Long Island, I love you

Long Island challenges you. It is not for the faint of heart. If you are a timid tourist who likes it easy, forget Long Island. This is a place that dares you to discover it. Tourism here requires problem solving. It requires persistence. It requires a total lack of common sense.  We rented a car and took off to discover all the sites mentioned in the cruise  guide book. How hard could it be? There is only one main road down the length of the island, and the island is only a few miles wide. The first one was easy, Santa Maria Church, built by the Spanish and later converted to an Anglican church by the English, stands on the main highway, a splendidly intact structure, falling into genteel ruin.

Next came the plantation ruins at Grays...hmm, we seemed to have missed that. Then the caves at Hamilton....How the heck did we miss those?   We did find the museum at Buckley (though it was disguised as the public library) and got specific directions to the two plantation ruins we hoped to visit. After the museum, we successfully located Deans Blue Hole, in Turtle Cove, a lovely beach with shallow water circling the world's deepest blue hole, a 600 foot deep watery drop off connecting to the Atlantic Ocean.

Interesting and beautiful.

On to Clarencetown where Father Jerome, an Anglican architect turned Catholic Priest, built two stunning churches, the first, Anglican St. Pauls, the second, a Catholic church.

Both had been damaged by a hurricane last year, the Catholic church lost the cross atop one spire, and the Anglican church lost its roof. A cherub, victim of the storm lay in the grass nearby, its head and body separate.

We turned north again, deciding to bypass the caves. We followed the directions to the ruins of the plantation at Grays. Down a paved road to a dead end, right turn up a cliff on a rocky trail made for an off-road vehicle, we drove our rental car to the top, hiked through weeds and prickly plants into the bushes. There we viewed a single stone structure comprised of two end walls with chimneys and lots of stone rubble.  Bushes, neck high and thorny, prevented further examination.  Back to the car, down the hilly, rock filled path, and back to Queens Highway, the pot hole filled black top that serves as the main island road from tip to tip.  We headed north, looking for the highly recommended Blue Chip restaurant. 

And, we found it. Lots of Bahamian natives sitting outside on picnic tables playing scrabble; inside, a half dozen men sitting at the bar, not drinking, just chatting. In an adjacent room, two raggedy men sit staring vacantly at a TV set. 

"What do you want?" The proprietor asks.

"Lunch," we say.

"I don't have much," he replies. "I guess I could fix you some conch or maybe some chicken."

This is not sounding good. What kind of restaurant is this? So we settled for two cracked conch and two orders of chicken. We could see him behind the bar, pounding the conch, which is naturally tough, into submission.  A woman came in, she brought her own food in a styrofoam container and her own coke, but she sat at the counter and talked to the owner. This is definitely not looking good.  Another woman came in. "Have you got a menu? She asks. "No, I've got chicken and conch." Yep. We knew that. 

He brought us heaping plates of fried chicken and lightly battered conch and delicious fries. The meal was wonderful and we later found out that Mario, the owner/cook was renowned on the island for feeding the poor and the hungry. That's Mario standing in the left of the picture, one of the world's good guys.

Well fed, we went in search of the Adderly Plantation ruins. "Look for the signs on the main road in Stella Maris", they told us at the museum. We thought we were following the directions, but there is a Stella Maris town, a Stella Maris marina, and a Stella Maris resort. After searching for an hour, we gave up and went to seek the monument to Columbus at Cape Santa Maria. Look for the sign off the highway everyone said. Our first effort brought us to a sudden dead end at a tiny bay at the edge of the island. Try again, no sign here, but it is going in the right direction. Hmm, over a bone rattling dirt road to dead end at a really nice resort. Turn at the sign for the monument on the main road they said. Our third try was another dusty tire track path that seemed to go in the right direction, but no sign. A mile or so along, the road became so rocky and rutted that we feared bottoming out the rental car and left it sitting in the center of the road while we continued on foot around several more bends in the road.

After what seemed another half mile around several bends in the road, we spotted, maybe a mile in the distance, the MONUMENT. We all agreed that yes, we had seen the monument, and returned to the car, only to discover that we were missing a hubcap!

We retraced our path along the road, looking everywhere and then retraced our route along the road to the Cape Maria  Resort. Doom and gloom. It looked as if we'd bought ourselves a hubcap. But, bumping along on the road to Cape Maria Resort, Luke spied the hubcap, which had spun off into the bushes. Jubilation! We're happy again. That hubcap could have been anywhere on 70 miles of potholed, rock filled roads. How lucky were we to spot it!  We were so inspired that we set off to find the Adderly Plantation. This time, Jan spotted the sign and we embarked on another rock filled, dusty path, which ended at the beach. No signs here, but our directions from the museum were to walk toward the beach from the end of the road and follow the bushes north along the beach until we found a path.  Eventually a path appeared on the shore, heading toward a hill. We could see two chimneys rising above the trees. Now this was a ruin worth seeing. Maybe 7 buildings, crumbling stone houses, ramps to barns, storage, stone walls, a cistern, all part of a complex 2500 acre plantation dating from the 1700s. Except for the whine of mosquitos, the visit was perfect.



Ten hours of touring, bumping and searching, hiking, brambles, bugs, signless attractions, a hubcap, lost and found, and locating and visiting 6 of the 8 places on our list. We returned successfully to the boats.  Woke up the next morning to discover thieves had robbed the Scotia bank, just down the road, and they'd shot up the interior. They tried to make an escape by boat, but the Long Island Police were on the job and they were caught. Long Island may be far away out in the Atlantic, but life is never dull. Next post, the Long Island Regatta.