The Bahamas have something wonderful, and perhaps unique, in their Exuma Land and Sea Park. This park includes some of the most beautiful and unspoiled places in the Exumas chain of islands and they have made the waters, cays (islands), plants, shells and animals within this area protected from any harvesting, fishing, collecting, development or other activities that might harm them. There are no stores, laundromats, marinas or cell service (except if you pass close by to a privately owned island that has a cell tower). This also discourages some of the boaters who like more amenities where they stay, but for us it is great. There is a fee for anchoring, about $20 per night, but we are happy to contribute to the preservation of this special part of the Bahamas. This park is run on a shoestring budget with a crew of only a few people patrolling the area, taking reservations for boats to stay on moorings, answering visitors questions, maintaining trails, and generally making any visit a positive experience. We really enjoyed our time here two years ago, and our time here this year has been a highlight too.
Warderick Wells is one of the Cays in the park and is also park headquarters. It is one of MB’s most favorite places in the world! We spent 3 nights here which gave us a chance to hike many of the trails on the Cay and to snorkel the waters as well as join in for the beach happy hour on Saturday night so we could meet many of the other cruisers there. The moorings for visiting boats follow a “horse shoe” shaped channel at Warderick Wells. This channel is quite deep – maybe 20 ft at high tide - but it is also pretty narrow with “walls” on each side quickly going up to banks that are completely exposed at low tide and barely covered at high tide.
We put on our snorkeling gear and stepped off the boat and into a watery wonderland. We saw a lot of very cool creatures there including a 6 ft Nurse Shark, some very large turtles who liked to feed on the grass under our boat, and rays - one of which, a spotted eagle ray, easily had a 6 ft “wing span” (see picture below). During slack tide, when the current flow through the channel stops, the water clears so that from the boat we can see the bottom through 20 feet of water almost as if there is no water, but only air between us and it.
Because the channel is pretty narrow the tidal current rips through there at an amazing speed. While this murks up the water a bit, it was sort of fun to snorkel in it, just drifting with the current and watch things float by. We learned, however, to not get far from the boat since swimming back against the current is quite a workout.
David and Mary Beth
P.S. The picture of us with the sign is at the top of BooBoo Hill on Warderick Wells Cay. There is a tradition for boaters who visit there to carve their boat name on a piece of driftwood and leave it on a pile, quite a large pile after many years of this, so we made one which is shown in the picture.