Black Point, Great Guana Island, Exumas, Central Bahamas.
Swiftwing
Sun 26 Apr 2009 15:32
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Great Guana Island is about twenty five
miles north of George Town and was our next port of call.
 Local sailing skiff which are raced every
May and are very fast hugely over canvassed.
 Skiff being rebuilt almost totally
anew.
 The workmanship looked really
good.
 Downtown Black Point which is the second
biggest centre of habitation on the Exumas with a population of 80.
 The main road through Black
Point.
 Ruby's supermarket was
closed.
 There is no NHS here and most locals
can't afford health care. We have a friend who is having a CAT scan in Nassau
and it is costing £1,200 with a further £200 for the half hour
consultation.
 One man Police Station. We spoke to the
local cop who had a boiler suit for a uniform. He was very friendly as were all
the locals and told us to let our hair down but keep tied on as you might wake
up with none in the morning! I think this was an analogy about getting
robbed.
 One man station with a new launch. There
is a huge American DEA presence here and I think they pay for all the drug
enforcement hardware. There is an unmarked helicopter which flies about at night
with no lights noting the movement of cruisers and directing resources to
unidentified fast power boats. A large proportion of the Americas drugs come
from Central America via the Bahamas.
 Looking across the anchorage from the
Laundromat built specifically for cruisers with it's own dingy dock. It was a
new building, beautifully fitted out and by far the best laundry we have seen
since we left the UK.
 Again, the Internet cafe' is the best we
have seen with all new computers at no charge though we did leave a donation of
$5 for our hour and we bought soft drinks.
 The party hut which is used at weekends
and has it's own dinghy dock.
 Dinghy dock at the party
hut.
 The Mailboat calls once a week from
George Town and is the only transport to and from the island besides personal
boats which I don't think many of the locals can afford.
 There were cars on the island but they
were heavily outnumbered by golf type buggies. You can't make it out very well
but this blue one was made to look like a sixties beach buggy.
 There is no soil cover on the island with
only this very hard and very sharp limestone.
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