local palm into material to be sold to tourists on the resorts. There's not much economic opportunity on these small outer islands, and plaiting can be done anywhere. Most young people move to Nassau or Freeport to find work. Each day we see water taxis taking people to nearby Staniel Cay for work. 

The next island north, Bitter Guana Cay, is uninhabited except for a population of endangered Bahamian Rock Iguanas. These lizards were once the dominant herbivore throughout the islands, but hunting for food and the pet trade plus the introduction of feral dogs, cats and pigs, plus real estate pressure has reduced them to just six islands. Each island has it's own unique sub-species, as they can't get from one island to another. 

We motor the short distance and anchor off the beach. Tourist boats come over from Staniel Cay, disgorge their passengers for twenty minutes, and cart them back. We have a luxury of time. The iguanas are habituated to humans, who bring fruit to lure them in for a photo op. As soon as our dinghy brings us to the beach, they come running from the scrub, but stop ten feet away. That's close enough! They have been known to bite. 

It's a dramatic beach even without the wildlife. At one end is a huge limestone cliff, jagged in blazing white with crevices for the iguanas. We find a trail on the other end, crisscrossed with iguana tracks, which brings us to the Atlantic side of the island. Mostly craggy limestone, deeply crenellated as the limestone disolves differentially leaving an otherworldly surface reminiscent of scoria (which is volcanic) of pinnacles, holes, sponge and vugs. You certainly don't want to fall here. And it tears up your shoes.