Days 11 and 12 (Fenting – Fake Tenting)

For the last two days, we’ve adventured on a down island camping trip. We started off waking up at 7am Saturday morning, and started packing our gear and supplies for our trip.

We loaded up the vans and hit the road immediately after breakfast. Our destination: the campsite outside of Preacher’s Cave.

Along the way we made multiple stops, the first of which was the Rock Sound Market, where Justin (the assistant head of the Island School) told us to split up into groups of 3 or 4. He assigned each group a specific set of grocery items, and told us to pay attention to the price and where they’re from. What we collectively gathered as a group, is that the majority of Eleuthera’s goods are imported, which accounts for the price being significantly greater than we’re accustomed to. 

The second stop we made was in a settlement called Palmetto Point, where we went to see their sacred Silk Cotton Trees. These trees are colossal and elegant, and hold significant meaning to the people of Island. These trees are generally located at the center of each settlement, and are a vestige of their African Heritage. It is believed that the ancestor’s of their families live in the tree, and has become a major focal point of the settlement.

Continuing on our road trip, we stopped at Governor’s Harbor for lunch. It is considered one of the oldest settlements on the Island, and our task was to talk to the locals and learn interesting things about the area. For instance, it is believed that Black Beard the Pirate passed through the settlement, and sunk a ship off the coast of the harbor. A lot of us also went to their famous bakery, and indulged in some beef patties (which were delicious!)

After Governor’s Harbor we went to Gregory Town where we quickly went gift shopping, and some got ice cream at the local store.  Gregory Town is actually where Lenny Kravitz has a Green home and recording studio!  We got the chance to pass the end of his driveway, but it was gated so we could not see much.

We then finally arrived at our base camp, and hastily set up our tents so we could head out to our final stop of the day.

Our final destination was Harbor Island (Briland as Keanu calls it), which is considered the up-scale “Hollywood” side of Eleuthera. There, we were given a few hours to explore and eat dinner, where a lot of the group ate at The Queen Conch and the Pizzeria. Allie may have temporarily gotten over her missing of Charlie, when she took in a stray dog for a few hours. It was heartbreaking when he followed her all the way to the dock, where Ali stood at the back of the boat staring longingly into the dog’s eyes as we cruised away from the Island. A lot of people also visited it’s pink sand beach, which was stunning! The sand is like powdered sugar, which an anonymous source described as being similar to “wiping out in butter”. It was the most beautiful beach Ryan’s ever seen. It was a bit of a bummer that the majority of the shops and restaurants closed at 6pm, but we still had an awesome time.

Then we went back to the camp site and immediately fell asleep from exhaustion. Unfortunately, Cailin, Lauren, Kirsty, and Sara’s tent was less than desirable (and less than functional). Instead of a tent, they were sentenced to sleeping under a propped up tarp, on top of another tarp, tied down by rocks, held up by one pole in the middle. At first, everything seemed okay, but then the wind picked up. At 3am, Sara woke up to find the fent (fake-tent) crashing down on her and her tent mates. Kirsty, Lauren, and Cailin somehow didn’t realize that the fent collapsed, and Sara had to wake them up, and then proceeded to sprint to the van and spend the rest of the night in there. It was awesome.

The next morning we got up around 7, and packed up our tents and quickly ate breakfast before starting our adventure for today. The first thing we did was explore Preacher’s Cave, located directly behind our base camp. This is where the Puritan’s made their home after their ship, the Eleuthera Adventurer’s, crashed on a nasty reef called Devil’s Back Bone. The cave is ridden with sink holes that expose the sky and forest above it. It’s also believed to be a major burial site for not only the Puritan’s, but the Bahamas’s native Lucayans as well. 

After that we went to Ocean Hole, which is literally a hole in the ground filled with salt water, which we were able to jump into from 25 feet in the air (which is about 10 feet higher than High Rock). It was definitely one of the highlights of the camping trip.

We then traveled visited the Glass Window, which is the narrowest part of the entire Island, which is basically only a car’s width wide. It was incredible to see the calm Caribbean side and wild Atlantic on the other. We even saw a few sea turtles at the bottom of the cliffs on the Atlantic side. Ryan, Ali, Ben, Liam, Danny, Colleen, and Aaron, climbed down the Atlantic side as far as they could go, and were hit by the sprays of the gigantic waves of the Atlantic.

Our final stop on our trip, we visited the Bay Caves of Eleuthera. These caves are a sacred site to the Island, where one date recorded in the cave even traveled back to the 1700s! In the cave, we were able to see the famous Wedding Cake Stalagmite, which National Geographic even came to photograph. The cave hike was about a mile long, going in and out of various caverns and crawl spaces, and ending with wading through waist high water. In one portion of the hike, we were all told to link hands and turn all of the flash lights off, and had to lead each other through a portion of cave. Sara had a hard time with the exercise, but eventually was able to overcome her fear of caves and the dark. In the final leg of the cave, we were taken to a cavern filled with red clay, and used our bodies as canvases and gave each other war-paint which was super fun! To rinse off the clay, we went to a large landlocked salt water lake, which Justin mistakenly called “that little pond over there”. In the pond, we saw tons of sea horses, brittle sea stars, and giant crabs, because somehow these organisms got into the lake, and have no natural predators to regulate their populations.

We then traveled back to the Island School, relaxed, showered, and ate dinner: a typical Island School afternoon.

Overall, the camping trip was AMAZING! Everyone had tons and tons of fun.

See everyone soooooooooon!

Love,

Ryan and Sara

Ps. We chose Liam and Colleen to be tomorrow’s Caciques! (: