Little Farmers Cay, a Summary

We spent a week in Little Farmers Cay and since some of our experiences there deserve a longer, more in depth description, I’ll do separate posts for them. Pick and chose, as you wish.

We arrive on Saturday afternoon and dropped anchor not far from the government dock. There are a few other boats anchored. We plan to stay for Farmers First Friday in February Festival as we have never attended a Bahamian Festival.

Sunday morning we attended St. Mary’s Baptist Church.  I’ve never attended a Baptist service before and it was quite an experience.  Short impression- LOUD and exuberant.  (Further discussion in another post.) I’m curious if this is a typical Baptist service or if Bahamians spice it up.

After the rather extended service, we wanted to eat lunch. There was a food stand on the dock, so we headed there. Unfortunately, a boat with several tourists had just arrived and ordered conch salads. Conch salads are made one at a time. The conchs were piled on the dock. He grabbed one, pounded a hole in the pointy end and cut the animal out and cleaned it. He threw that in the water to feed the turtles and manta rays that have learned to hang out there for their meals. The tourists were encouraged to jump in the water and feed the turtles with parts of conch trimmings hung on a string. 

As we were sitting at a table waiting for him to finish with the tourist boat, we were joined by Carlo. He is very friendly. He asks if we are Christians and claims that we are on the same page. Every local that come on the dock was his cousin, uncle or brother. He found out that we were waiting to eat and insisted that he cook for us, ‘for free’.  “Come break bread with my family.” His children were going to be joining him. It took us awhile to figure out that he was drunk and becoming more so. Finally, he asked if we were ready to go. We walked to his house and he told us to wait a minute. Soon he returned and we went back the way we came. Turns out we were headed to the bar. We met more relatives on the way. At the bar Carlo bought a pint and sat down with it. “Then I will cook and you will meet my family.” Reggie saved us by saying that he wasn’t feeling well and we would have to take a rain check.   

One day we took in the three books we had finished to Ocean Cabin’s book exchange. It is a two for one exchange and one of our books was “rejected as not fitting on the shelf”, so we should have been entitled to one book, even though he kept the rejected book. Then he told us to go ahead and get two books. After we chose two he asked me if I liked “Harry Potter”. I told him I hadn’t read any. He handed me a hard copy, “Here take this one also.” Turns out it was a one for one. The “Harry Potter” book was too tall to fit the shelves and actually a script of a play.

We were able to purchase four snapper from a guy that was cleaning his catch. They were boney but tasty. Need to figure out how to catch them.

On Thursday boats started arriving. By that night the sky was lit up with anchor lights. I was awakened around eleven o’clock pm by a loud engine sound. When I got up to check it out, I was surprised to see the two story mail boat anchored about 100 yards from us. The crane on the front was unloading pallets onto a barge. The barge then had to go to the government dock across the harbor and unload by hand. It then returned for another load. We asked one of the locals who had been up most of the night unloading supplies why the mail boat didn’t tie up at the dock. “We’ve been asking that for two years. If you find out, please let me know.”

Brief impression of the Festival—a party with lots of drinking.  The Regatta was the best part.  More about that in another post.