Royal Island - Where There's Smoke...

We are dying of smoke inhalation...but more on that later. On shore here are the ruins of what must have been a fantastic estate at one time. The shell of the manor house sits high on a hill with steppes leading all the way down to the lagoon. There is a ramp at the waterline leading to a stone boathouse that is carved into the hill itself. The wooden roofs are long gone, but numerous buildings are still standing. Our guidebook says that a Florida Gatsby-wannabe named W.P. Stewart bought the island in the 1930's and had this elaborate compound built. Massive stone blocks were shipped in by sailboat (not an efficient way of transporting cargo, since the small boats could only carry 21 blocks at a time) and hand-carried up the hill. I imagine that at the time the place was very lavish, but for whatever reason it has been left to decay and is now completely uninhabitable. It irks me that the guide book does not say why it was abandoned. Hurricane? Financial woes? Anyone with internet access feel up to a little research?

Anyway, the smoke inhalation...we heard from another cruiser that the island was recently bought by the same guy who owns the Atlantis resort. So every morning a team of a dozen workers comes screaming into the lagoon on their powerboats and works on the landscaping, all the time shouting at each other in what we know must be English but could be Greek for all we can comprehend. We can't for the life of us figure out why they are working on the landscaping first while the buildings lie in tatters, but they have planted a rainbow of bouganvillea on the stepped terraces and are in the process of clearing (and burning) all the underbrush. Since the lagoon is ringed by land on most sides, it makes for a hazy low-lying cloud of smoke that just hovers over all the boats in here. It's not totally unpleasant, but the boat is starting to smell like Eau de Campfire. We can't really complain though, at least they aren't burning trash (we've encountered that in several anchorages) so we'll take campfire smell any day.

So today after the workers left we (and a dozen other dinghys) blatantly ignored the large "Private Property" sign and went ashore to explore. Kevin wasn't looking where he was going and wandered right through the still smoldering ashes of the bonfire. You should have seen him hot-foot it out of there just like in the cartoons (no harm done despite the fact that he was wearing sandals). The estate is huge, and the current inhabitants (wasps, ants, and lizards...lots of lizards) are really living it up. The floors still have the original colorful tiles, and in the entryway a monstrous fireplace dominates the room. We followed a paved road through the woods and saw the evidence of the landscapers all the way to the beach on the north side of the island. They had cleared most of the trees so that the road can be rebuilt, but every few feet a poisonwood tree stood completely untouched. Not only can their sap give you an itchy rash, but if you burn the wood and inhale the smoke you will be sorry for weeks afterward. So I guess that's why they leave them alone. Although with all the smoke we are breathing I suppose we'll find out soon enough if they did accidentally burn a log or two.