Warderick Wells had some hiking maps in the office much like you might see in a state or national park in the US. It appeared the trails were well-defined and marked. We did not fully understand the Bahamian definition of trails and marks.
The island is rugged. It is coral so there’s little to no topsoil, and the surface is pitted where the more water-soluble coral has dissolved away and the harder stuff remains. The edges of these pits are quite sharp, so hiking here is an activity for sturdy footwear. We wore sports sandals where were pretty good except for getting sand under the straps. Some of these pits had grown to be large holes – 3 to 6 feet in diameter with depths ranging from a few feet 20 feet or more – there were several where we could not see the bottom. One had a ladder in it, but we resisted the temptation to climb down. The ladder was something like an 8 year old would build for a home-made tree fort. Maybe 8 year olds here build pit-forts since the tallest trees are only about 6 ft high.
We had a hand drawn map on printer paper from the office, a few snacks and a little water as we stepped briskly onto the trail. We climbed up to the top of the island where we could see the windward side of the island. It was a little hard to stand still up on top with the full force of the wind against us. The view was impressive - cliffs and outcroppings abutting iridescent turquoise water and waves crashing against the shore and lifting high in the air before being blown into spray by the wind. A very impressive display of the power of the wind. At the risk of sounding like the engineer I am, the force of wind increases with the square of the wind speed, so a 20 mph wind pushes against the objects it hits with 4 times the force of a 10 mph wind. On top of the hill we were in 30 mph gusts. A real hurricane can have winds of 100 mph. I’ll do the math for you – the hurricane wind pushes with a force 11 times stronger than the 30 mph wind that nearly blows me off the ridge. How does any structure or tree survive a category 4 or 5 hurricane?
We proceeded over the ridge and down to the windward coastline. The trail has now become very difficult to follow. There are small cairns of coral chunks that we figured out mark the trail, but they are not very visible and they look very much like some natural little coral lumps so we are never sure if we are on a trail for much of the hike. By the time we were a few hundred yards from the office, the trail seemed little used – a clue that we failed to process in our little pea brains.
Our hike took 4 hours (to go about 4 miles) so it was tough walking. We went up hills and down hills. We where in dense underbrush, on the top ridges and cliffs with magnificent views, and much of the time we really did not know where we were on our “map”. One very cool thing we saw were the ruins of a dwelling and outbuildings from the 1700’s. Some of the loyalists who fled the states after the revolutionary war came here to try and recreate their farming lives. It’s pretty obvious that there is no topsoil on these islands so I don’t know what they were thinking. They did not stay long from the looks of the buildings.
We saw a couple snakes, one of the nocturnal hutia (looks like a giant guinea pig, endangered species, only found in the Bahamas), lots of lizards and a few birds. The trail brought us to one beautiful pristine beach after another in between overgrown palm trees and scrub bushes. MB managed to pick up some of the poisonwood tree sap and has an itchy rash on her arm.
It felt great to walk, to climb hills, and to explore a little after the time on the boat. Next time though I’ll take two bottles of water, a few more snacks, and wear real shoes.
Curly Tailed Lizard
Pit with homemade ladder
There is a hutia hidden in here.