May 1, 2009: Island Roots Festival, New Plymouth

We said goodbye to Baker’s Bay this morning and passed by a beautiful private island that is for sale as part of the Guana Cay development project. We are on our way back to New Plymouth for their Island Roots Heritage Festival.

But first, we stopped at the south end Green Turtle Cay where there is a deserted beach facing the ocean and went to shore for a shelling exposition. We pulled the dinghy up on the sand and sank an anchor into the beach as a safe guard against the rising tide. It was a beautiful walk down the white beach and fronds of sea oats danced in the breeze on the low dunes. Tom spotted a sting ray swimming in the shallows and it was clearly visible in the 4 foot deep crystal water. We found lots of small shells, pink and yellow sunrise tellins, kitten’s paws, some tiny whelks, various shaped and ridged clam shells, spiral sea snails, some small pieces of white coral and even some whole sand dollars. It was fun looking. We found some sea fan skeletons and were surprised that they are not fragile... they are more like wire netting.

Next we cruised on to New Plymouth finding over 20 boats anchored off shore as the crowd gathered for the event. White tents and Bahamian flags lined the peninsula in from of St Peter’s church. We found our way to the government dock and tied the dinghy up to the low platform for the afternoon. Our first stop was Harvey’s Grill because they advertised fresh bread baked on the island. Yummy, homemade bread.

We walked out to the point and paid our $3 to enter. We found all kinds of goodies to eat and tents with various crafts for sale. Tom bought some conch fritters and I logged on to the Outer Island Internet for a while. We heard that there was a talk going on in the Administrative Building and walked back to hear

Nancy Albury who worked with Paleontologists from National Geographic. She talked about “blue holes” which appear to be fresh water lakes on the islands, but are very deep (over 100 feet) and link into sea water tunnels in the rock. Due to the bacteria ecosystems in some of them, the lower water is oxygen free and totally dark. They are finding amazing fossils in the bottoms of these holes that have been preserved for over 12,000 years. They found land turtle shells and crocodile bones that link the Bahamas to Cuba and other Central American countries from a time when the sea level was much lower. The species of crocodiles from Cuba are unique, fresh water animals who spend most of their time in forest, are very aggressive and hunt in packs. The information leads to evidence that the Bahamas were very different in ancient times. They also are discovering how pollution of these holes is impacting the fresh water supply on the islands. She was obviously a learned scientist and the presentation was very interesting.

We returned to the festival and saw people in costume from the 1790’s representing the history of the Loyalist migration to the island.

Now I am familiar with a lot of festival contests. These would include hog calling and corn shucking from my college days as well as watermelon seed spitting and greasy pole climbing from Montreat summers. But today was my first Conch Cracking contest. Contestants were given a hammer and a knife and two conchs to harvest and skin. Obviously, there is skill involved! If you knew to poke a hole near the top of the conch spiral, you could harvest the conch in less than a minute. But not everyone knew this!

The local Amy Roberts Primary school children gained the stage and did a very clever enactment of the Junkanoo festival. This is reminiscent of the slaves celebration of one of their local heroes and included Africa drum, cowbells, and dancing. The Bahamian festival of Junkanoo is an energetic, colourful parade of brightly costumed people gyrating and dancing to the rhythmic music celebrated on December 26 and January 1. Tom and I got an order of fried Abaco lobster with coleslaw and ate it on a picnic table under a tent and I bought a turtle tee shirt to help the cause.

About 5:00 we knew we had to move on, so we shoved off and an hour later we are anchored at Powell Cay for the night. Several other boats are sharing the anchorage, and we are hoping for a still night. The huge sun gave us a show as it waned in the sky.