Warderick Wells, Exumas

She humidity has arrived, 86% last night and holding so what has been comfortable sleeping has turned into tossing and turning and throwing off covers.  The wind was also diminished last night though it woke up this morning and was again brisk during the day.  I presume that the humidity is being pushed ahead of the cold front with possible thundershowers headed our way from the west.

Exuma bird

This morning we left at the boat at 7:30am to drop off our name board in the company of the many hundreds of others already on the top of Boo Boo Hill, taking the Causeway Trail as it was nearing high tide and the short trail was sure to be underwater.  At the top of the Hill we rewarded ourselves with a leisurely breakfast of water and granola bars and discovered that Boo Boo Hill is popular, not just for the view or the pile of name boards, but apparently also for cell service that can intermittently be received if you stand on the bench at the summit and raise your electronic device high in the air.  Several people arrived over the course of the morning with phones and ipads and all were somewhat successful at downloading emails and even Facebook.  Of course we didn’t bring phone or ipad.  This morning it was also a classroom as the two American/Norwegian girls were having Physical Education and Art all rolled into one by visiting the peak with their sketchbooks.

Curly tailed lizards are abundant!                  

From the pile of name boards we could hear the “whump” of the blowholes which gave the name to Boo Boo Hill.  According to the Park literature, boo boo is the sound made by the ghosts of those who have died in shipwrecks off the coast or by Murphy, the islands very own personal poltergeist, thus the name Boo Boo Hill.  And I thought it was because the park made a booboo years ago by allowing visiting boats to leave painted driftwood in a park that was supposed to be returning to its natural state!

Very shortly we covered the brief distance north to the blowholes to see for ourselves where the ghostly sounds were emanating.  We found holes in the ground of varying sizes which dropped vertically downward to the ceiling of sea level lava caves.  When the incoming onshore waves fill the ocean facing cave opening the trapped air is compressed and escapes boisterously upward through the blowhole with a loud “whoosh” and a forceful blast of escaping air.  The blowholes we saw varied from a foot in diameter to only a few inches but all exhibited a forceful gush of air skyward when the wave conditions were right.  When there is high surf during a high tide, water also escapes vertically out the blowholes but we were not to see that today. 

The rock ring was placed there by the park.                  

The return trip was also along Causeway Trail, as the driest way back so we had to wait several hours for the tide to max and start to recede before crossing the tide washed rocks across the Causeway Inlet.  We took our time on Boo Boo Hill, at the Blowholes and still had to take an additional half hour rest under a patch of 10 foot palm trees near the Causeway before the water was low enough to cross the rock jetty.  A bed of palm leaves was really quite comfortable.

Waiting for the tide to go out.

Followed by an afternoon of reading we have finally settled into island life.  Hunger soon drove Bob to start dinner of veggie burgers on coconut bread topped with tomato and onion slices, cheese, lettuce and condiments of ones choice.  Later, feeling a desire for something sweet we each had a bowl of applesauce, Peggy’s topped with a touch of maple syrup, and Bob’s with honey.  And after that; a smidgeon of vanilla liqueur which, though it has lost its alcohol content as it has been open for years, still has the taste of sweetness.