WEST INDIAN TRAVELOGUE
Riverdave’s Journal
2-26-06
While staying at our family cottage on the Bahamian Island
of Abaco, my wife and I took a short plane hop to the island of
Eleuthera just to the south. We stayed in a flat across from the Rev.
Charles Sweeting in the town of Current in North Eleuthera. Rev.
Sweeting was the pastor of the Methodist Church in the town of
Cherokee, Abaco when our family cottage was purchased by my father in
1972.
Like Cherokee, the town of Current is a somewhat isolated
town and there are many kinship ties between these two communities.
Unlike Cherokee, Current is now a racially mixed community with a black
majority. But the owner of the flat where we stayed, a Mr. Algreen,
appeared to be of neither strain. We were told that there is a good
bit of indigenous Arawak indian blood still flowing in the veins of
many of the residents of North Eleuthera, more so than on any other
island in the Bahamian Archipelago.
The town of Current is a seaside fishing village, so we
continued our island ritual of walking down to the waterfront to watch
the evening sunset on the shallow western side. Sunset at low tide is
exceptionally beautiful. If the water also happens to be dead calm, as
it often is, for several minutes the sea turns an incredible pink from
shore to horizon giving a surreal aura to the entire surrounding area.
I had never witnessed anything quite like that before. This startling
phenomenon doesn't happen on the eastern Atlantic side of the island
because both deeper water and rougher waves keep the water a dark blue
in appearance.
For dinner in Current, I bought fish to cook from local kids
who were fishing with hand lines from the shore. They were catching
what they called "crawshad." It looked like some species of jack, but
suited our taste quite nicely. Later, when I got a chance to snorkel
further down the coast, I noticed that this fish was very abundant in
the sea.
We first visited the two largest old colonial settlements, Harbor
Island, slurred as "Briland" by locals, and Spanish Wells, both of
which are reachable only by ferries. They have quaint old sections
with tidy colonial homes. We walked around Briland and rented a golf
cart for exploring Spanish Wells, roaming the old streets and peering
into the trim little tropical gardens maintained by their owners.
Harbor island is a tourist town and Spanish Wells is fast
becoming a retirement community for wealthy Floridians, but we enjoyed
learning how these offshore island communities make their livelihood,
comparing them to Abaco's offshore cay communities. We think Abaco's
cays still maintain a quieter atmosphere that we prefer.
We swam at the Harbor Island beach, and found it, along with
most of Eleuthera's other many beaches, to be much bigger and in better
shape than Abaco's beaches. So if one is solely intent on finding long
pristine sections of pink sand beaches, Eleuthera is a great place to
find them. Of course sitting on sunny beaches is not the main reason
Josie and I like the Bahamas.
In fact, both of us cannot tolerate a lot of the direct sun
that one gets in exposed beaches. After a dip of ten minutes, we
usually head for a shady sea cave or protective forest. But the
contrast of the cool, clear, sparkling waters and a sunny day is a most
exhilarating winter experience. Winter water temperatures run about 73
degrees in Eleuthera and in Abaco. On a cloudy cool day this is not an
inviting swimming condition, but on sunny days it is the very ultimate
in a refreshing ocean bathing experience.
Next our attention shifted to exploring the island's other
natural features. North Eleuthera contains what is known as the
Preacher's Cave, a large limestone cave with a forty foot high ceiling
that recesses into the limestone hill about 150 feet deep. It's post
Arawakan history begins with a band of 200 British Loyalists who headed
south from Charleston, South Carolina after the American Revolutionary
war ended and were then shipwrecked off shore from Eleuthera. They
took refuge in this immense cave for months as they began to build more
permanent dwellings. Their descendants now live in Spanish Wells and
Harbor island. The cave was also used as a place of worship by this
group and others and hence it's name today - the Preacher's Cave.
It is a startling visual contrast to sit inside this immense,
dark, cathedral-like cavity and peer out its entrance to the colorful
lush tropical vegetation that surrounds it. Rev. Sweeting proudly
informed us that all of his relatives, on both sides of his family,
trace their history back to the shipwrecked band that took refuge in
the cave. I pondered that situation while meditating deep inside the
cave. What an amazing sense of connectedness to a single geographical
space he must have - to be able to trace all his origins back to a
particular seaside cave two hundred years ago! His mother and father
were even fourth cousins.
We rented a car and drove 110 miles to the southern tip of
the island. Unlike Abaco, there are no pine forests on Eleuthera and
instead of being flat, its terrain consists of rolling hills.
The northern half of Eleuthera is covered with a resurging bush forest
that is reclaiming the land after years of experiencing a once
flourishing citrus and pineapple industry. Unfortunately, agriculture
does not seem to be a priority of the present government of the
Bahamas.
Once a big exporter of tropical fruits and vegetables, it is
now a net importer of food by a huge margin. It seems that the
government of the Bahamas has chosen to invest in a limited number of
expensive and fashionable, high end tourism projects at the expense of
sustainable agriculture for its people. From my perspective, this
looks like a mistake.
Much of the southern half of the island is covered with a
wild and untouched West Indian subtropical hardwood forest. We went
there on a mission to find the great lizard cuckoo, a large indigenous
bird of the island. Although we found the more common mangrove cuckoo
as we walked the final mile to the southern lighthouse point, the
lizard cuckoo failed to make its presence known to us. But the end of
the island is a spectacular place with huge rocks jutting out into the
sea and a pristine, coconut palm lined beach. It was a very hot day
and we barely had enough water to remain comfortable as we traipsed
across that wild and rugged place.
While failing to bag that new exotic species on this trip, my
interest in the more familiar mockingbird was reignited. I was
impressed with how much this common bird is the dominant singer in both
Eleuthera and in Abaco. There are actually two species of mockingbirds
in the Bahamas - the northern mockingbird which we also have in North
Carolina, and the Bahama Mockingbird, which looks almost identical but
which is a shade browner than the northern species that is gray. But
both sing their cheery repertoires with great vigor throughout these
islands at all hours of both day and night, town and countryside.
Probably my favorite experience on Eleuthera was the
discovery of an extensive banyan tree grove in the countryside north of
Rock Sound. We parked the car, climbed through a barbed wire fence and
found a string of banyan trees that stretched at least a half mile. We
asked permission to walk from the local Hatian laborers that were
wielding machetes in a nearby field. I asked them what they called
this magnificent tree and their reply was, "Hey mon, whah tree?" It is
amazing how often we fail to notice what is in our very own backyard!
The banyan (Ficus bengalensis) is one of the largest and most
uniquely structured trees in the world. It is a native of India, but is
planted ornamentally in all tropical regions of the world. The
strangler fig, Ficus aurea, is the largest native tree in the Bahamas.
My own history with the banyan tree goes back to my first encounter
with it on the campus of the American University of Beirut in 1974. I
was so transfixed by its fabulous shape and size, that I have since
sought the tree out whenever I am in tropical lands, often finding them
in city parks as ornamental trees.
But this banyan grove in Eleuthera has a wilder country
setting. It is actually located in the middle of a sprawling cattle
ranch. My guess is that it was planted a couple of hundred years ago,
perhaps even in Spanish times, as shade for cattle from the intense
tropical sun. The banyan's complex structure of massive horizontal
limbs and vertical prop roots reminds me of structures that I used to
build with "tinker toys" as a child. If I was visiting planet earth
from another cosmic realm and had only an hour to see the most wondrous
sight on earth, I would ask to be taken to a mature old banyan tree!
This Eleuthera tree is the best example I have ever seen.
There may be better examples of banyans in India, but there
we would have to cope with cobras hiding in its buttresses and naked
hindu holy men camped out underneath its sacred branches. All we had
to contend with at the Eleuthera tree were a few friendly brahma cows,
hummingbirds and anoles (arboreal lizards). There are no venomous
snakes in the Bahamas. Although nowhere advertised as a tourist
attraction, in my opinion this is the focal point of the island. It
was worth the time and effort to travel to Eleuthera just to experience
this wonder of a tree.
Shortly after we left the banyan tree, we picked up a Nassau
newspaper and read with excitement that the U.S. Supreme Court had
unanimously ruled in favor of legalizing for a church in New Mexico,
the sacramental use of the Amazonian visionary plant medicine known as
“Ayahuasca.” Attorney General Gonzales prosecuted the church but he
was soundly overruled on this one, based on the defendant’s use of the
Religious Freedom Act of 1978. This bodes well for the future use of
this wonderful tropical medicine in the United States that I have
worked with for eight years now. The Bahamian columnist reporting the
event gave an amazingly positive philosophical spin on the event.
While in the south we spent one night at a small resort in a
hexagonal cottage atop a dune overlooking the Atlantic side of the
island. It was refreshing to be up high with a view after being in the
low flat in the town of Current. I snorkeled among the coral rocks and
we watched a fabulous sunrise to the east the next morning. Josie
recalled times spent with her mother who loved to spend winter months
on the Island of Bequia further south.
In our six days of travel in Eleuthera, we ate in restaurants
only three times. We prepared all our other meals ourselves from
materials we picked up at small local markets and bought from kids on
the beach. This allowed us to "picnic" our way through the island, the
preferred "Owen" style of traveling.
We flew from Eleuthera back to Abaco in a six seater
airplane. We got to see the town of Cherokee from the air as we
passed over all our familiar spots, flying at an altitude of just one
thousand feet. Weather during our Eleuthera trip was perfect, with
highs in the lower eighties and lows around seventy with light sea
breezes. Since we have been back in Cherokee, the temperature has been
mild, but at present lots of wind and rain is coming in ahead of the
cold front descending into the Southeastern U.S. We saw the
encircling frigate birds yesterday, as they always show up just before
a storm. It is now mid-afternoon, but it is so dark outside the street
lights are on!
Our neighbor's dog "Ninja" lies lazily on our front porch
today as it rains, dreaming of more promising weather to accompany us
on our next bush hike. He showed up as an abandoned puppy the year
Josie and I were married here in Cherokee. He took refuge across the
street from us under the Methodist Church until he was adopted by our
neighbors Gurney and Katherine Sands. Ninja really is a "bush dog"
too. I have noticed how he browses on a particular shrub in the forest
that has a square stem, so it must be in the mint family. My guess is
that he does this to deal with the medicine his owner gives him for his
occasional seizures. I think that these seizures are really the
altered states of consciousness that a bona fide bush dog goes through
in the course of his island life. you see, Ninja really is a shaman ...
I have not read much this trip - having plowed only about
one-third of the way through a new annotated edition of Thoreau’s
Walden. On the other hand, Josie brought a pile of books that she is
enjoying. I just squeezed the juice out of fifteen sour oranges that I
gathered in the forest behind the schoolmaster's house. I will freeze
the juice to bring home for my mother to use to make her renown sour
orange pie. U.S. customs won't allow the whole fruit in, but frozen
juice will pass. For some strange reason, a sour orange pie usually
shows up around my birthday in april!
Photo by Riverdave: Eleuthera Island Banyan Tree
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