Post two of two for this week....
We have returned to Marathon and it's fabulous out again...
But first we should talk about Wednesday and Thursday. Wednesday we awoke and had our typical Bahama morning breakfast at the restaurant on site.
It doesn't suck to eat breakfast in an environment like this....
After breakfast we decided to go to Georgetown the biggest town on this island of Great Exuma. Now this may be the biggest town on the island but it's by no means a big town. It has one road that kind of runs in a circle around a pond... The pond has a little bridge you can go through and get to the ocean...
In Georgetown we met Elvis. Not Elvis Presley. The Elvis of Georgetown. Elvis calls himself Big Pimpin. As you can guess he is a black man with swagger. This dude understands marketing and I think he might be the richest person in Georgetown but you wouldn't know it looking at him.
He collects $20 bills about as fast as he can take them and writes receipts on one by one pieces of note paper with a scrawl. He flags people in off the highway and is the main method to get yourself out to the island on the other side of the harbor.
His ferry is this boat ...
He loads as many people as can fit in the boat sitting just about anywhere and then sends it out to the island through the anchorage.
The young man who played captain warned us right up front "You're going to get wet". We did. It's all part of the experience. Nothing like a 1992 two-stroke barely floating over the water to get you to Paradise. Well, Paradise on this earth anyway... Even if we sank we would only be a few feet from a bunch of yachts...
Once we arrived we all climbed off on the beach and went for a walk through the jungle ( not very far ) to the waterfront restaurant with picnic tables, sand volleyball courts and wildlife. A very enjoyable place....
This place is called Chat and Chill and that's what you do here...
... Besides spending money of course... Every place in the Bahamas likes you to spend money. This place is a gold mine. It is buried with people everyday 12 months of the year. Great food and great company.
Oh, and it's got a little Soup Nazi vibe... slide edited for content ..
We also explored the island a little and ran upon a house that had been destroyed in the hurricane. It was quite a house with a 360° view until it wasn't a house...
Going this direction the pilot took it much easier on us .. The water was calmer...
Once we arrived back in Georgetown we decided to head further south to visit the cancer beach. It's not named cancer beach because people get cancer in the sun. It's named cancer beach because it's physically located on the Tropic of Cancer. Similar to how Gaylord is located halfway between the equator and the North Pole, the tropic of Cancer is located halfway between the equator and the 45th parallel that runs through Gaylord...
Of course it probably goes without saying we had to sample the local fare as well...
On the way in and out of the Tropic of Cancer beach we also got to take the Toyota Corolla two tracking. The roads of Great Exuma don't really have much in common with our roads...
This may explain why the rental car has four individually tailored rims... Lol
After the tropic of Cancer Beach we headed even further south to explore the southern tip of the island..(or at least close to it)
After driving back to our resort we took a walk down to the fine dining establishment in our resort complex and had an amazing dinner....
We play cards pretty much every night with the friends we were traveling with. I would tell you I won but.... well I guess I'll just tell you I won.... I am the editor of this after all. There may have been others that won on different nights but that's kind of irrelevant.
This is a picture looking down into the water. I'm not sure why my software decided to put it here but isn't it amazing?
Thursday morning we arose and went for our typical breakfast and then took a walk through the golf course and around by the marina.
We had a 100-knot headwind so it slowed us up a little bit on the way back. I always love the feeling of returning home to the US after visiting exotic places. It doesn't have to be home in Belmont Michigan as much as just in the US...
Marathon Island was a welcome sight....
After returning 'home' the water was so flat and weather so gorgeous our friends decided to spend the night with us on our boat! But first we had to go for a dingy ride...
There are many many tiki bar/restaurants surrounding our marina. So many we haven't visited half of them... So we decided to go out to sample what they had to offer.
We started with the Sunset Grill.
Then visited Burdines.
And finally had a full dinner at Castaway.
Castaway ranks as a favorite for sure....
When we first showed up we thought they weren't open because there was nobody sitting outside at all. When we got to the host, we were informed they had two tables that we could choose from but the rest were all reserved. It sounded a bit like a story until 30 minutes later when everything was full...
One cool part about Castaway is that we don't even have to go out into the channel to get there from our marina. The water is shallow but we can cut around the corner of a floating trailer park. Yes they have a floating trailer park.... Marathon doesn't do everything the conventional way...
We also got a full moon out of the deal. We think we're going to print, frame and hang this one in our boat...
Next came game time of course...
We were treated to the first perfectly flat waveless night of our stay here in the keys. Not even a lapping sound on the hull of the boat at night...
Breakfast at Lazy Days in the marina was awesome as well.
And that brings me to the end of the blog for this week. We are comfortably sitting in our boat in Marathon enjoying the weather and sometimes we are having guests visit from the area. We will be headed back to Michigan next weekend for a short visit then returning to Marathon to begin to prepare for our journey northward...
We are praying that our boat will work just as well once we begin the journey North as it did when we took it out for the test ride...
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