I was drinking my morning cup of coffee, looking at a satellite image of Andros Island that decorates the walls of my room, when I noticed a road/track that ran parallel to the Queen’s Road, and which could take me to the West Coast National Park. All excited I went to talk to my host to ask for directions, only to have him look at me like I was insane. After some further explanation he said that yes, there was a dirt road, but he had never gone through it because nobody ever used it. Maybe I would rather go visit the Captain Morgan cave (he even lent me a flashlight)? Or go to the blue hole near Love Hill on the east coast?
So I went and dutifully visited the Morgan cave (I was told it was the biggest cave ever, but it turned out to be pretty small), which was a typical water table cave, squat and in the shape of pancake. I could well imagine Morgan’s hoard spread all over the sand that covered the floor, but as carefully as I looked I failed to find a forgotten gold doubloon.
I then looked after my lost track and in a matter of minutes I got lost into the kind of adventure I had been pining for. My poor friend James, who rented me the Nissan that turned into my expeditionary vehicle, will probably regret renting his car to a geologist. I probably went into the bush for about 100 km, visiting mangrove swamps, water table lagoons, and tidal inlets in the broad and gentle western side of the carbonate platform, disturbing all sorts of water fowl, forest birds, and wild pigs (I almost brought a wild pig for dinner as he dashed across the track in front of my car). As I was traversing this wilderness I reflected that being at ground level gave me a very myopic view of the broad variety of depositional landscapes, and that combining satellite views with ground observations was the definite way to go.
After 5 hours lost in the bush, far away from any form of civilization, I finally regained the paved road. It was getting late, and I was getting hungry, but I decided to run the 40 km down to Love Hill, to check out their blue hole. There were of course no signs, but I asked and got some vague directions, and following my nose I eventually got to a sign, deep in the pine forest, proclaiming that I was entering the Blue Holes National Park. Are you kidding me? I had been hunting for this park for at least three days, and here I am, in the last hour of my solitary vacation, stumbling by chance into one of the highlights of Andros. I drove eagerly into the park for a couple of kilometers, parked, and within a few hundreds of meters found the Captain’s Blue Hole, a beautiful enormous expanse of fresh water occupying all of a gigantic sinkhole. An interpretive sign advised me that the fresh water was a lens “floating” on denser salty water, as I had repeated time and again to my Hydrogeology students. How I wish I had found this place three days ago! I am definitely going to write to the Bahamian Tourist Agency about better maps and signs for the nature tourist.
I got back home without a problem, had dinner, and then sat
to write this blog when, all of a sudden, hell broke loose! The day had been
very pleasant, and when I got home there was nothing but sun, but now I am in
the middle of a typhoon, with buckets of water falling against the walls of my
bungalow, as if some deranged firefighter was pointing a high-pressure water
jet at my door. I even had to pack towels against the bottom of the door to fend
off a pending inundation. Mondo Bizarro!
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