It was a unique experience exploring a small island in The Bahamas on a Tuesday in November! Our ship tendered some distance away from the island and tenders ran continually from ship to shore delivering and picking up vacationers. The name of this particular island was re-named Coco Cay by Royale Caribbean, which seemed to irritate our tour guide (a native Bahamian) a little. The name that the locals know it by is Little Stirrup Cay. Our tour guide told us many details about it, including these facts I've copied from Wikipedia:
"Little Stirrup Cay, Bahamas, is one of the Berry Islands, a collection of cays and small islands and is located approximately 55 miles north of Nassau. The island is less than a mile (around one kilometer) wide from east to west and less than 200 yards (meters) from north to south. The east end is the center of recreational activities with beaches fronting a coral basin where manatee, rays, and numerous fish can be seen. There is a rocky inlet on the north side of the island large enough for the tenders to operate from. Nature trails run the entire length and width of the island."
This is what the tenders looked like. They are small ships that can seat up to 200 people. We rode on top both to the island and back to the ship to have the best views, but you can also feel the rocking of the waves more on top. (The date stamp is incorrect on the following pictures. These were all taken onTuesday, November 27, 2012)
The ride to the island took several minutes and was great fun all by itself! Feeling the waves rock the small ship with the wind in our faces, watching the Monarch get smaller and watching the island get larger as we approached was all pretty cool. We also got to see folks doing the parasailing, which looked like a lot of fun. It was pretty expensive, though, and just a 3 minute ride, so we decided to just watch others partake in that this time. Maybe someday!
They do go up pretty high and I'm sure they have a great view up there!
Coming up to the dock at Cococay!
Here we all are, ready to explore the island and relax some on the beach!
The first thing we did was go on a guided nature walk:
We saw iguanas, sea crabs, and lizards:
Here is our tour guide, who did a great job talking about the native edible and medicinal plants of the Bahamas. Being born and raised here, he was very knowledgeable about Bahamian history and culture. His hometown is Nassau.
Here are just a few of the things he talked about:
Here we are along the tropical trail. Back home everything is pretty dead and brown this time of year, so it was refreshing to see all the green plants and trees.
I'm carrying our beach supplies:
Matthew and Lisa carried Timothy when he got tired walking:
There were some ruins of ancient Indian dwellings. I forget the name of the people group, but he said that they were not related to the Mayans.
This is a giant fire-ant colony not far from the trail. Stay away from that!
They also have a poison-wood tree that is like our poison ivy except it is a whole tree! Stay away from those, too!
Here is Lisa and Me in front of the Love Vine Exit:
Our nature walk ended at a beach on a more secluded side of the island. We basically had this area to ourselves because most of the folks stayed at the 1st beach they saw off the ship!
That's Lisa on one of the beach chairs with our stuff on the picnic table. Aren't the palm trees and ocean picturesque? Meanwhile the children played in the ocean. Our guide said that people can walk a couple miles out in the ocean at this spot without the water getting much over knee-high.
We walked all along the beach until we got back to the more inhabited part of the island where lunch was waiting on us. We almost missed it because they were only serving between 11:30 and 2:00 and it was almost 2:00 by the time we got to "Blackbeard's Grille". I'm glad we got there in time because it was nice to sit and relax at the picnic tables eating hamburgers,hotdogs, mac and cheese, and chips. They bring this food from the ship and like all the food, there is no extra charge.
Here are the children in front of a sign for Blackbeard's Grille. (Not sure where Timothy was at this exact moment. He may have been chasing sea-gulls.)
Speaking of Blackbeard, I may as well show you his grave we found on our nature walk. Our guide told us that there is a legend that the body of Blackbeard was taken here and buried, but he doubts that it is true. The seas around this island were a favorite of Blackbeard's and he spent a lot of time on New Providence where Nassau is, but he was killed in a battle off the Outer Banks of North Carolina. His head was cut off and hung from the bowsprit of the sloop captained by Lieutenet Robert Maynard so that Maynard could collect the reward for Blackbeard. Blackbeard's body was probably thrown overboard into the ocean, but if it managed to make it back out to the Caribbean, this could have been where it was buried!
This "Please Do Not Feed the Birds" picture is a classic because as my head was turned, a seagull swooped down from the sky and carried off an entire whole hot dog, right out of the bun on my plate! I was not meaning to feed the birds, but I guess the seagull couldn't read the sign and decided to just help himself! I was pretty mad, until Erica gave me one of her extra hot dogs.
After we were all filled with the hearty grub of Blackbeard's Grille, we did a little shopping and found our way back to the ship via the tender. The shop owners were very nice and were glad to see us. It felt like we had the island to ourselves!
On the tender back to the ship we spied some comfortable looking hammocks that we somehow missed earlier. Oh well, there wasn't really enough time to take a nice hammock nap anyway.
Our pilot was having a fun time rolling us left and right on purpose.
It was pretty interesting to watch the tender dock alongside the Monarch:
Many thanks to Christina, who took most of the pictures used for this post. Here she is in her cabin later that day. Isn't she beautiful!
The following day found us exploring Nassau, which I will cover in a future post.
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