Good morning

Woke up to a lovely sunny day, looks to be a bit of wind but nothing bad . We are here today and tomorrow for sure. Martin leaves on Wed. morning and John arrives tomorrow afternoon.  

So what is the plan today more exploring! I'm heading out for a nice long power walk to enjoy the village and take in the local sights, then will finish off with a bit of a workout on board El Nido...nice town but no gym.  

I'd like to spend a few hours on the Pink Beach today there are reefs really close to shore so I'm sure there are things to see so we will bring our snorkel gear. This marina is a safe Manatee zone so that would indicate that they are here somewhere, I'm hoping to see one.  

I enjoyed a wonderful morning walk around the town looking at the pretty Victorian style cottages and small local vendor shops. Bryan joined me for 1/2 of my walk which was nice, he took a picture of me under or shall I say in a huge tree with massive roots I have no idea what type of tree this is ...do you? There are many rental cottages along the pink sand beach on the SE side of the island they look wonderful and range in price from $3000 to $15,000 a week and range in size from 3 to 5 bedrooms. It would be a lovely place for a vacation we are loving this town. Most of the town is clean and organized there are broken down buildings but also lots of well manicured cottages the people are very friendly. There are many high end restaurants which are very difficult to get reservations for so we might have to plan better next year to try out a few of them. The small gift stores are your typical Bahamian goods, straw hats, purses etc., I did find a few shops with very nice things one was definitely put there to accommodate those mega yacht / star owners $$$ for most everything in the store!

After lunch we took our golf cart out for some exploring (see picture of the skipper driving and reading the map!) hoping to find a snorkel sight. A note again about the driving mostly only carts on the roads, they drive on the opposite side of the road and streets are very narrow ...no seat belts...no street lights it is so relaxing. We made it to a couple of nice spots on the pink sand beach but the surf and wind was too high to snorkel so we swam and played in the waves and of course walked the beach! On our mission to find the perfect spot we found a path that said Cannon's this way so we hiked a ways in to the SE point of the Island it was a very rough and rocky point, it is the point of the Island that they have huge cables pulled under the water to another point on Eleuthera Island this is the point we will leave I sure hope it is calm when we do! We never found the cannons hehe but the hikes was nice.

If you walk directly past the Valentine Marina and walk to the end of the road you will see 2 of the cannons at Roundhead point. The military was made up of the round heads and the cavaliers, around the mid 1600's a contingent of round heads were stationed here to protect this area from threats of invasion by the Spaniards.

We spent a couple of hours at the pool later in the day which was nice and we enjoyed a lovely dinner at the marina restaurant it was a great meal. Bryan successfully beat Martin and I in a rousing game of crib and we watched a bit of tele.

A great day.