We arrived safe and on time -which as many may know is quite a miracle here in the Bahamas. It is said “If you have time to spare take Bahamas Air, or Bahamas Air is a Christian airlines, only God knows when it is coming and God knows when it is leaving”!!! We were on Bahamas air and I am so thankful. The only other airline that flies into the island- Southern Air- has smaller planes and in all the wind and rain they cancelled flights for 2 days!!!!!! 2 days??!! Oh that would be so crazy/expensive to be stuck in Nassau for 2 days. Anyway I digress……home once again. It seems like we never left, that we just a few days ago putting things away to close up our home here and now we are busy as beavers opening it once again! But no it wasn’t a few days ago, it was 5 months ago and what a wonderful 5 months it was with traveling, spending time with family and friends and living in our camper in northern Ohio. Oh I digress yet again! More on that another time.
September was a wild and stressful month with 2 hurricanes-Irma and Maria- to worry about and then a 3rd- Jose almost caught us out on the Otter Banks in North Carolina but we got off just a few hours ahead of the high tides crashing waves over the 1 road in/out blocking it with sand like snow in the north!
So when I say we finally made it home…..it feels like a dream to be here. But then I wake up and see all the work to be done I know it is real. Living on an island to many is a picture of swinging lazily in a hammock on a beach with a frothy drink in hand. That can and does happen on occasion but not these first few weeks.
May I share the reality of having a home on an outer island in the Bahamas? I don’t write this lightly and definitely not complaining about all the work. Many lost all they had living on islands south of us and here also just 2 short years ago when Hurricane Joaquin devastated our precious island.
We started building our first house here in 2000. It took a total of 7 months over 4 years, 30 days at a time as money would allow. It was 3200 sq. ft with 1000 sq ft of decks. It slept 10 and we ran it as a guest house for 4 years. We picked guests up from the airport- which could be a $100 one way taxi ride, cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner and took them to any beach up and down the island. After 4 years of wonderful times with many friends and family we sold, built smaller- only 800 sq ft with 1400 sq ft of deck and only 2 small bedrooms. We had to put in solar- our wonderful Bahamas government was disputing with the electric company that we lived in a subdivision and it had to have electric, water and paved road in order to be called a subdivision. The electric company said we had to be called a subdivision first in order to get electric….and round and round we went so we got solar. It was a learning curve for sure. This is how I make coffee in the mornings.
Boil water and pour into thermos to keep hot using only propane on the stove. WORKS! We put in all LED lighting, merely use big items like washer on full sun days and don’t own a dryer- have Gods dryer- clothes line.
We have a 23,000 gallon cistern- God fills it up for us over the rainy season- and
solar hot water for the outdoor shower
made with 441 bottles. We grow our own vegetables/herbs/lettuces making the soil to grow them in with a mix of peat moss, black sand that we buy from a local and compost. The local fishermen sell us grouper, hog fish, lobster and conch for our meals and we have a couple wonderful food stores close by to purchase most of what we need. “If you want it, don’t look at the price!” I tell friends. Gas is over $5 a gal and has been as high as $6.25 a few years back. We drive an 89 F-250 Ford pick up and a ’03 Dodge pickup truck. We have 2 trucks because 1 is typically in need of some repair. “Rust and termites never sleep” is a saying here. Something regularly has to be fixed in order to use it! There are not any poisonous insects or animals here but plenty of mosquitoes during rainy season, noseeums or “sandflies” that you can’t see but have teeth as big as a shark I swear! My perfume this time of the year is deet- ugh! But if I want to work outside I must use it- nothing else works trust me.
I must close as I have plenty of work staring at me to get finished before any beach today. Busy putting away things we brought in on our pallets of shipments, 6 months of supplies.
Piles everywhere to be put away…………………
and more piles…….then the cleaning can start……..oh and planting the garden after making soil mix! Better get moving. John is already out power washing the deck, one other thing that never sleeps here is mold/mildew.
Life living on an island is never dull nor boring…..stay tuned for beach pictures……..
island life 