July 8-9, 2004 - Sand Escapades

White American Suspicion

When we parked to go into the ice cream place, I led Leia behind the building instead of past a group of Bahamian teems just sitting on a car across the street from the parking lot. I could tell she preferred to walk past them, but I'm for discretion being the better part of valor. It wasn't ALL because they were black, but a bunch of young men hanging out no what where or what color are potential trouble, especially when it comes to women.

I never want anything bad to happen to my Leia, so I chose the safer route. On the way back to the car, though, she HAD to walk by them. She explained that she had to not feel afraid here and did not look up when we walked by the car where they still were. Thank God the kids weren't any trouble.

Radio Ga-Ga

After the ice cream shop, we went back to the bungalow to settle in for the night and write postcards, my journal, etc., taking note of the bounty of stars once again. Thank God for Eleuthera!

Dialing down the AM band on the radio, we listened to the Bahamas station for a while, but it kept going from stronger to weaker and back again. It was kind of annoying, so we turned to a country music station of all things! Is this what it has come down to?

Snorkeling, Atlantic Style

We woke up late-ish and had a leisurely breakfast on the porch. The day was already warm and promised to become more so later.

Good old Quentin stopped by to check things out and I was able to get a lot of good pictues of him which will be fun to post on our website.

Leia wanted to see if she could a hold of Sandee, who was only going to be on the island one more day. At the same time, she wanted to go swimming and as for me, I wanted to go snorkeling. I really had never been snorkeling - what little I did, it was when I was a kid - but I was determined to at least try it again. What's more, I was able to convince Lee to try it with me. After all, we bought snorkeling masks for the occasion.

We got down to the Atlantic side around noon and started testing out our new equipment. What a rush! We had so much fun exploring around the coral reef beds just in front of our beach. All kinds of fish and other creatures could be seen - and without my contacts, just the snorkeling mask, which was amazing!

After about an hour of fighting the Atlantic waves and undertow, we decided to find a place on the Caribbean side to explore.

Leia consulter her Eleuthera guide and we settled on a place in Tarpum Bay. After a brief pit stop, we packed our gear and hit the road.

A Dumb Tourist Maneuver (Part 1)

We drove to down to (illegible) on the Queens Highway as instructed, then came back north about 2.8 miles to find the dirt road to take us back to the shoreline. When we got there, I could see it had been a place where people came to hang out … lots of beer bottles, an old pair of men's thongs, etc. littered the joint. I concluded this wasn't exactly what we were looking for.

In Leia's everlasting quest to please me, she found what she thought was a road along the shoreline. Now our rental car seemed quite capable and I was game (if not a little hesitant), so I drove down to what I hoped could be the next access road.

I could feel the ground was soft - all sand - as I drove out, but our front wheel drive rental seemed to take it well. However, we were fast running out of "road", so I managed to turn the car around with the intention of going back the way we came.

Unfortunately, the place where I chose to turn was probably the worst place of all. I gave the car the gas, but it was just enough to get us over the berm. The undercarriage got enough up in the sand pile that got quickly built up by our spinning tires. We were stuck trying to drive on the freakin' beach! How stupid of me to risk this, I thought to myself.

First, I tried rocking the car, but only succeed in turning up more sand and digging us further into the bank. We piled out and each took turns pushing while the other one drive, but no luck even budging the thing!

We then put the car in neutral and both tried to push, but the car wouldn't move at all. What were we going to do?

I pulled out all my Boy Scout / Webelos weather lore (which amounted to squat, really) and found a found a couple of boards to put under the tires to add a little traction. However, the front tires just turned uselessly and I only succeeded in burning more rubber.

Leia and I stock of our situation. She finally figured out that our undercarriage was successfully keeping the tires from getting the purchase they needed. The rear tires were fine if it had been a rear- or four-wheel drive car. Then we would've be out of there in a second. "If" is a useless word, unfortunately.

We used our former makeshift platform wood pieces to dig out the tires and as much of the sand blocking the undercarriage that we could. Again, we tried pushing while the other one drove, but had absolutely no luck.

Needless to say, the weather was hot and humid and we were sweating unrelentingly. We tried more digging and more pushing, but to no avail.

Next Time

More on our sand driving snafu ... and we actually do go snorkeling on the Caribbean side.