nearly home

So, I have had a few days in the Turks & Caicos Islands (and if I am honest, got bored on Day 2). 

Now I am having a few more days R&R, this time in the Bahamas (and if I am honest, the boredom didn’t start until Day 3).  But as with TCI, it is absolutely beautiful so just hanging out down at a different beach each day, watching the sunrise and sunset is not a bad definition of ‘boring’.  Not a bad ‘decompression’ from Hait, but I’m not sure about the acclimatisation though, it’s still 30+ degrees and beautiful blue skies… I hear it was frosty for much of the UK this morning.

When I finally arrive at my destination for phase 2 of decompression (I took a plane first, then a boa), my AirBnB host is fantastic; meeting me on the quayside of Spanish Wells, with a golf cart.  It’s a fun way to get around the island, most folk seem to have one.  It is small enough to walk places (it’s only a couple of miles long and a half mile wide), but it’s hot and humid out here, so it’s a great shout!

Whilst idling the day away over a mojito, I realise it doesn’t take long to become boujee.  I have been taking cold showers for more than a year, and I know water really is precious (because you also need power to pump it), but the moment I’m ‘owed’ a hot one from the AirBnB, I stand there, water running with my hand held out expectantly in the flow, cursing it is taking so long to get hot.  That was Day 1 out of Haiti.  Boujee indeed.

Almost from the off, I find Spanish Wells ‘messing with my head’.  A huge number of properties have Christmas lights and decorations in, on and around them.  The usual stuff: inflatable Santa’s, snowmen, reindeer, sleighs, elves, wreaths, lights, and more lights, but there is also a mannequin in scuba diving equipment with tinsel and lights (???), but its not the decorations so much as the environment.  It’s the tropics after all, I need sunscreen and sunglasses, I’m wearing shorts and a t-shirt, I’m at the beach, the sand is fine and golden, the sea is turquoise, yet I am surrounded by Christmas decorations.

And in one startling revelation, though of course entirely practical and completely understandable; it seems that in the Bahamas, Santa uses a speedboat!