Staniel Cay - Wild Pigs and Wildcats

This morning we moved from Sampson Cay to an island about a mile south called Big Major's Spot. The anchorage here has at least 30 boats (4 of them are massive megayachts 100 feet long). Big Major is unpopulated but not uninhabited as we soon discovered -- there is a small troupe of wild pigs living on the island. This morning we watched another couple dinghy up and feed them, so we thought we'd try too. We didn't dare land the dinghy on the island (since the previous couple beached their dinghy and two of the pigs tried to get on board), but we just hung out maybe 20 feet from shore and sure enough, they swam right out to us. It was really a sight, once they are in the water all you can see are these huge ears and a big snout sticking up. All we had to offer was bread (all our produce is canned or frozen) but the pigs didn't seem to mind. The bravest one just swum around our dinghy for about five minutes gobbling up all the bread he could. He only tried to hop on board twice but we were able to lure him away by throwing the bread a few feet away from the boat. I guess these guys are pretty well-fed, since all afternoon we kept watching boats come and go bringing offerings to the pigs.

Later this afternoon we took the dinghy over to Staniel Cay, which is the most populated island in the Central Exumas. We tied up and decided to walk around the town to see what it had to offer. We stopped in at a small bar called "Happy People". Our guidebooks said it had closed after the owners had passed away, but there were some local guys who had reopened it and were keeping it going. The place had a really fun vibe, and reminded me of the old "Palappa" back home in Tempe. There were only four of us in the place, including the bartender Gary, but the music was good and the beer was cold, so what more can you ask of a bar in the middle of nowhere?

After that we crossed the street to check out the library. The building was maybe as big as my garage but it was crammed with books. In fact, the librarian told us that we could take (and keep) any book for a small donation. I guess they get a lot of cruisers who just dump all their books off and the library doesn't know what to do with them all. We got to chatting with Joan (the librarian) and she asked us where we were from. When we said Phoenix she said, "Oh, well I went to school at the University of Arizona down in Tucson". Apparently she was a Delta Gamma back in -- she had to really think about this, I guess life in the Bahamas will do that to you -- class of '51. She did undergraduate in Anthropology then traveled around a bit before moving to Florida and getting into boating. She said she and her husband came to Staniel Cay way back when and just never left. They settled down and raised their family here. She was surprised to hear that we were both graduates of U of A. I guess she doesn't see too many people from landlocked Arizona cruising around in a boat in the Bahamas. What a small world, huh? Bear Down Wildcats!

Where we are:
Lat: N 24 10.933'
Long: W 76 27.548'