Dawn on Monday, January 5
This morning, Christi cut Eric’s hair first thing. Keith declined a haircut.
We rented the car at 1100, right after Christi and Keith finished up school work. We had four errands to run in the 2 hours: fill the propane tank, grocery store, bakery and boat store. The first stop was the propane place, which was located in the middle of the island, where the majority of the locals lived. As we’ve said before, the non-touristy parts of Nassau looked like a low-end suburb in Florida: small bungalow-style homes, boxy stores and strip malls, and lots of fast food joints.
Filling up was fast, easy and cheap. We would have paid at least double in the Exumas. We returned to the marina and dropped off the propane tank. An hour had already passed, so we asked for more time on car. They gave us another hour and we headed off to Solomon’s. As hard as it was for us to believe, we were unable to complete all our grocery shopping within the two hours allotted.
We were planning on leaving tomorrow, but we hadn’t finished our errands, so when Eric returned the car, he asked the marina office if we could stay one more night. They said they didn’t have any open slips, but they’d figure out something so we that we wouldn’t have to leave tomorrow.
After we put the groceries away, we went to the marina restaurant for a late lunch/early dinner. Here were Eric’s tiny, but delicious, gourmet fish tacos and a bowl of roasted cauliflower drizzled with tahini and an herb sauce.
After eating, we were all pooped. We’d intended to take a walk around the complex to scope out the construction that had been completed/new construction started since we were last there, but we were simply too tired for a walk. From what we could see from the marina, it looked like the buildings under construction the last time we were here were finished. We could see two new structures were underway.
Neither of these buildings had been begun last time we were here.
On Tuesday morning, Eric woke up to find himself covered with mosquito bites. Somehow, mosquitos had gotten onboard and ate him while he slept. We turned on the bug zappers. Even though the weather was nice, we kept boat closed up and ran the A/C.
In addition to The Pink Octopus, there was a little cafe onsite, next to the marina office. Eric wanted to check it out, so he had breakfast there. They had typical breakfast sandwiches. As soon as we finished doing school work, the marina had us move to the dock in front of the office/cafe. The marina manager told us it wasn’t considered a slip and we weren’t supposed to be there, but he used it as an overflow spot in times like this.
Once we were situated in our new spot, we rented the car and went to the Swiss bakery and stocked up on decadent treats. The Swiss Bakery was a patisserie, meaning it mostly sold sweets, and the prices were the same as or lower than what we’d pay in the US for comparable bakery items.
Then we went back to the grocery store to complete our shopping. We think we’ve purchased enough non-perishable food to last us at least two months (though we’ll need to replenish on perishables, such as eggs, much sooner). While the prices at this Solomon’s were more than what we would have paid in the US, they were a bargain compared to the stores in the Exumas — we’d say that our grocery bill was probably half of what we would have paid in Staniel for a comparable list. Given how much we bought, we believe the savings in groceries paid for the marina. Plus, we were able to buy brands that we preferred on many items, and often those brands simply weren’t available in the Exumas.
With just those two errands, the whole two hours was gone, and we hadn’t made it to the boat store yet! We again had a late lunch/early dinner in the marina. This time, we all ordered pizzas, which were probably the best value for the money on the menu.
After lunch, we got fuel. The fuel dock staff man-handled kosmos forward to be close enough to the fuel dock for the fuel pumps to reach. We took a total of 250 gallons at $4.40 per gallon (we received a 10 cent per gallon discount for staying in the marina, so it would normally have been $4.50 per gallon). With taxes, it came to about $5 per gallon. When they were done fueling us, the fuel dock staff manhandled us back to where we were before. Eric started polishing fuel right away. Thanks to our new faster transfer pump, the polishing was done by the evening.
Much to Eric and Christi’s surprise, Keith asked Christi to cut the hair that kept falling into his eyes. Christi pulled out the barber kit and set up a chair on the dock. She cut bangs (fringe), and gave the rest of his hair a little trim. Christi thinks that Keith’s bangs made him look like Inigo Montoya, which Keith took as a compliment.
We again were too tired to walk around the neighborhood. We had a quiet night onboard. In the photo above, you can see there was a blue light near Kosmos. The area all around the channel had those blue lights, and during the night, all the windows looked surreal with the eerie blue glow.
