Grand Bahama

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Hi there, and welcome to my Grand Bahama page. We had been to Paradise Island, Bahamas, but not Grand Bahama before this trip. Grand Bahama was very very different than Paradise Island. It was a heck of a lot quieter and had this sort of weird, deserted feeling in many parts of it. For example, when we got off our plane at the Grand Bahama airport, there was dead silence and only the sound of crickets! That weirded me out... but in a good way, of course. I'd never in my life heard crickets at an airport, especially not on a plane runway. It was kind of comforting, though, as we were about to get to bed anyway when we reached our resort. We stayed at the Sheraton Grand Bahama which wasn't the most interesting resort in the world, but it had a beautiful, clean beach (shown at left and here). The Bahamas hasn't been a British colony since 1973. Many of the 50,000 people on Grand Bahama Island were not born here. They come from all over The Islands of The Bahamas. In 1834, when Great Britain banned slavery throughout its empire, former slaves in The Islands of The Bahamas were allowed to stake claims on whatever open land they could find, and many of Grand Bahama Island’s older settlements such as Pinder’s Point and Williams Town were founded by former slaves. These towns are almost invariably named after their founders or a former slave owner.

The weather was very lovely when we were there, in the 70's and 80's... and we got some rain, too. The island is very green and clean, something I was pleased to see. The Grand Bahamians obviously take great pride and care in their environment. That's refreshing to see! I was impressed by the Grand Bahamians. They seem to have it pretty good overall. I would have liked to have seen more of the island but I had the crappy misfortune of getting sick on the first leg of our trip and it carried over to our stay on Grand Bahama, too. I sure would've liked to see some festivals or cultural events but I wasnt feeling up for much. I also missed out on all the diving we had planned on Grand Bahama, and believe me, I was the opposite of happy. I didn't get to do our shark and dolphin dives. My sweetie did, though. He did the open ocean dolphin dive and the shark dive where the dive master wears the chainmail suit over his wetsuit and hand feeds the sharks. It's quite a spectacle... dozens of sharks come to feed and you get to sit on the ocean floor, watch, take pictures, and just be in awe. He got some really good photos and says the shark dive was more intense than the dolphin dive, of course, but that both were really amazing. His photos are at the end of the slideshow and he got some video, too. I sure wish I could have done it, too, but then there are still many cool shark encounters in my future.

We did go on some pretty drives, too... got to do quite a bit of beach combing. There were these huge stands of Caribbean pine forest all along the roadsides on the island. These pines actually cover 50% of the island and are quite lovely as well as fire resistent. There were lots of palms as well, but the Caribbean pines are the most common trees on the island. Grand Bahama has a subtropical climate. Here's some of our drive along the island on our way to one of Grand Bahama's best kept secrets, Goldrock Beach at Lucayan National Park. Goldrock Beach was my favorite place in Grand Bahama.

We drove to Lucayan National Park and hiked through this very pretty mangrove swamp with a boardwalk to get to Goldrock Beach. I also loved the mangrove swamp (shown above) because it felt inviting and had a rough, rugged beauty and charm. Here's some video. It was so peaceful there and there were practically no people there other than us. We even saw a raccoon on our way back to the car. That was a cute way to wrap up the outing... gave him half a croissant we had left over. The beach itself was absolutely breathtaking! I had read about Goldrock Beach online on somebody else's travel blog and when I saw their photos, I knew we had to go there. So we did. The beach was flat, elegantly textured with fine sand, and went really far out like the beaches in French Polynesia. The water was so clear and warm, too, just the way I like it! And it's color was like aqua Gatorade. We saw some stingrays on both days we were there. Two babies, about the size of dinner plates. That was a real treat. We saw some adults, too, farther out from the shore. Here's my video. Yeah, that was a totally gorgeous experience. The light was amazing the whole time and kept changing on into the early evening. The air stayed warm and perfect. And we were the only people there besides 4 other people and the beach was so huge we hardly saw them at all. They left just after we got there, anyway.

I would have loved to explore more beaches on the island because there are quite a few, but again, being as sick as I was, I felt like crap. Luckily, the time we spent at the park made the visit well worth it. Lucayan National Park also has a cave system that you can go explore, too, but we didn't manage to fit that

in, unfortunately. I guess I should feel grateful that I could even get out of bed. 'Lucayan' National Park gets its name from the some of the island's earliest inhabitants, the 'Arawak' communities, who became known as Lucayans... they were believed to be pretty advanced and well-organized socially and politically, and it's thought approximately 4,000 lived on Grand Bahama when the Spanish Conquistadors arrived in 1492. Spain's arrival and subsequent claim to the island shortly thereafter eventually led to the rapid decline and eventual extermination of the Lucayan population. Other likely causes were mass die-offs from European diseases, frequent genocides, or the Lucayans being captured as slaves. The Lucayans vanished so quickly, and this is probably why so little is known about their society. However, in sites such as the Lucayan National Park and Dead Man's Reef there have been numerous artifacts discovered including animal bones, pottery shards, shell beads and evidence of a complex burial system. That always pisses me off in a big way... knowing about all the human diversity, wisdom, and societies that we have lost because of greed, conquest, slavery, genocide, ethnocentrism, and all the other horrible things that seem to repeat throughout history. Anyway, I'm sure the Lucayans were very amazing and had lots to teach us. But we'll never know, will we?