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Yesterday I made my way over from Eleuthra to New Providence Island on the Medium Ferry. I was sad to leave such a beautiful place, but it was time to move on. I spent one last morning on the pink sand of Surfer’s Beach, watching the surfers make the most of the day. The funny thing is, this was the hottest day yet, and I was kind of regretting leaving the water for a half day of travel. Amazing how these things work out. I’d like to say thanks very much to Tom and Liz for being great hosts. If you ever get out to Eleuthra, please look into staying at the Surfers Haven. You won’t be sorry.

There’s been some lessons learned about Nassau today. First is, it’s a dirty place. Most of the hotels have bad reviews and it is difficult to judge places without seeing them for yourself first. The hotel I’m in now is one of those places. It has some horrible reviews on tripadvisor.com, but they are mostly older. I can see that most of these things have been addressed, and by looking around the place it’s not so bad. Really, it all leads to the second thing I’ve learned about Nassau. It’s expensive. If you think that you are going to come to the Bahamas for a cheap vacation, think again. Even the roach-coaches are pretty expensive, but this shouldn’t be a surprise in a town there the average rate per night for a room is $500 USD. I was looking around on hotels.com and even saw some over at Atlantis and such that were $900 USD or more a night. Going back to the bad reviews of hotels and such here, I think that most people that write bad reviews of these places come here thinking that they are going to get a $500 a night room for $100 a night, and when they don’t we read about it on the net.

There are good deals to be had, but you have to work really hard at it, and to be honest, not have too high of expectations. Last night I went down to “the fish fry” at Arawak cay and had a pretty good time. There was some good music (Stop the world and let me off!) and pretty good food for cheap. It was the local hang out, and that was pretty cool with me. I’d recommend others to go there as well.

Yesterday was my lazy day. We all need that, right?

I spent the day at the Surfers Beach just down the road from my room watching the surfers play. Really, I just took turns napping and reading, along with swimming. It was pretty rough!

I decided to head back over to Nassau today on the ferry so I could roam around a bit over there. There’s quite a bit more going on in Nassau, so it will be good to check it out.

Today has been the most tiring day of the trip so far. I left the Surfer’s Haven at around 9 am to return the Jeep by 10 am in Gregory Town. After that I hitch hiked up to the water taxi dock outside of Lower Bogue and caught a ride over to Harbour Island.

I’m not usually all too interested in hitch hiking, but on Eleuthera it is totally acceptable and even very normal. There’s no type of bus or transit system here, so if you need a ride and don’t have a car it’s the only way. Now that I’ve done it a bit, I’m really glad I did. The people here are amazing. Always smiling, laughing and good humored. Often times I’ve had trouble understanding some of their dialect, but it definitely not as hard as getting around Mexico. Bahamians have a type of accent similar to what most people would consider Jamaican, or at least I would anyways. I hope to find out more about it here in the next couple of days, but I think it’s fascinating. I really like the “No Problem, Mon” and everyone singing a popular song “Stop the world and let me off” has got me laughing more than a few times.

So after taking the $5 water taxi ride over to Harbor Island, I proceeded to walk around town for a good part of the day. It’s a pretty touristy place with some interesting businesses and it is much cleaner than the rest of the Bahamas I’ve seen so far. There’s a pretty good bakery I would definitely recommend. I also found some of the most expensive beer of the trip so far at $6.50 a bottle! Needless to say I didn’t order another.

After strolling around town, I went over to the east side of the island where the “Pink Sand Beach” is and I wasn’t let down a bit. It surely does have pink sand, and it was very beautiful. This was a close second to the lighthouse beach as my favorite beach so far. I walked the whole thing and went for a couple of nice swims.

I had heard on the way in that getting rides is pretty easy around 5pm on Eleuthera, I planned to be back on the road by 4pm. Luckily for me, I got two rides right in a row, both from very nice and talkative ladies. I ended up making it back to the rental house by 5:30. How convenient. It really was a fun day.

Tomorrow I’m going to relax and hang out at the Surfer’s Beach all day. I do after all have a good book that still hasn’t been touched!

Yesterday I explored the North half of the Island, today it was the South. The beaches in south were very nice, pink sand, never a soul there. It was really something else.

Renting the Jeep paid off well again today. The beaches on the south side of the island were the best so far. It’s about a mile drive on a fairly rough dirt road to get to the end of the island, but it’s worth it. I spent a bit of time there swimming and enjoying a very private setting.

On Sunday, 90% of businesses are closed. I was a bit worried about gas for the Jeep for a minute there. Most of the restaurants are closed, and many of the stores. If you even think you might need something, get it on Saturday. I’d also like to add that there are no big stores on this island. The closest thing to what I would call a “normal” grocery store was up in Lower Bogue on the north end. It’s a real grocery store, for the most part, but still not any cheaper than any other store I strolled into.

I do wonder how the people here survive at all. Gas is $5.11 a gallon, and a gallon of milk was $6 the other day. They probably just don’t use much of that stuff, but one has to believe that everything is the same and very expensive.

Tomorrow I drop the car off and head up to Harbour Island to check it out. It’s supposed to be an interesting place, but who knows what that means!

Yesterday I made my way up to the northern half of the Island. Renting cars here is expensive and none of them are in very good condition. There are no rental car agencies, just people who rent their cars out. Luckily I picked up a Jeep in fairly good condition for a couple of days, with the plan to explore the north one day and the south the next. Since the the island is 110 miles long, this was the only way I could get to see the most of it.

The town of Current on the north western side of the island was my final destination for the day, and it was a pretty good one. The sunset was nice, the water was clear and it was a good place to get a meal and a Kalik.

By the way…. it’s been in the 70′s, not warm, but nice. The water is actually fairly cold, I haven’t even swam yet! It didn’t help any that I only got my bag from the airline yesterday at 4 pm!

So now I’m off to the south part of “Lutra”. YAY!

Yay, Eleuthera!

Things didn’t really totally work out the way that I had planned, but things never do. We made it into Nassau with a couple of hours to spare before we got onto the ferry for Eleuthera. I was really surprised at how diverse and interesting it was in Nassau, and it kind of bummed me out that we had missed one of our opportunities to really look around. We are thinking about the possibility of catching an earlier ferry and going back over to Nassau for a couple of days of perusing.

Eleuthera so far is amazing! It was dark when we came in, but we could still see some very interesting things along the way. Today we are going to rent a car and take a drive around, I have to get back to the airport in Governor’s Harbor to get my bag. Oh, did I mention that despite asking three different people in Atlanta and checking into things on the phone, the never put my bag on the plane? Really, I haven’t been all that impressed with Delta!

And so, the whole thing ended up being not such a big deal. I’m here. In Baja, motoring along on the Sea of Cortez. It’s funny how easy it is to get stressed out while traveling, when in reality we should just go with the flow.

This is part of the reason why I like traveling so much. The emotion. The feelings that run through my body when crazy things happen. Especially when there is absolutely nothing I can do about it, are something that I strive for now. It’s what makes life worth living.

So now I move on to the next future story….

Well, it’s funny how easily mother nature reminds us that she is in control. The weather took my “normal” trip and made it quite interesting on Thursday morning.

In my mind my van has been a solid performer since I bought it. The thing is downright reliable and a great vehicle. That’s why I was so devastated when it wouldn’t start for me. I had the van towed over to the only shop in town and that’s where I learned my lesson. Unfortunately the owner of the shop was in Elko for the day at a doctors appointment.

What happened was I started the van up in the morning, just fine. It warmed up and got going fine, then I drove about a half mile down the road to the truck stop. Eli and I went in to get a bite to eat for breakfast and in that time it happened.

As the van sat in front of the shop I went and got a hotel room and fired up the laptop. After quite a bit of googling I still couldn’t come up with a reason why the van wouldn’t start. I figured that the thing wasn’t getting spark for some reason, because I could smell the gas as I cranked the engine over and over to try and get it to start.

After not really coming up with anything, I started looking into just towing the van to Price. I was very concerned about getting on the plane Saturday morning to get to work. I don’t have a job that you can just show up a little late for. The boat won’t be there when you get there! It takes a whole lot of timing to make things work, and any variance in that takes massive effort.

I then remembered that the shop the van was at was a u-haul dealer, so I called them up and asked about renting stuff to tow the van. It was about three pm at that point. Still baffled about why the van wouldn’t start, and not coming up with anything I asked the lady at the shop to try starting it just one more time for me. She said she would, then call me back.

Two minutes later she called back and said “It fired right up!”

As soon as I got over to the shop, the owner pulled up. That’s when he gave me the run down. He says that this happens often in cold weather like this. What happens is, you start the car things warm up OK, but things condensate for a bit until it gets hot. Especially the distributor cap. Then if you drive for just a little while and shut the car off for any period of time that condensation freezes which keeps the distributor from working properly. He says that he’s “fixed” many cars by taking the cap off and setting it next to the heater for a while.

So now I know.

We left around 5pm from Wells and made it to Price around 11pm. It was a little later than I had hoped, but not nearly as late as I feared. Now Ill be in baja just in time, no problem!

I went to start the van today and…… it just cranked over and over. Nothing! I guess the -12 degrees didn’t do me any good.

Unfortunately, there is no way to get around here, and with a 3 year old in tow with super low temps I’m in no place to do the work. I had the van towed to a shop, but there’s only the one in this whole town and he can’t take a look until this after noon.

Keep me in your thoughts, I need to get out of here by tomorrow to make my flight to Mexico early Saturday morning.

On top of all that, I’m stuck in a tiny motel room with my son and he’s losing his mind! Cooping up a 3 year old is a recipe for disaster.

This could get interesting!

I’m slowly making my way back to the boat now. It’s been a really nice drive today, from California out to Utah to drop off my son. Snow on the ground and beautiful weather. I’ve experienced something for the first time as well. Freezing Fog. It’s foggy, like usual, but if you look at it in the light you can see little ice crystals. The temperature outside is 3 degrees Fahrenheit.

As we continue east tomorrow, I will try and get some better pictures along the way. The point and shoot just can’t do it justice. We won’t be as pressed for time, either.