Our sincerest thanks to Greg and Barbara Allard for once again sharing their thoughts and beautiful photography from their Bahamas cruises. These photos and descriptions will have you aching to follow in Meander‘s wake! For more of this excellent photography, type Allard in our Homepage search window for letters from previous cruises.

BAHAMAS 2024-#2
MAY 8, 2024

Live passionately, even if it kills you, because something is going to kill you anyway. 
-Webb Chiles
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Hello everyone. 
We left Great Harbour Cay in the Berry islands about a week ago, and after another bumpy, windy, salty
78 mile open-ocean crossing, we arrived at Spanish Wells off the northern end of Eleuthera, in the Far
Bahamas.
Before we visit Spanish Wells with you, there are still several people from Great Harbour whom we would like you to meet.

This six-year-old Bahamian boy, Jamal, was fascinated with our electric bikes, as Barbara explained the
various controls. It was clear that he was sharp: he understood them all right away.

Jamal, and his beautiful proud mother Joelle. All kids, everywhere, love to mug for the camera.

One of our favorite adventures – a dingy expedition to a remote beach. This one is on Cistern Cay, and this place has
some history. In the 1970s & 80s, the Bahamas was a major location for the importation of drugs into the U.S. One of the most notorious traffickers was Carlos Lehder, co-founder of the Medellín Cartel. With the assistance of corrupt Bahamian officials, the Bahamas was positioned perfectly to serve as a drug transfer point; it was close to the U.S., and its huge, often remote, coasts.
Cistern Cay was one of the islands where Lehder’s operation was based; he built a paved runway on the island. There are the remnants of several small planes which crashed into the shallow waters around the cay. Bad pilots, bad planes…. or overloaded? Even today you can explore his once beautiful but now gutted home, just a short distance from our dinghies. Why gutted? All of the sheet rock walls in the house have been torn open by frustrated treasure seekers who thought that those inner walls would hold large quantities of cash and drugs. Were they really “frustrated”? Which of them will ever admit that they found anything?
Today, the U.S. government works closely with the Bahamian officials to continually address the trafficking issues. These days it is not unusual to see a US Coast Guard helicopter pass overhead.

Our long time readers may recognized this gentleman. He is Tramico “Mico” Evans, who lives on Great Harbour and
works at the marina. We have known him for years. His personality is as bright as his smile. But on this trip, we realized that we did not know much about him. So we asked him.
Mico is 37 years old, the youngest of ten children. Born in Nassau, he was raised on the remote island of Andros. His
father cheated on his mother, so to get away from him she took her children, for the summers, to Great Harbor where she had been raised. He has multiple relatives on Great Harbour because of his mother’s connection with the cay. His oldest brother was a police officer in Nassau; when he died, he left his pension to his mother. One of his brothers had a somewhat yellow complexion, which Mico said was “like a ripe mango”; his brother was forever called the “Yellow Man.” Only five of his mother’s ten children (by two different men she never married) are still living.

This is Sand Dollar beach at Shark Creek. At low tide you can walk out far from shore, and with a sharp eye, you can
collect dozens of sand dollars – which are a species of flat, burrowing sea urchin. We don’t collect the live ones,
which are a darkish color, but we do prize the skeleton of the dead ones, which are mostly about three inches
across, have turned white, and have a fascinating pattern in their shell.

Some sand dollars collected a week ago. The five large holes are used to ingest food, and they also allow the urchin to
propel itself across the bottom. When they no longer living and look like these, they are quite fragile.

In the next Newsletter we will show you Spanish Wells, north of Eleuthera, where we are right now. We will also be
doing one more profile from an individual from Great Harbour, a famous, legendary Bahamian, with an international reputation.
Warmest regards to you all.
Barbara and Greg
Copyright Greg Allard, 2024