Finally! A walk in the park
Since we enjoy visiting parks and gardens in the States, it was a given that we’d join the Bahamas National Trust to also support the Bahamian national park system. After fortification at Tippy’s (see Day 2, Part 1), we were finally ready to explore the Levy Native Plant Preserve, created in 2009 by the wife of Leon Levy (co-founded Oppenheimer & Co.). Longtime residents of Eleuthera, in his memory, she wanted to create a living classroom of botanical abundance and history.
Trails wind all through the Preserve with so much flora to take in. One plant that really caught our eye was the Thatch Palms because their attached fronds almost make a circle. Warning here comes an interesting educational tidbit: Before Columbus, the native Lucayans attached dried thatch palm leaves to the roof frames on their huts to keep out the elements. Thatch Palm is still used to make “straw plait,” the process of braiding strips of dried thatch palm leaves and weaving them into a variety of items, such as straw baskets, bags, hats.
Thatch palm is pretty cool, but there’s supposed to be a tower around here where we can catch the cool breeze. The trails are the “wiggle-est” we have ever been on, so a couple of miles seems much longer and on a warmish day we may not smell so fresh; good thing the Welcome Center had bug spray, because the mosquitoes are finding us…
I am not leaving this breezy tower unless you promise we can find the turtle pond using that twisty map.
Perhaps we shouldn’t have sat down?
Along the way to the turtle pond (which way does this map go again? I think we took the long way to Ethan’s Tower…twice), we did see some interesting things.
During her overview of the park map, the nice young woman at the Welcome Center, Jewel (nicknamed JuJu), told us the pond was home to more than 30 special freshwater turtles, the Trachemys terrapen, sometimes called Jamaican Sliders. She called them “lying turtles,” as in they tell visitors they’re never fed. Man was that true. Turtles leaving wakes! They made a beeline straight for us as soon as we arrived. It was hilarious! Definitely ended our visit to the park with smiles and laughter.
There is so much to write about the Preserve we could go on for quite a while, but we still needed to get back to the boat. And of course, that was an adventure. We decided to use the “Breez” connection. So, a call to Ronnie’s (the dive bar).
“Hey Quincy, is Breez there?”
“No? Well, he mentioned a dude who gives rides.”
“Yep, that’s him.”
“Oh, his name is Buff? Thanks for the phone number.”
“Hey, Buff! Can you pick us up? We are at the Preserve.”
“Yes, we walked here.”
“You can? Great!”
Ten minutes later, Buff (let’s just say Buff is a big guy) arrives in a Nissan Teana (Maxima) complete with Japanese console and voice prompts; and whoosh off we go! We say whoosh because Buff being a local knew where all the subtle potholes were, and hence drove at meteoric speeds on the straightaways! Which was handy, because the hardware store could not fill our propane tank, so in a flash, we were at the propane supply place (at least 10 mi. north – less than eight minutes!). Not to be discouraged by a grumpy dude who first told us no, Todd went over and “sweet talked” the accompanying older gentleman into filling our tank. Whoosh, back to the harbor, thanks Buff! Oops, the wind had shifted again, and the bay was “a boiling!”
Think about sorta jumping down off a dock from your butt onto a bucking bronco (dinghy)… Back across the churning bay to the Mare, get the bronco fastened to the crane and back up on board, and we are home exhausted. “Pedometer reading” for the day? More than 5.5 miles….
Ah, the pleasant sound of roosters….
Our Travels 