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.
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Exuma bird
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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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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Waiting for the tide to go out.
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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.
