Warderick Wells - Hutia and the Blowholes

Today was the perfect day to go hiking. We filled water bottles, slathered on the sunscreen (we are both way beyond "farmer tan" at this point), and headed to the trailhead on the beach. It's hard to miss the beach as there is a 52 foot sperm whale skeleton stretching across it. It was put there as a warning to cruisers not to toss bags of garbage overboard, apparently the poor whale ingested some and died as a result.

We hiked all over the north part of the island, keeping our eyes peeled for hutias. The hutia (hoo-tee-uh) is a small rodent and is the only land mammal native to the Bahamas. In the 60's it was believed to be extinct but a small colony was found on another island. In 1981 they imported 13 of them here to Warderick Wells and, as rodents do, they went forth and multiplied. Unfortunately they are nocturnal so the only hutia we got to see today was stuffed and under glass in the Warden's office.

Our hike took us to the top of the hill overlooking the shallow Exuma Bank on the west and the deeper Exuma Sound to the east. Walking along the limestone cliff we came across several holes in the rock that the guidebook described as blowholes. The holes go all the way down to the ocean and when the waves surge through the sea caves below, the blowholes erupt with gusts of air and sometimes ocean spray. Kevin was standing over two seemingly dormant ones when he asked "so when do you think they actually blow?". His question was answered immediately by a loud crashing noise and a gust of air strong enough to blow his shirt up to his chest. He jumped back and -- I am not kidding here -- screamed like a girl. No wonder the original settlers thought this area of the island was haunted by the ghosts of shipwrecks. Blowholes are scaaarry.

We tried to use the wifi internet access here ($10 for 24 hours -- guess they can charge whatever they want in the middle of nowhere) to upload photos to the website. Unfortunately the connection crapped out on us and we were only able to upload one photo (of the fish Kevin caught on our way from Nassau). We will try again next time we can find a faster connection.