Life on a Bahamian Island

Little Farmers Cay is a quiet, lightly developed island, settled by a former slave and populated largely by descendants—about 50 or so. As on other cays in the Bahamas without large tourist resorts, sailboats like ours anchor or tie up to a mooring ball offshore and dinghy ashore to a small town dock.

 

Most islands will haul your trash to the local dump for about $5 a bag; just leave it in the bin on the public dock (at left in photo).

 

Little Farmers and other islands boast colorful houses and tiny convenience stores with a few groceries. The day the weekly-or-so mail boat arrives, fresh produce is available—but it disappears fast. Earlier this week, I scored a head of cabbage and a pound of carrots at Black Point on Great Guana Cay.

On Little Farmers Cay, I met lifetime resident Rend, who built a towering, three-story wooden house from salvaged wood, surrounded by gardens and fruit trees and chickens poking around the yard.

 

Rend picked pomegranates and guavas from his garden for me. Can’t wait for them to ripen!  His wooden chess board and another game board are handmade.

 

Rend’s daughter Jasmine, visiting from Nassau where she works in marketing t the Atlantis resort, just happens to be an old friend of our mechanic back in Nassau, Albert the Diesel Wizard! Passed a pleasant hour chatting with Jasmine and Rend about island life and their hopes for creating a guest house on their land, which stretches down to the sea.

 

We stopped for a cool drink and reserved a 6 pm dinner at one of the two restaurants on Little Farmers. Back on Echo II, we enjoyed our own homemade bean soup for lunch and took a long rest before jumping in for an afternoon swim. The current runs so swiftly between the islands, I did another "lap pool" swim--stroking with all my strength and making little headway against the current.

It’s a hot day here! Not much to do but live the island life.