Niko on Bimini

 

Warning: this is going to be a very long blog post.

Yesterday Travalon and I drove down Highway A1A in Florida, stopping at some gorgeous beaches. Here are photos from Satellite Beach. I love the cute little sandpipers! There are at least three kinds.

This gull looks like it would like to speak to the manager.

This is a statue of Ponce de Leon at Ponte Vedra Beach.

These are photos from Sebastian Inlet State Park.

This is a mature pelican with two immature ones.

There were also lots of cormorants around.

We stopped for lunch at a really good place called Sharky's, where we had conch fritters and I had a tuna steak sandwich while Travalon had clam strips. As we drove along A1A, it merged with Highway 1 (which we took all the way to Key West last year), and we got sort of confused so we pulled over at a little park full of white ibises and muscovy ducks. 

Younger muscovy ducks don't have the wattles on their faces fully developed.

I love the blue eyes on the ibises.

There were also some turtles.

In Tequesta there was a church called St. Judes just off Highway 1, and it had Mass at 4 pm, right after we got into town. So perfect! This Mass is so popular that they have traffic cops right outside the church afterwards! 

We got back on A1A where it split from Highway 1 again and stopped at Carlin Park Beach, where a Jewish ceremony was being held right there on the beach and a mourning dove was cooing loudly from a telephone wire. Here are photos of the coconut palms there.

And the beach itself. We were respectful of the Jewish ceremony and didn't photograph that.

Here is what comes off of those coconut palms!

As evening was falling, we stopped by John D. MacArthur Beach State Park, and because of the dim light most of those photos didn't turn out, but this one of me on the wonderful boardwalk kind of did.

And look at the license plate of a car parked there! Just for Travalon!

I suspect this particular person likes all cats, because they had a bumper sticker that said: "Cattitude."

The day had been wonderful until we had to get onto Highway 95 because A1A ran out, and we needed to make up some time. The traffic there was horrible, with drag racers and a guy going 35 mph. Things got worse when we got to our "boutique" hotel, which had no office and no obvious way to get in. Travalon checked his email, and they had sent him a code to get in... but it didn't work. We called their 24/7 helpline.... and got voicemail. We gave up and went to a nearby Asian fusion restaurant for Lunar New Year, and that was great, but when we got back to the hotel some guy obviously calling from a foreign country had to reset our code. We got in... and the bedsheets were stained and had hairs on them, so they clearly had not been changed. We slept on top of them instead of under them. There was no parking permit in the room like there was supposed to be, so we were afraid the car would be towed overnight. Of course they had no wake-up call service, nor was there a clock in the room, never mind an alarm clock, so we both set the alarms on our phones for 5:45 am.

This morning it was fortunate that Travalon woke up just before 5:45, because I woke up when he got up... and then we barely heard our phone alarms go off so, so quietly. Would that have even awakened us?? We quickly packed and left that sorry excuse for a hotel, happy to find the car was fine. We grabbed a quick breakfast at Dunkin' with all the bleary-eyed port workers, then we drove to the port, where the worst part was finding a parking spot at the port parking ramp - we ended up on the very top. Then we checked in... and waited. That gave me time to be tortured by the green owl on DuoLingo. Finally everyone piled onto the ferry, called the Jaune II, where everyone else rushed to buy breakfast. The water was quite rough, and at first I was a bit scared, but the boat just rocked and didn't sink, so I grew accustomed to it, and Travalon slept... but everyone else around us was throwing up. Was it because we had eaten so much earlier that we didn't get seasick? People have always noted how I don't get motion sick, and I'm supposed to have a gene that makes me less prone to it. Maybe Travalon has that gene too.

The trip took almost exactly two hours. Here are some views of Bimini from the ferry. Actually, these are of the shores of Florida from the ferry.

Now photos from Bimini.

This was our first view of our hotel.

These photos are from after we got off the boat. Bimini really does seem to be paradise, and it's a lot quieter than New Providence, where Nassau is.

We had lunch at a place called Smitty's - we both had cracked conch with rice and peas, which is what they call it even though it seems to be rice and beans. Then we took a walk, trying to find the Catholic church. It was on a street with no name that was full of churches, and as we walked along, two middle-aged white people who clearly had no idea where we were, guys kept driving by and asking if we needed a taxi ride. "No," we said, "we want to walk." But after walking for half an hour, I was exhausted because I'd stupidly lugged my beach bag in case we found a place to swim, only Travalon hadn't brought swim stuff, and the only things I really needed in the bag were my phone and Niko. When the next guy asked, we gave up and accepted a ride... and it turned out the taxi driver knew the guy across the street who had the keys to the church, so we got to go inside. Also, they have an Ash Wednesday service at 8, so we can go if we can get up. It's a good Lenten penance to get up and get ashed.

This guy also knew where we could get guava duff, but we had to special order it. They did have guava cookies, so we got four of those. Then we drove around the island. Here is a lovely view.

Then our taxi driver, Yul, took us to see the Dolphin House and its creator, Ashley Saunders, who used to be his English teacher. This is a bit like the Dickeyville Grotto, created with found objects like seashells and bottles, only its inspiration is not God but dolphins. Here are some photos.

And some photos of the inside.

This is a lamp made of a conch shell.

This is a sea turtle skull.

Isn't this unexpected! All the places are in Madison.

Here we are with the artist. I would highly recommend this particular site.

Another beautiful beach we passed.

This is the view from the balcony in our room.

This is the infinity pool at our hotel.

We took the free shuttle down to the beach on the west side of the island to watch the sunset.

This is looking down the beach in the other direction.

And then we saw the ferry leaving! We are leaving on it on Wednesday, when it supposedly leaves at 8, but tonight it left at 6. A lot of people were coming just for the day, so they got here at 11 and left just seven hours later.

At first we weren't going to watch the Super Bowl, since we wanted both teams to lose, but we ended up ordering pizzas from the bar and watching some of it downstairs. I guess because we're in the Bahamas, we didn't see any good ads, just ads for upcoming shows on ESPN. Then we came back to our room, where I worked on this very long blog post while Travalon watched the rest of the game, which went into overtime. I decided I hated the Forty Niners less than the Chiefs, but in the end the Chiefs prevailed. I couldn't care less about Taylor Swift dating one of the team members, but for some reason that drives some right-wing people crazy, and they said we would all know it was a conspiracy when the Chiefs won the Super Bowl. So I guess they were proved right...?

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