It wasn't long before things got interesting here. Fishermen returning to the marina gathered at the fish cleaning station and held up some awesome looking Mahi (Dolphin). When they started to throw the scraps into the water, nurse sharks showed up. You'll also note that Ray is not above looking for some Mahi snacks. After a couple of days it became obvious that they know about the fish cleaning station because they lay on the bottom waiting for scraps on a regular basis. Staniel Cay itself is composed of a relatively small community without much going on except for the Yacht Club we are staying at. Small pathways in town lead to the grocery stores and upon arrival the owner will turn on the lights for you. Everyone is saving money however they can these days. We attempted to get to the beaches on the East side of the Cay but we were unable to locate a safe path down from the bluff we found ourselves on. Perhaps with the addition of a golf cart tomorrow we will be able to locate a good path to one of the beaches.
However in the mean time we were able to get out in the dink and check out some of the nearby Cays. In particular we went to Big Majors Spot, and Bitter Guana. Both of these cays have interesting inhabitants that run out to greet approaching boats. In fact, some are so happy to see you they will swim into the deeper water where the boats anchor for the evening. But that only happens at Big Majors Spot.
The locals on Bitter Guana are members of the endangered Exuma Islands Iguana club. http://www.iucn-isg.org/actionplan/ch2/exumaisland.phpThese reptiles actually hear approaching boats and run down to the beach to see if anyone has interesting bits of food to eat. We had some Belgian Endive with us and it seems they have good taste in their selection of veggies. They readily accepted the Endive, and also enjoyed some Romain lettuce. There were many of them in attendance and I'd say the total topped out at about 20 of them on the beach at one time. They regularly threatened each other and would chase one another away if their space was invaded. It wasn't long before we learned just how fast these critters can run. Given they have some nasty looking claws we kept our distance staying close to the water since they seemed as though they wanted no part of it.
But over on Big Majors Spot the pigs swim on out to check out your offerings. If they don't line up with their palate, they swim away towards another boat. The above greens didn't work well for them and they left it floating in the water or on the sand of the beach. We elected to stay in the dink since we had heard they can be aggressive. We also kept the dink in a few feet of water so they had nothing to use as a base to jump into the dink with. Another couple came in with their dink and all of the pigs went over to see what they had. They actually got out of their dink and went to feed them by hand on the beach. I don't participate in feeding wild animals out of my hand ever since I saw someone teasing a large black bear in Yellowstone park. While he got away with it, the impression it left on me is permanent. Anyway I guess the pigs were a bit upset because we had nothing interesting and they spent extra energy swimming around and sure enough the lady was nipped while feeding the big ol' sow that pushed her way to the front of the pack. After she screamed it wasn't long before they were back in the dink as well. So don't feed wild pigs. They may look pleasant with spots and such but they have teeth and use them.
With all of the traveling this year I've had to create another link for the GPS tracks, they file size got too large for the Google Earth conversion program. But all of the tracks are there. I've also uploaded additional photos into the bucket -> http://s252.photobucket.com/albums/hh40/danno53/Boating%202010-2011/
By the way the reason for the remark about an uneventful trip, is that the people that installed our new shaft seals did not polish the shafts and the seals have worn enough to start leaking already. Insert explitives.
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