EXUMA CAYS LAND AND SEA PARK - SPECIAL EDITION

TRIP FACTS AS OF:  February 5, 2011

Days gone from VA:         110
Days in Bahamas:               49
Miles Traveled:           1,527.9
Things Overboard:       Not one thing!!!

February 2 through February 5, 2011:   We left Cape Eleuthrea on Wednesday headed for the EXUMAS!!!   David was able to check off one more thing on his "to do list" so all is well.  We got into the Park around 3 in the afternoon and dinghy'd over to the Park Ranger's office to sign in, pay for our mooring ball, $20 a night and pay for internet at $10 a night.  We heard boaters calling on their VHF radios to get on the waiting list for a mooring ball.  There are a grand total of 54 mooring balls spread out between the North Field, Emerald Rock field, where we were, and the South Field. 

Before I goosh about how beautiful this place is let me give you some history. The Bahamas National Trust, a non-governmential organization, was created by the Bahamian Parliament in 1959 to manage their park system.  Parliament also set aside 176 square miles for the ECLSP to protect marine and land animals in the Park.  The park is 22 miles long and extends out 4 miles on either side of the cays and includes 15 islands and many tiny cays.  It is a NO TAKE zone so you can't pick up the conch you see in the water or go fishing.  Their motto is:  TAKE ONLY PICTURES AND MEMORIES, LEAVE ONLY FOOTPRINTS IN THE SAND.   

If you've ever seen pictures of the park you usually see the North Mooring field , which is the most famous. 
For those of you who haven't it's a channel in a cresent shaped channel with a hugh sand bar in the middle that gets dry when the tide goes out.  Here you go.... enjoy...

                                                  North Mooring Field - ECLSP - low tide

One of the famous spots at the park is BOO BOO HILL.  There are two thoughts on how the hill got it's name.  The first is from locals who say that settlers shipwrecked on the island and their spirits haunt the cay.  The more scientific explanation is that after centuries of  storms, rain and wind erosion, a series of BLOW HOLES formed and when the tide and wind are just right the holes produce a "booooo"ing sound.  I like the locals version myself.  Back to the hike.  To get to the top of the hill you cross over BANSHEE CREEK.
Banshee is home to a mangrove nursery and at low tide you can see what the mangroves root system looks like.  They survive in salt water and no water and are pretty amazing to see. 



Mangrove roots at low tide.

While we were anchored in Spanish Wells we saw what looked like pieces of grass bobbing in the water.  They turned out to be mangrove seed pods waiting for the tide to drop so they could plant themselves in the soft sand like this:


Mangrove nursery..........

Once we hiked to the top of the hill we found the collection of "natural" (no plastic ANYTHING) name plates left by people.  Most of the nameplates were made of wood inscribed with names, dates and boat names.   We picked up a piece of bamboo driftwood and will etch our info on it and hike back up to the top of the hill when we head north later this month.  

World Famouse BOO BOO HILL ........

The tide/winds weren't right for us to hear BOO BOO so we hiked over to the beach.  The trails on the island don't have a nice boardwalk for  you to follow.  Rangers have hacked the trial through small palms and other vegitation that have grown up through the limestone bedrock.  Someone discovered the limestone even makes "music".  We stopped and David picked up a small piece of limestone and tapped on 3 big pieces of rock.....each piece did have a different "sound" to it...




"Musical Rocks"..look at the texture and that's what we walked on..really sharp & rough

 Limestone is sharp and jagged from being worn by all the years of rain and storms. Some of the limestone has been worn down so deep that when the Spanish came to the Bahamas they would find these deep wells and gather drinking water.

Imagine drinking  from this????

Walking around the beaches you could see conch in the water just scooting alone.  One of the statistics on conch show that the conch concentrations are 31 times higher than outside the park  Which is great since it means there will be conch for future generations.  There are similar statistics for crawfish (lobster) and Grouper.  The park serves as a nursery of sorts keeping areas open to recreational and commercial harvesting fully stocked.  Here's what a baby conch looks like "scooting" ...look to the left and you can see the trail it leaves....

Baby conch - they can grow to about 12"..this one was about 5".

We ended up hiking 3 trails the second day we were here - The Davis Plantation Trail, the Loyalist Beach Trail and the Alive Beach Trail.  While we on the Loyalist Trail we counted 10 of those wells that had water in them.   After reading about the Bahamas I imagine the Davis Plantation was started by an American Loyalists who were not ready for democracy.  Plantation owners from the South came down, built homes and tried to duplicate what they had in America - to no avail.  After seeing the limestone and land they came to you can understand how difficult it was for them.

At the end of our last hike we were headed back to the beach and came to an opening and this is what we saw......

That's US.....in the Emearld Rock Mooring Field

We left the park on Saturday, the 5th, headed for Staniel Cay and the SUPER BOWL game.  We'll head back to the park on our way North later this month and finish hiking the rest of the trails and just enjoying the beauty.  Looking down at the water and seeing two Horse-Eyed Jacks swimming around the swim step was amazing and apparently isn't the best the park has to offer.  We'll call ahead a couple days so we can get a mooring ball in the North Field since we've talked to people who say that fish and sharks come through there a lot. 

Hope you enjoyed our visit in the ECLSP.   We took their motto to heart - we took tons of pictures and have great memories and only left ....

More later.... Dave and Peg