The Beach

So I read in this travel guide on The Bahamas that we bought at Borders before we came, that there is a beach on the northwestern end of the island called "Love Beach" that is great for snorkeling. The funny thing is, you can't get to it. At least I couldn't. You would have to park some distance away and walk along the beach/rocks to get there. I'm not sure how long of a hike it would be. This seems to be similar to other areas of the island. There are beaches with public access, but most of the coastline is protected by residential areas which are "private".

Bahamian law stipulates tha any part of the beach cannot be privately owned. (Unless you own the while island. And there are many of The Bahamas 700+ islands or Cays that are privately owned.) So the way around this dilemma seems to be to build a "community", give it a name like "Coral Sands" or "Compass Point", and build a wall from the beach to the road and all along the road to the end of your property where it will conveniently meet up with the wall of a similar situation on either side effectively blocking all access to the water. If someone has built a small pier or dock, that is private property on which you can not go on or over. There are miles of coast road like this. You can get a glimpse of the beach but can't get to it. As long as you can get to it you are free to use it, but that's the easy part. So Love Beach seems to be like this. I think it is interesting that it is suggested in a travel guide but you really can't get there. I haven't given up yet, and I will keep you posted. It seems that the way things get done on this island is through who you know, and fortunately I now know some people who know a lot of other people, we will see where that takes us.

The other "great" beaches are on Paradise Island where the immense Atlantis resort resides along with several other hotel/resorts and some very exclusive housing developments. The island is accessible by ferry from the port area in Nassau or by bridge, $1.00 toll, from Nassau. This was an interesting drive of hotel parking lot guards and gated communities. Again this problem of how to get there. There seems to be no public parking on the island so unless you are a guest of one of the hotels on the island, I'm not quite sure how to get to the beaches. These are apparently the best beaches in the area, long expanses of sand. I have not yet given up on this quest either.

There are plenty of other beaches and I did find one on which to hang out for a while this morning. It may have a name but I did not see a sign. As you can see the area is a mix of sand and rock. The water is very clear and it was warm. I didn't stay long since I did not want to fry my pale skin. Even with SPF 50 I managed a very minor burn. Here you can see the pictures. I was going to go down to Potters Cay on my way back home to get some pictures of the food stalls and fish/Conch/fruit/vegetable market there but I was having problems with the camera. I think is got a little damp at the beach, but is working fine now. I will post pictues of that very intersting area soon.

I also had a very interesting evening at the home of one of the KidsUp committee members, Ros Roberts. She has two daughters the same ages as Emma and Mekayla, who are leaving in a couple of weeks for their annual summer in England with Ros's family. I will save that for tomorrow.