Tuesday 29 December 2015

Park It! (Part Two)

Bonefish Ponds National Park #2

There are four national parks on New Providence, the island where Nassau is located, although I'd stretch that to five, if you count Clifton, where I went snorkelling twice and saw the undersea sculptures. I set myself the goal of getting to all of them, aided by my sister-in-law, who not only had a car but is also an avid birder.

When we were at The Retreat (as mentioned here, I asked the girl behind the desk for details about two other parks I had seen on their website: Bonefish Pond and Harrold and Wilson Ponds. We weren't given much information about the former, and in the latter, we were told that it was closed, but no reason was given.

Not surprisingly, that encouraged me to do a little digging and find out how to access them: I enjoy challenges like that and the fact that we had driven close to both but had seen no signage for them only made it more fun.

Bonefish Ponds was an amazing place: a brand-new paved road leads to a small parking lot in the northwest corner of the park, and then onto the boardwalk out to the observation deck.

Bonefish Ponds National Park #1

Above a 360˚ panorama I shot, looking back at the parking lot from the boardwalk: click on the tiny thumbnail to see it in all its glory. The tide was running out when we got there, and we were able to see the red mangrove shoots up close and personal as the level of the water dropped.

Bonefish Ponds National Park #3

There's another access point to the south-east corner which we visited a couple of days later, although there wasn't all that much to see: the highlight of going out there, however, was the flock of glossy ibis we saw on the way. Wish I could have gotten my camera out faster!

Harrold and Wilson Ponds #1

And then there was the challenge of Harrold and Wilson Ponds: I explored the BNT's map to find the boardwalks at the northeast and southwest corners, and then we drove out. Lots of herons and egrets, but it's easy to see why the southwest part of the park has portions of the boardwalk closed: the invasive cattails are as tall as I am!

Harrold and Wilson Ponds #3

Once again, a small, simple photograph doesn't do this place justice, so we found the hilltop overlook on the map at the other two areas a couple of days later, and I shot this panorama (above) of the area.

Primeval Forest #2

Something that continually surprised me on these expeditions was the excellent quality of the maps at the individual parks, but apart from finding Primeval Forest, the last of the parks on the list, there was virtually no signage on how to get to them. Had it not been for Google Maps, where I plotted out all the waypoints before importing them into my trusty Garmin eTrex 20 GPS, most of these adventures would have been a lot more complex.

The biggest reason why Primeval Forest exists is because the landscape is mostly karst, which made it virtually impossible to be developed in any way. You drive down a small backroad to the large BNT sign, park, and follow the wonderful route that's been laid out. Great signage, even a circular staircase that takes you inside one of the deeper features, and even though you're not that far from the airport, you feel transported back in time.

Ironically, after I took the picture of what is considered the oldest tree on the island, this mahogany (below), we visited the ranger in his little cabin to sign the guestbook and buy a shirt to support the BNT: the photograph on the back of the shirt is identical to the one I took.

Primeval Forest #4

Monday 28 December 2015

Adventure on the High Seas

More!

One of the advantages in being somewhere for an extended chunk of time -- five weeks, in the case of this trip to The Bahamas -- means you can have a great number of different adventures without feeling rushed. My niece's husband now runs his own boat charter service, but for awhile, he worked for Powerboat Adventures, and arranged for me to join their day-long trip to Allen's Cay and Ship Channel Cay.

Our first stop was Allen's Cay, where you could get off, pick up a long, thick skewer and a handful of grapes, and feed the endemic (and endangered) Bahamas iguanas: they are actually pretty tame, and know the sound of the approaching boat. Still, you need to use the skewer to feed them, and anyone with a brightly coloured pedicure was warned to dig their toes into the sand in case an iguana mistook a toe for a grape.

Feels like a wet suit

Then we headed off to their private island, Ship Channel Cay, for the rest of the program: it was a trip where you could do as much or as little as you wanted on the island. I was more interested in the drift snorkelling than feeding the baby Atlantic manta ray (Manta birostris). One kid got stung, but he'll have a story to tell for the rest of his life....

Ruddy Turnstone

And then there were the birds: a nice flock of non-breeding ruddy turnstones (Arenaria interpres) kept us company on the beach, and I saw several other species that I was unable to capture with the camera. Our lunch was a great whopping hot buffet: just what I wanted when I emerged from the water. It was a grey day, sadly, but at least they ran the trip: it had been cancelled the two previous days because of high winds and rain.

mmmm lunch #2

Humans and rays weren't the only creatures fed: here is a lemon shark (Negaprion brevirostris) devouring a vollyball-sized lump of fish guts and heads -- the same fresh fish filets we ate at the buffet, in fact.

After lunch, there was a demonstration of conch salad-making which I passed on: instead, I grabbed another Sands beer (although I wish they had had High Rock or my personal fave, Strong Back Stout) from the open bar, climbed up to the observation deck, pulled out my journal, and wrote until we were summoned to board the boat for our return trip to Nassau -- I was the last person on board. I could have spent a few days there: there was a trail up to the top of the "mountain" I would have liked to hike up, but my surf shoes weren't appropriate for that, and to be there without the others would have been the sort of break I needed to have had more of on this trip.

There's always next time, right?

Drift snorkling

Sunday 27 December 2015

Park It! (Part One)

Water on fan palm

One of the places I went to the last time I visited Nassau was The Retreat, a national park as well as being the headquarters of the Bahamas National Trust, which runs their national park system. The main attraction of The Retreat is the huge collection of palms from around the world, gathered by Arthur and Margaret Langlois, who owned the park when it was a private landholding.

Chenille plant

(And they have lots of other tropical plants as well, including this Chenille plant Acalypha hispida: while it isn't a Bahamian native -- it's from Oceania, in fact -- I think it's pretty cool, and is a member of the Euphorbidae family, which also includes the crown-of-thorns and pointsettias.)

Zombie palm

But the palms (hundreds of different ones!) are the real attraction here, with some species like this Zombie palm Zombia antillavum (above), which is endemic to Hispaniola, although more in Haiti than the Dominican Republic, from the Americas, but also the Red Sealing Wax palm Cyrtostachys renda (below), also known as the Lipstick palm, native to Thailand, Malaysia, Sumatra and Borneo.

Red Sealing Wax Palm

There are lots of cool pathways to take at The Retreat, one of which passes by the original well that fed the main house: it's not in use now, and has the most interesting well cover: given it's probably 3 meters across, I tried to think up a way to rig up my camera to take a shot from overhead, while I pretended to be caught in the spider web.

But my tripod just didn't cut it. Next time, I'll have to find a small drone, I guess.

Falling!

Saturday 26 December 2015

Broadside

Lasqueti Press #4

Ever since I was in Nassau four years ago, I had kept my sights on coming back to work with Sonia Farmer at Poinciana Paper Press: it took longer than I thought, but it finally happened.

Lasqueti Press #5

Sonia's studio is tucked away in downtown Nassau, and it's really lovely, with great access, lots of light, tons of type to look at, and a little sign press to do smaller runs (plus a lovely C&P that needs work but which can crank out copies with an elegant mechanical ballet).

Lasqueti Press #8

Day 1 consisted of me showing up with a haiku about the conch (Lobatus gigas), and we looked at various faces, tossed around some ideas about possible images to go with it, and just generally talked about the wonderful world of letterpress. After setting the type, Sonia mixed up the most beautiful pink ink to print it with, and we did that on some Strathmore 130 lb. medium watercolour paper, as well as some coloured pieces of her handmade paper.

Lasqueti Press #10

Sonia also had a spare linocut block in the shop, and I borrowed her tools, spending the next day finding a suitable image, then transferring it to the block before carving it out. We were both pleased with how it looked when it was inked up with yet another custom blended ink (this time it was black, with both blue and white blended in to make a cool dark grey), and set about printing it onto the scraps of paper Sonia had in her drawers.

Lasqueti Press #11

Once they had dried, I experimented with both watercolour pencils and crayons to give life to the shell, and proceeded to finish off the edition of seven by signing and numbering them when they had dried from the colouring. What a fun time!

Lasqueti Press #12

Wednesday 9 December 2015

Mer-not-so-much-maid

Snorkling #1

Back when I was a teenager and had done all my lifesaving qualifications, I looked for something else to do in water, and signed up for snorkling lessons, as I was too young to be certified on SCUBA. I had the opportunity to go on a couple of free dives after that, but Calgary wasn't then, and isn't now, on anyone's list of great dives, and apart from a few vacation trips, I hadn't been in years.

Snorkling #2

But the opportunity arose to go visit BREEF (see here) and I was able to resurrect my old training. Was I ever glad to go!

Snorkling #3

About the only downside was not being able to take my new camera: Canon doesn't even make a dive-housing for mine, and even if I could have found a third-party one, it would have been as much as the camera itself. Instead, I grabbed one of those little Fuji underwater film cameras -- from which these pictures come -- and while it's better than nothing, it still doesn't capture the adventure as much as I wish it did.

Snorkling #4

But it did whet my appetite to do more, and I've looked at picking up a cheap digital camera just for such wet adventures in the future. What I spent for the disposable camera and developing the film and scanning it onto a CD, and the extra time I took to manipulate the images to make them sharper and less "blue," is about half of what I can buy something for.

Plus it gives me an incentive to come back and have more underwater adventures. It's also good for things like kayaking and boating: two other watersports I want to do more of as well.

Snorkling #6

Sunday 29 November 2015

Old places, new faces

Coast

One advantage of having been here before is that there are places I went to that I enjoyed and wanted to visit again: four years ago, we paid a brief visit to the Clifton Historical Authority, a national park that is on the far southwestern tip of New Providence.

Pirate Steps

Didn't have much of an opportunity to explore, and, to be honest, there wasn't much there that talked about why it was a protected area.

Looking out

About the only thing that there was to see that was serious was Sacred Space by Antonious Roberts.

Follow the, uh....

Imagine my surprise when we went earlier this week to discover wide paths, picnic areas, excellent signage, and a wonderful Sir Nicholas Nuttall Coral Reef Sculpture Garden installed as part of Bahamas Reef Environment Educational Foundation (BREEF)!

Life list: check

I'll be returning with snorkling gear to explore it next week, weather permitting, and trying out a cheap little underwater Fuji camera so I can, I hope, take some photographs.

So long. Farewell.

Friday 27 November 2015

Scratch and swoosh

Anole #1

I've gotten more than a few of I kind of hate you for being somewhere warm notes from friends in frosty/snowy Calgary: I hope this post makes them feel better....

My first night in the Bahamas was eerily similar to my first night in Vancouver, with calamity stricking again. This time, it was in the form of some sort of insect which found my legs irretrievably attractive, and to which I had an allergic reaction: a multitude of large, red, itchy welts appeared on my calves.

Morning at the beach #3

Took awhile before we found something that worked to let me get a proper night's sleep, and although I've gotten one or two more every day, I'm not having such a violent reaction. But I'm not going to be getting a pantyhose modelling contract any time soon, either.

Signage

And I still itch.

The first couple of days here were hot, humid, and perfectly still, which probably didn't help either, but the temperature and humidity dropped, while a gentle breeze picked up.

Gulls in Paradise #2

Unfortunately, that gentle breeze became a serious, neverending gale, with large whitecaps even on some of the protected waters here. The nearest beach faces in that direction, and while I was looking forward to walking over there to soak my troubles away, even a strong swimmer like me doesn't have a death wish.

Great Egret in Paradise #2

Saturday 21 November 2015

Catching up, part three

Baaa

It was an interesting group of passengers on the ferry: if you want to take a car, you have to ship it over on a barge, which isn't practical or cost-effective, unless you live there. One guy, about my age, tried one of the less original pick-up lines on me "haven't I seen you on this ferry before?" even though I was standing and talking to my chauffeur at the time.

Someone else on the ferry mentioned that dolphins had been seen in the bay four days before, but had no information on how or where to find the feral sheep. Imagine my surprise when I saw this one and a companion in the schoolyard on our arrival!

After being met at the ferry, we piled into a rickety truck for the short ride to my friend's cabin: rustic was how it had been described, and it lived up to that in spades. Propane powered the small oven and three burners, as well as the bar-sized refrigerator, with a wood stove cranking out heat, and a wide range of candles (and one Coleman gas light) and flashlights enabling us to find our way outside to the composting toilet in the night.

Island Girl

Getting settled in basically meant putting all the food and beverages that needed to be cold into the fridge, so we then headed off to the nearest beach. It is neither wide nor particularly long, and covered with pebbles instead of soft sand, but it held a fine collection of pebbles, shells, logs, and one, somewhat windblown, very happy person (above).

Along with a dead jellyfish (below).

Shoot the light #11

Lasqueti has been my business name since I moved to New York City in 1982: I had sailed around it, and I had flown over it, but until November 5, I had not set foot on it. For my milestone birthday this year, I was determined to change that: being able to share it with two friends who helped to make it happen was bonus.

Sentinel

We left to hike down the road to another beach about a kilometre away, with a northern exposure instead of a northwestern one, listening to the wind in the trees, talking about music, food, life, and the mutual friends we shared, and watching the sun filter through the trees from time to time.

A great dinner, lots of perry, beer, and single-malt Irish whisky, and endless talk filled the evening and breakfast the next morning. Despite being in one room that was, in fact, a double-car garage kit that had floor-to-ceiling windows instead of roll-up doors, and "running water" that came from the rainwater collector and which had to be boiled before use, it was one of the best trips I've ever made.

I'll be back. Soon.

Shoot the light #12

It was all over too quickly, with a very rough crossing back to Vancouver Island the next morning: most of the passengers were either horizontal on the benches in the salon, or out under cover on the back of the boat, trying to stave off nausea. Despite the amount of alcohol consumed the night before, we were just fine.

Crossing the line

A quick lunch in Nanaimo, a warm ferry ride to Horseshoe Bay, then checking into my hotel in Vancouver en route to a dinner party with friends from high school, and brunch Saturday with another transplanted Calgary friend, finished off my trip. I arrived back in Calgary exhausted, with much work to do in the few days I had before heading off on the road again.

Friday 20 November 2015

Catching up, part two

Shoot the light #10

Sunrises are one of my favourite things to shoot: it's way easier this year to do it because I don't have to get up at 4 a.m. to do it.grin

This is beautiful downtown Cowichan Bay, on November 4, the day our new government was sworn in: I walked across the road from my hotel to the park, and decided to try some of the new bells and whistles of my new camera. This uses High Dynamic Range (HDR) to create several different photographic exposures from one simple shutter click, and then recombine them into a photograph that lets you see everything (like the town) that's in the shadow more clearly than just one automatic exposure would produce.

And it does it in less time that it takes to read that paragraph....

George or Gracie?

It was lovely and quiet down in the harbour, with the pair of tame-ish mute swans (this is either George or Gracie, I'm not sure which) cruising around the bay in their silent way. There aren't many ways to start one's day that are better than being alone and quiet with nature on a still morning.

Gentlemen

After a hearty breakfast, we (an old friend from university days who retired out to Vancouver Island, and offered to be my chauffeur for the adventure) had a lot of fun tasting wines / beers / ciders, going to a fibre store (where, indeed, I bought some local product), eating some great food, and visiting the pier at the south end of the main drag along the water to see where the Stellar's sea lions raft up to exchange ideas of current interest. You could hear these boys from quite a distance!

Always something going on

We then made our way up to Parksville to spend the night before setting off on my bucket-list adventure to Lasqueti Island. This had been the most complicated part of my trip west to organize, between the research on the ferry schedule, the weather, things to do, and so on. Then, as luck would have it -- and I was remarkably lucky on this trip -- a friend owns property there, and who had been most helpful in the planning, said "hey, as it turns out, I'm going to be there that week: why don't you spend the night at my place?"

So what started out as a quick day trip turned into something much, much more.

Thursday morning dawned calm and bright, and we made our way to the ferry dock with time to spare. French Creek is a lovely little place, with a great cannery/market, where I bought salmon to take over for dinner (along with a great deal of beverages we had purchased on our tasting adventures) as thanks for staying the night.

Our faithful chariot

And so we steamed out on the passenger ferry promptly at 9:45 a.m. ....

to be continued

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