Miss Marlenne*2

We met up with Preacher for lunch today in Blue Hills. After a great lunch at Smokey's we walked across the street to look at a wrecked sloop:



I have been talking about these boats all through this blog, and looking at wrecked ones ever since we first got here. We have seen them sunken and breaking up a mile offshore. We see pieces of them washed up on the south facing beaches and rocks quite often. French Cay is loaded with their skeletons.We read about them in the newspapers, usually when they get intercepted with a hundred Haitians on board. Sometimes we read about real human tragedies involving these boats. Here was my chance for a close look.

This one sits well above the high water mark, and if you ignore a little cosmetic damage it's in pretty good shape. Needs a little TLC. A Handyman Special....



Well, okay, that was boat salesman talk....actually it's got a big gaping hole smashed through the hull and the pitch and caulking is falling out. I suspect the original hole was smaller and that people on the beach have broken off the boards to get inside the hull. But holing a hull is not hard to imagine at all in a boat drawing about six feet coming into this side of Provo. The outer reef is well over a mile offshore here, and it's a treacherous one. And even once you get inside the reef there are coral heads and coral patches everywhere. I am surprised that this boat made it through to shore at all.

The smashed hull made it easy for me to stick my head inside and take a look around. I have been wanting to get a look at the construction of these boats for a long time. The first thing you see once your eyes adjust to the darkness in the hull is the ballast:



These are a modern version of the ballast stones we found from ships hitting these reefs in the 1700's. These days, the weight of tough plastic bags full of Haitian sand keep the boat upright. Well, that's the plan anyway. Doesn't always work with sixty or seventy people on the deck. It makes sense, actually, to use sand bags for ballast. They are cheap, easy to position, probably pretty comfortable to sit on, and they wouldn't be as prone to shifting as large, loose pieces of rock would be. That means they would not be knocking your planks loose in heavy seas. Good idea, actually.

The bad idea part is not using enough stable ballast, with 'stable' being the operative word here. The more ballast you put in, the less cargo you can add. When your cargo is over a hundred human beings, you can still get away with it if they stay where you tell them to and the weather cooperates.

Just a few months ago, such a boat as this made the trip. Rough seas, desperate, frightened, sea-sick people in the pre-dawn darkness. Somebody shouted "There's Provo!", and over a hundred people rushed up onto the deck at once, joining the 75 already there. The boat capsized. 65 of them died within sight of land. They were buried in a mass grave. Very few of them were identified.

I started looking at the construction more closely. The beams are all hand cut, and solid. Looking up at the underside of the deck, it was not the flimsy construction I expected. I could find no soft pine, or wood that you could define as a "2x4" or a "6x6". Every piece was individually cut to it's purpose. And there isnt a straight line in sight:



I didn't recognize the type of wood. I asked Preacher what it was, because some of these beams are bigger than could come from any of the trees I see here in the TCI. I took a piece of the broken planking home with me. Preacher said "It's one of those Haitian woods...". Okay. Preacher is not a woodworker. I am already thinking of what I can build with this stuff. And I need a lathe.

Then I looked forward in the hull, up to the bow. The only light from the single hatch shining down into the hold:



And for me, at least, this is where it hit me. What it must have been like to tack back and forth into the Trade Winds, the heat and sounds and smells of a hundred humans in this space. The boat rocking, and leaning. The creaking of a boat built to hopefully last one trip. It's only 140 miles in a straight line, but how far in a sailing vessel? No place to lay down or sit comfortably. No food,no water. No bathrooms.

The day after we took these photos, I picked up the current issue of the "Turks and Caicos Weekly News", and there was yet another story about another sloop intercepted by the Marine Police. I thought maybe the newspaper photo would help picture the conditions on these boats:



"more than 150"....I looked at the photo, and I estimate maybe half that many are on the deck when that shot was taken. Imagine that many more riding below in a hold almost identical to the one in these photos. How dangerous is that? And how desperate.


This boat was built by hand, by people who knew how to build a boat. The keel, ribs, the inside planking,beams, timbers, the bracing...it's all like something you would see in a nautical museum in a more modern country. It's what you would expect in a boat built two hundred years ago, before power tools or stainless fasteners. There's no fiberglass here. No life rafts. No fancy adhesives.

It looks like something shipwrecked sailors would put together from whatever they could get their hands on. A boat built by men desperate enough to risk their lives to try to make it to another island, hoping it just held together long enough to make it.

Well, the "Miss Marlenne *2" made it. Battered, but intact. She's sitting high and dry on the beach in the TCI. I don't know what happened to her human cargo, whether they melted into the population here or were rounded up, fed, and sent back to maybe someday build another boat and try again.

Maybe someday we will find a "Miss Marlenne" # 3. I hope their luck holds, and they have fair winds and a star to steer by.

Some marina photos

Yesterday I drove down to the marina to talk about fixing our gasoline leak. As you might have guessed, I took photos.



That's looking back at our house on the hill from the entrance to the marina. only 900 yards in a straight line from our patio to this spot. But its 10.2 miles by road. Bad road, except for a few miles in the middle of the trip.

There is usually a stiff chop in our face coming out of this channel, but it wasn't too bad yesterday. A shame we were not boating.

This is what the natives call "ironshore":



It's not iron. It's limestone. It's what these islands are made of. It erodes into bizarre shapes, crevices and caves. And it will sorely test your toughness and pain threshold barefooted. It's wild and forbidding. It's gnarly and dangerous. It will put holes in your boat, your cooler, your feet, knees and butt if you're not careful. It eats shoes and eyes your toes...

We like it. It does neat things with waves, turning them into dramatic big splashing white sprays of water. It traps all kinds of interesting floating things and hides them for me. Fish live underneath the overhanging ledges of it. And every foot of it is unique. It shapes and smooths driftwood on it's way past:



(I can hardly wait to get some of this stuff into the new workshop)

I talked to the Marine Police at the marina. They were getting ready to go on patrol, warming up their boats at the dock. They know us. They get big laughs out of the dog, especially when he decides to take on the three yard dogs who outweigh him by forty pounds apiece. It gets exciting. They have two big patrol boats at the marina, and a smaller go-fast boat.

This is the smaller, and older of the patrol boats:



We've noticed that they tend to take the other one when they go patrol the Caicos Banks. No wonder, it's newer, and has nice air-conditioned airline-style seats inside for the team. I couldn't get a good shot of it yesterday because it was just leaving the marina on patrol , passing in front of our house:



Since we are going to have such a great view of the Banks from the house, I thought about what we should do when we eventually see a boatload of Haitian refugees on the horizon (we all know it's gonna happen), We should call the authorities, right? Turn them in. Get them busted, fed, and repatriated?

Or should we establish a rapport with the Haitian smugglers so they cell-phone us to find out where the Patrol boats are? I think we will just stay out of it, and observe. For now, anyway.

This is what it looks like from the dock looking straight down into ten feet of clear water. It's not blue, but it's not bad for an enclosed marina:



Things continue to change here, on Provo especially. Here at the marina they are building and expanding. The closure of the businesses at Leeward created some incentives for others to step in and fill some gaps. Here, they are building new marina offices, showers and facilities for boaters, a restaurant, chandlery shop...



We are all for it. Now, if they will just put in some more slips it will be great. Oh, and if we can figure out a way to get here from the house without driving ten miles or swimming. The government has announced they budgeted to pave the road in. Hallelujah.

This is a landing craft. There are several of these around, and they are the "pickup trucks" of the islands. They can land cargo and vehicles on beaches where there are no docks. The only option if you want to build a home on a remote spot.



I mentioned the family living aboard their catamaran. Other cruisers come, stay a while, and then leave. These guys have been here for a while. The husband is a plumber from the UK, the mother a Canadian teacher, with two young kids in school. They bought some property on South Caicos, but I don't think they are going to build on it. Just picked it up as an investment. They have turned this cat into quite a home.



They have a window A/C unit in a plywood door they install when they are dockside. They have a great stainless grill setup. Storage locker on the dock. Parking a few feet away. The boatyard and marina life for friends and entertainment. They sail fairly often, not tied to the dock permanently like some liveaboards we have seen. Usually, on weekends, the kids will be jumping off the cabin into the water, while he works on the boat and the lady has her laptop under the canvas in the lawn chairs. Really nice people. Living a real tropical lifestyle.

Why couldn't I have grown up like that? I always wanted to be either Mike Nelson in "SeaHunt", or one of the kids in "Flipper". These guys are close.
Once you make this jump, you find yourself surrounded by like minded people.

Once again, it seems that it comes back to pursuing dreams. Am I encouraging you?

Update on our new house, thoughts on building here.

Many people seem to be interested in the house we are building here.



So, from time to time, I will post a few photos on the progress. We were out there yesterday, due to some questions on the roofing material. The view is still pretty good. We had made a major change in the roofing material, from wavy Ondura to metal. The subcontractor finally showed up this weekend and started putting it up. However, we got an email from our architect saying he did not see any signs of the radiation barrier that was supposed to be getting installed under the tin. We left it to him to fight with the subcontractor, but we did run out to take a look for ourselves. The roofing material is this white metal called "Galvalume". Its a mixture of tin and aluminum, supposedly formulated to handle this type of environment. It comes in different colors, but for various reasons we decided on white. You can just see some of it on the far roof in this photo looking from the top of the garage at the 'front' of the house:



We looked around and actually found a couple rolls of the radiation barrier stuff on site. I emailed the architect as soon as we got home, to let him know about that. I wanted to give him a 'heads up' before he lit into the sub-contractor about it. He had told us that he did not see any on the job site. La Gringa checks the view from the little pergola. It's going to be a nice feature. Although I was skeptical at first, I must admit, it's growing on me. We also noticed they have finished off the little planter here on the patio. The next step here will be laying 1500 square feet of 2x2 foot textured concrete pavers in a sand bedding.



You may notice there are electric connections all over the place. This is going to be one well-lit patio area. With it being on the hillside overlooking the marina, maybe we will become a navigational beacon without intending to. (And before you ask, NO, ...it would be a green light on this side of the channel entrance.)

Everyone is still telling us the goal is to have us moved in by Christmas. We have talked to a lot of people here, and getting a house built within one calendar year seems to be very unusual.

Some dreams that did not happen. I was thinking about home construction down here when I was driving down to the marina this morning to talk to the boatyard about fixing our fuel tank. It seems like it's been years since we started this house, but in actuality the bulldozer started clearing the lot in early February. It's 'only' been a little over eight months to this point. From what we have seen down here, that's not bad at all. We noticed early on that almost everywhere you travel around Provo, you can find what appear to be abandoned construction sites. We pass several just on the road to the boatyard. I often wonder what the story is with theses homes. This one, for example:



A nice home, on a good lot. It's fenced in. The builder seems to have gotten some walls half way up on the second floor, and just stopped. We have not noticed anything done on this house in two years. A cement mixer sits on the upper level floor, and the materials seem to be there. Here's one not as far along. In fact, this one seems to be almost totally abandoned:



It is also in a good location, well set back from the road. The plaster is falling away from the walls now, and the driveway doesn't look like anyone's been up it in years. This house is far enough from the ocean to be safe from storms, yet a second floor, or small tower, would have a view of the Caicos Banks. What's the story here? I dont know. I wonder. And this one, in the same general area. It got much further along than either of the previous two:



The walls are all up, the roof is on. There is plywood covering most of the openings. The view from the top floor should be really nice. It's a nice lot, with privacy, and naturally landscaped with native flora that obviously needs no maintenance to flourish. It's a great spot for a home. But, the plywood is faded to gray. There are no signs of any work being done, and there hasn't been in the two years since we have been here. What happened? I wonder if these were vacation homes being commissioned by people living far away, or if they are owned by locals. Did something happen to the distant owners? Death? Divorce? Are these little pieces of paradise orphans of court proceedings? These sights are very common here. We could probably point out a hundred home sites that resemble one of those three examples. I wonder if someone couldn't make a deal for one of these and finish it. The building permits were granted, the design work done. The land bought and paid for, and probably when it was going for a sliver of what it's worth today. I would imagine these lots went for $10-20K an acre just a few years ago, and there is probably another $ 25K in the structures. Would a widow in France, or a divorce-saddled dad in the US just love to have some quick cash to get out from under them? And it's not just these mid-size homes, we could show you deserted foundations of businesses never completed:



A building on the waterfront in Five Cays.

We could show you unfinished waterfront homes that would cost several million bucks to build today if you started from scratch.



Wonderful ideas now sitting in the sun abandoned and growing weeds, waiting. Plans change, life goes on. Unfulfilled dreams can be sad, but the important thing is to have the dream in the first place. Imagine the excitement of planning these homes, clearing a space, completing that first row of blocks. Sitting in lawn chairs with friends at the end of the day. Enjoying a cold, well-earned beer, watching the tropical sunset fade to reveal a sky full of the brightest stars you ever saw. Talking about how very fine it's all going to be. It was a good part of someone's life, once. Maybe that's what a dream should do for you, and if it has, maybe it's done it's job for now.

And who knows, maybe these are chances for someone else to scoop up a fresh dream and run with it.

First French Cay trip

A late afternoon photo from our temporary back porch:



Well, I guess this is the first "official" day the blog has been open to the public. We are sitting here thinking, how can we make it better? More interesting? Please, send your comments and let us know what we are doing right or wrong."

Now, on to French Cay....

Friday we finally took our boat from Providenciales out to the little uninhabited island of French Cay:




This map is so you can find it on the sat image so that you can visualize it. It's a litte bitty speck of an island, roughly twenty miles south of Provo. We had never been there before this trip. Never even flew over it. Its not on the way to anyplace else we would normally go.

But for hundreds of years, it was a convenient hide-out place for people who kept an eye on the Spanish ships sailing South of the TCI, with some bad intentions. You've heard of these guys......pirates. And not the Disney version.



The light blue water is the Caicos Bank. The dark blue is the deep ocean. The TCI is essentially a flat hilltop a little over a mile high, in water that is just almost as deep as the hill is high. That's why we stick out of the water. We are surrounded by 5,000 to 6,000 feet of water in every direction.

French Cay is on on the far edge of the Caicos Bank, straight south from Provo and southeast of West Caicos, all alone in the middle of the blues. In the 17th century the island served as a hideout for a brigand of the sea, Nau L'Ollonois, who ambushed and captured passing sailing vessels. A seriously bad guy. He would hide out on French Cay, waiting for Spaniards to come sailing by to the South. He also had a hideout over on West Caicos, a hole where he would tie his ship with branches in the rigging to make it look like trees from a distance. Crafty Frenchman, eh?

Our excuse for the trip was that we needed to fill the boat's fuel tank and see if it was still leaking after my attempts to tighten hoses, reseal gaskets, and reseat bolts. We don't really need much of an excuse to get on the water, but we had one.

The water was rougher than we like it. The trade winds were kicking up out of the Northeast, as the trade winds do. That put us into a two-foot chop on the way out, which was building up toward three feet on the way back. It slowed us down, in our little bitty boat, and made for a real bumpy and wet ride. Isn't it funny how big a boat can seem when trying to squeeze it into a narrow slip, vs. how small it becomes when you surround it with nothing but ocean and sky as far as the eye can see?We still went.

After an hour of going slow so as to not rattle our teeth out nor spill our drinks, we finally got our first glimpse of French Cay. A low, flat, lonely island out of sight of any other land.



The first thing you see is the single navigation aid: a pole with a radar reflector, a light, and an Osprey sitting on it. The water here is darker than what we are used to seeing on the Bank. A greenish tint, although still crystal clear.

The dog pays attention when we get near an island. I don't know whether he is thinking "wow, look at all those birds.....


or maybe "I been bouncing for an hour, look at all those bushes...."

Looking toward the South, at the Eastern end of the island, you can see where the gnarly coral area suddenly stops and there is a beautiful, smooth sandy bottom. It's in the lee of the island, and a perfect place to drop the anchor and be protected from the wind and waves:



We really wanted to do just that, and were prepared to spend several hours exploring the cay. But we had a problem. The fuel tank on the boat was leaking gasoline into the bilge. We probably lost three or four gallons into the bottom of the boat on the way over. It was difficult to tell how much, exactly, until we got into this calm water and could let the boat drift level. We ran the salt-water washdown hose into the anchor locker, and ran the pump. This diluted the leaked gasoline with seawater, and when it was mixed up enough we ran the bilge pump to clear it out. We don't like having to do that, but this was dangerous. One spark, and we would have gone up in flames. At least gasoline evaporates almost instantly in this environment.

But what we could NOT do was stop the boat and let it sit unattended with a leaking fuel tank while we explored the island. We needed to keep running the engine, burning off fuel, and keeping the bow high. The leak is somewhere in the front of the tank, and the leak stops when it gets down to about three quarters full. We had to keep motoring.

Looking back toward Providenciales with the sun behind us is a better picture of the color of the water as the ocean mixes with the water over the bank.


Home is somewhere just over the horizon, that-a-way.

(That view is pretty close to what the water actually looks like over the sand. Photos taken into the sun make the water look darker than it really is.)

As we putt-putted around the Eastern end of French Cay, we immediately starting seeing bits and pieces of lumber and ship's parts scattered on the sand.



On the GPS chart, that area to the right is labelled "Haitian Fleet", and we did see ribs and parts of boats long ago broken up and covered by sand and vegetation. On our list of things to come back to.

The remains of another Haitian sloop, with an Osprey sitting there calmly watching us. I realize the photo is crummy. The sun was just totally in the wrong place to get good photos, and of course we couldn't stop the boat.



We also re-learned that for all it's strengths, the little pocket digital has a crummy telephoto. (Note to self: leave the zoom alone)

It's not only the wooden Haitian sloops that have come to their gravesite here on French Cay. We also saw the skeletons of some more modern,steel boats that will never float again:



We eased a little closer to this one, but the water was getting shallow on this end. We went in until it was about 3 feet deep, trying to get a better photo and angle, but the sun was still in our faces, which shadowed the wreck:



We could catch glimpses of the bones of other wrecks over the grass and bushes, wrecks on the southern, open-ocean side of French Cay. It was tantalizing us, because we wanted to see them. The best way to do that will be to go back, with a healthy fuel tank next time, and anchor in the lee where that evil French pirate anchored three hundred years ago. Then we can walk over the island, take our time, and get some really good clear and close up photos.
But this time, it was not to be.

As we left French Cay, looking eastward toward Africa we could see that the dangers of the reef along here are not limited to the immediate vicinity of the island. Staying well away from it is no safer. We could easily see the wreck of a much larger ship out on the reef itself a mile or two away:



This area is thick with shipwrecks. Dr. Don Keith, the marine archaelogist who found the Molasses Reef wreck, told me that it is estimated that since Columbus came through here in 1492, and Ponce De Leon in 1503, there have been at least a thousand wrecks on these reefs.
We definitely have to go back to French Cay again. We never need much of an excuse, in any case.

X Files Island

After a bone rattling ride out to French Cay and back today, we detoured and finally located the small island with the "x" that I spotted on Google Earth sat photos some time back. Even though we had bascially had enough boating for the day, we decided to see if we could get to the bottom of this:



What you can't easily tell from this sat image is what this looks like from the water. Most of the small cays around here of any size have some sort of sanded in beach on the lee side. The currents wash around them, and theres a shallow spot out of the wind and waves where you can drop the hook and wade ashore. Not this one.

First we circled the island slowly, about a hundred yards or so away. These waters are unfamiliar to us. There are coral heads and rocks just under the surface. We were hoping to see some kind of natural beach, or a place where we could easily get ashore. We did not.



The X mark should be just on the far side of that hump on the right side of the photo. Of course we were hoping to find a path someplace close to the X mark to get ashore.

So, we circled the island again, this time within maybe fifty feet or so of the shore, keeping a close eye out for submerged rocks.

If you imagine you are in a small boat, just fifty or sixty feet offshore of that island in the picture above, just north of that middle "hump" in the coastline, this is what it actually looks like:



We circled it twice in the boat, looking for a trail, a ledge, some sand. Some way to climb up the side of the thing.

This is the view looking directly at the SE corner of it, knowing that X is somewhere about a hundred and fifty feet in toward the middle of it from the edge of that bluff.



See any good climbing spots so far? No, we didn't either. La Gringa was a rock climber when she went to school in Wyoming, and she didn't see any good spots. At least not for an old gringo with bad knees in a bathing suit climbing out of the water up onto those sharp rocks.

And the water all around it is at least six feet deep, right up to the rock itself. Most of it is undercut by the waves. We kept circling, lowering our standards as we went. We started paying attention to the broken off pieces, most of them the size of a minivan. But at least they left a better edge, and had possibilities.

This is from coming around the south side, which even in the sat photo you can see is pretty gnarly. This is looking directly at the western end of it:



See where that piece broke off to the right in the photo? We were looking for a smaller version of that. It leaves a smoother surface, but that particular one is at least 12 feet high. ( those two big birds to the left are cranes we spooked, with about a three foot wingspan. The third one is a large "Laughing Gull".)

And remember, in the water next to the rocks, I could barely touch bottom with the tips of my toes. Its all encrusted with barnacles and coral and stuff I dont yet know the names of. But I know I dont want it on my bare skin. My fingers would not reach the top of the ledges there on the left from in the water. And even if they did, I was NOT going to haul my naked chest and belly over the edge of that stuff.

And if we did find a way to climb up on the western end, we would have to walk some 700 feet or so through jumbled rugged rock and brush, wearing bathing suits and diving booties. So we circled around again, closer to the rocks. I was thinking "man, whoever put that x up there sure wasnt marking this for a nice picknic spot. This sucker is almost inaccessible." Hmm....that might make it good for other things, though. Our curiosity was really getting to us. We examined every little crevice, looking for an underwater ledge, or SOMEthing to help us climb up out of the water.

The South side is even worse. Not only is there a chop to slap you around, but the water is deeper, the rock face is higher, and straight up for ten or fifteen feet from the water:



The X should be on the top of this cliff, and in from the edge. There's no way to see it from a boat. No other marks that we could find to ever be able to tell there was something on the top.

It was high tide when we were there. There was also about a 2-3 ft. chop running, which was splashing pretty well against the rocks on the windward side. There is no sand to speak of around this island. I mean, the bottom of the ocean is sandy around it, but it doesn't get shallower than five or six feet right up to the edge of it. And at low tide, these cays are undercut. Most of them are almost mushroom shaped. It might be easier to climb it at low tide, because it would make it easier to find a broken off boulder, or ledge to stand on. Whoever went to the trouble to put that "x" mark on it did not choose a place with easy access. We have been to many of the small cays around here, and usually there is a small beach, or shallow place on the lee side. You can usually wade ashore. It makes them great for picnic spots.

There is almost no chance the casual boater passing by will ever see the x on the top of this one, because its just too difficult to get to. There's no reason for most people to take the trouble to climb it. We also saw no signs of human visitors, not from the water at least. No trails, no discarded water bottles.

But of course, from looking at the satellite image, we absolutely know for sure that someone has been there.

We eventually settled on this spot as the most likely place to climb up. If you look at the sat photo again ( on the previous page) this is on that little bump exactly due north of the center of the x. You can see that its where a section of rock has fallen away, leaving a crevice channel bewteen it and the rest of the island: (this photos from the nice safe boat)



We anchored the boat about 50 yards away, sheltered by that little cove you can see in the sat photo, and the three of us went overboard. La Gringa, Dooley the Devil Dog, and me.

This is what the climbing spot looked like as we swam up to it. Its right in the center of the photo. It looked like there was a flat spot on the island just above it, where that scrawny little tree is. The rock is to immediate left of the dark shadow edge. Maybe you can get an idea how enthusiastic I was about the idea of climbing this thing in a bathing suit. But I had said I would do it. Me and my big mouth.:(and this photo is from the water)



I took the camera, of course. We had to swim right up to the rock. Its too deep to touch the bottom wading. And to be honest about it, the bottom here has all kinds of stuff on it. It's just not the place where you want go go tippy-toe anyway, even when you can:



So, we swam.

At the rock face, I held the camera underwater, and managed to get a shot of a ledge about three feet below the surface. This gave us a place to get a foot onto. I am not sure we could have climbed out otherwise.



This is dark, because it is between the broken off boulder and the island. The dog was swimming in circles, trying to find a way to get up onto the rock. But there was no way he could do it. The waves would pick him up, and he would try to scramble on the rock, then they would pass and he would fall back into the water. I finally braced one foot on that ledge, and the other against the side of the island. Its about a four foot opening. I lifted the dog onto the island, and he got a grip and climbed the rest of the way on his own.

Here's what it looks like once you make it out of the water, looking back down with the advantage of some height :



Sorry its a bit blurred. There was probably water on the lens, and its dark in the shadows next to the island. Oh, never mind... Look, The truth is that I was not holding the camera very steady. I was breathing kind of hard. I had just swum 50 yards against the tide, timed the chop to get onto the ledge, lifted a very nervous, wet squirming dog onto a rock ledge over my head, and then hauled my 56 year old out-of-shape ass up the side of a small cliff. Wearing nothing but a bathing suit and wetsuit booties, Okay?

Then La Gringa climbed it, and she made it look easy. But hey, she got to watch me do it first, and besides she's LOTS younger than I am. And she used to be a rock climber, and her legs are longer, and....and...and...never mind. She's better at it. Let's move on...

Climbing up the hillside was tricky. No paths at all. And the vegetation covers a lot of loose rocks, crevices, some good size holes that actually look like they were dug out on purpose:



Climbing to the top of the island took a while, carefully placing each step. This is not the place to turn an ankle. Its also not the place to fall down. There is nothing soft to land on here. It is going to hurt. La Gringa took a counter-clockwise path to the top, while I did more of a straight switchback route. Finally, I was on top, and looking in the direction where I expected to see this big, white X mark.

Can you see it?



This is what the X mark looks like today:



At first, I did not realize what I was looking at. I was expecting wide bands of spray painted rock, or perhaps long pieces of heavy vinyl. I could only see the shape of the X, becoming overgrown. Then I took a closer look, and noticed pieces of paper stuck underneath some of the rocks




I pulled some of them out, and it was like old, crumbly butcher paper. So, what happened was that someone marked this spot by unrolling and crossing two fifty foot long pieces of paper,which they then weighted down with rocks. It was meant to be temporary all along.

I pulled up a few pieces of the paper, to see if it had any writing, or markings on it. I could not find any. It is brittle from exposure to wind,rain, and of course the sun is absolutely fierce at this latitude. The paper appears to have been doubled over, or folded, before being placed. Here is a closer photo:



What I think happened was that the paper shaded and killed the vegetation under it. Or perhaps they took a machete and cleared that out so that the paper would lie flatter, and the plants are just now starting to grow back.

We looked around a while, enough to notice other, hidden caves obscured by vegation. But it had been a long day, so we gingerly worked our sunburnt way back down to the ledge where we climbed up:



We didn't even try to climb back down. I lept off the ledge feet first. La Gringa tossed the dog in, and after I got him stabilized, she jumped in too.

I did not have a mask and snorkel, so trying to take underwater shots was not worth a lot of effort,but I did take a look at what was at the base of the cliff on the swim back to the boat:



For someone like us, accustomed to clear, sunlit water,it is kind of spooky up against the island. There are grottos and underwater caves all around it.

We had already spent five hours in the tropical sun, swum from the boat, and climbed the island. We were not equipped with the right footwear to really explore this, we told ourselves. And we still had to swim back to the boat and motor back to our home marina. So, we decided to call this a pretty good first look, and told ourselves that we need to come back when we can spend the day and really look around. There's still some questions in my mind about it.

(After posting this, I was going through the fifty-something photos we took, and this one caught my eye. It's another angle on just one of the holes we found, and I dismissed it right off because it was blurry.



Then I did take a look at it, because the photos on either side of it were not blurry. Then I saw the strange shadows of the rocks on the far side of the hole. If you mentally subtract the loose piece of rock in the way, does it look strange to you? Eerie, but a total accident of light. I think.