Harbour Island, The Bahamas

Caribbean, here we come!

We left GRK Valley with the help of cousin Royce, who came in ostensibly to rescue his friend Zack’s snowmobile, but ended up rescuing us.  The snow by this time was 8 feet high, but because of the rain, under-snow springs and creeks had eroded patches to bare ground, creating a treacherous snowmobile path.

Treacherous terrain

We packed up and closed down the cabin and packed the three cats together in one small cat carrier.  Sasha hopped on one snowmobile with Royce, the cats balanced precariously in front of her on her lap, while Todd, Tia, and I followed in a second snowmobile with a sled. 

RRRRRRRrrrrrrrr!  Royce’s snowmobile shot ahead as they passed a particularly mucky sinkhole not 10 feet into our ride out.  Royce, Sasha, and the box of cats all fell off, the cats tumbling through the mud.  The corner of the cat carrier had caught the throttle, sending the machine hurtling forward and bucking off all passengers.  Luckily no human or cat was hurt, just a little muddy.  What a way to start a Caribbean vacation! 

Angelfish, here we come!

Connecting through Chicago, we spent two nights with Uncle David and Aunt Jen, sampling the deep-dish pizza, visiting the Chicago Art Institute along with Todd’s cousin Chris and his kids Isabel and Evan, and playing with dogs Rory and Monte.   Then it was off to our first stop:  Harbour Islands, The Bahamas.

We loved these dogs!!!!

Hanging at the Chicaco Art Institute with cousin Isabel

In May of 1992 I was in full teacher burnout at Options School in Washington, D.C., a dropout prevention school where the nearly-unmanageable kids were kicking my butt.  To revive myself, I asked for a week off and booked Todd and me a vacation in the Bahamas.  I had read a travel article about Harbour Island, with pink sand beaches and turquoise waters, and wanted nothing more than to escape.

Impossibly beautiful

Harbour Island is a sleepy northern strip off the main island of Eleuthera, a long, skinny, flat stretch of raised coral reef covered with tropical pines, mangrove, and scrub brush, with the occasional palm tree.   Dunmore Town was at one point the capital of the Bahamas during English rule, and its quaint clapboard houses harken back to an older time.

Heading in on the airplane

Todd introduced me to SCUBA diving here in 1992, persuading me to tell the dive master that I was already certified, and whispering directions on how to SCUBA while we rode out to the first dive site.  When we all hopped into the water, the strange sensation of mouth-breathing through a regulator convinced me that Todd had forgotten to turn on my air properly, and I panicked back up to the surface.  The dive master assured me that all was well, and we descended 90 feet to immense coral canyons.  I was hooked.

A pufferfish, one of my favorites

Underwater wonderland

Since then, I had wanted to return to Harbour Island.  When I sweetened the plan to live in GRK Valley and do homeschooling by adding a month in the Caribbean during the depth of winter, I suggested the pink sand beaches I so fondly remembered. 

Yes, it really looks like this

Tia and Sasha knuckled down to complete online PADI learning courses, and we arrived in Dunmore Town on January 22nd.  A furious but short-lived storm interrupted the pool session the next day and gave us a taste of what the Caribbean must be like during a hurricane.  But by the following day all was calm, and we dove on reefs that Todd and I could remember from 25 years ago.

Barracuda abound in these waters

Tia learns to dive!

Todd searches for sharks

Fresh lobster dinner

We stayed in a lovely little house on a hill surrounded by five acres of tropical garden, with a secret path down to the glorious pink sand beach. I swam every day in this most beautiful of settings, the lightly coral-pink sands contrasting with the turquoise waves and the darker curves of reef.  I dragged the girls out to swim with me once, to their dismay, but I just had to make sure they could appreciate such beauty!

Our home for a week

Simple and sunny

The diving was fun:  we swam through Sea Gardens (the girls saw a turtle and a nurse shark, while we gaped at huge rays) and the reefs off of Pink House.  Our second day was spent at those well-remembered coral canyons, now called Plateau, and a site near Eleuthera’s Glass Bridge and cliffs, where you could watch the surge crash onto rocks from under the water. 

Trying to nap with all these pesky divers swimming about

The delicacy and importance of corals was a big part of the curriculum

Yummy conchs!

The girls’ curriculum consisted of reef ecology, Caribbean history and writing about their experiences.  We learned that back in the 1980s someone released several of their pet lionfish into the Floridian subtropical waters.  The lionfish (from the tropical Pacific) found the Atlantic quite to their liking, as it is free of the parasites and egg predators that keep their population in check in the Pacific, and by 2016 they had colonized most of the Caribbean, gorging on native fry.  Tia and Sasha’s goal now is to become Lionfish Zookeepers, which involves spearingfishing the burgeoning lionfish populations and selling them to local restaurants.

Illegal aliens

Click here for the girls' favorite video on spearing lionfish!

We rode bikes around the island one day and dreamed of buying a house here.  Sasha and I found this one particularly romantic and compelling:

Sweet and breezy

Our last day was spent diving a reef called Split Head, where we encountered a Caribbean reef shark determined to take a nap no matter how close we got.  We saw a number of the bad lionfish, as well as garden eels, huge angelfish, and two enormous tuna, along with the ubiquitous schools of colorful reef fish.

Sunlit waters

We ended our diving on the wreck of the Amiporra, a ship carrying fertilizer that had run aground after a fire broke out on board in 1972.  Just the tip shows now, and it is fascinating how the ocean life has nearly obscured every square inch of the ship’s surface with corals, algaes, and sand.  A school of barracuda kept watch at the stern, and giant lobster hid underneath huge coral-plated metal shelves.  It was eerie to swim through the crusty housings and pass by the huge engines and machinery, softened now by the colorful corals and enlivened by the darting fish. 

Wreck diving is wild!

Harbour Island was just as beautiful as I remembered it.  Tia and Sasha pored through the local real-estate magazine, imagining the places we could buy once we won the lottery.  

Now this is the life...

We stopped through Nassau on our way to Cuba.  Not wanting to fork out the $40 for a taxi when there was a bus, I harangued my family into pulling their suitcases down to the bus stop.  When the fifth taxi stopped to ask if we needed help, I asked the very friendly driver how much.  His charm, friendly demeanor, and winning smile (as well as the grumbling of my kids) convinced us to hop in. Bahama John, as he calls himself, was a wealth of information and completely entertaining.  We had such a good time talking with him that we booked him back to the airport the next day!  If you are in Nassau, look him up: johnrbraynen@gmail.com

Pretty much all we saw of Nassau

We loved the Bahamas.  One thing’s likely:  we will return!