More on Rock Sound

Yesterday the hot news among the seven or so cruising boats anchored near us was that the price of diesel had gone down 80 cents a gallon at Dingle's Motor Services. That was the good news. The bad news is that Dingle's is not a place where we can tie Delilah up next to the pump: it's across the street from the dinghy dock. See our earlier blog from Nassau for a description of what hauling six full jerry jugs is like.

We also filled our water tank by jug today--and paid 40 cents a gallon for the privilege. Water is scarce here, and what we paid for is salt water that's been treated through reverse osmosis to make it drinkable. We don't expect water to get any cheaper as we head south, so we are careful not ot use more than is necessary every day. Needless to say, hygiene is not what it should be.

After all the errands, we set aside this morning to walk across Eleuthera to the beach on the Atlantic Ocean side, a couple of miles away, stopping first at the bakery to reserve a loaf of sandwich bread, which we would pick up on the return trip, and to say hello to Julian, the baker, who always has plenty to say.

We found the beach down an unmarked dirt path at the end of a long road, and we were the only people on it. The sand was powdery and white, and the long shorline had excellent reefs for poking around, but farther up the beach, beyond the high tide mark, sat all the world's plastic, thrown up there by the ocean during storms, along with old fishing nets and a selection of single shoes. Plastic is insidious, as it resists proper disposal, doesn't degrade, and floats, so you'll find pieces of it on any wild shorlines, as well as in the ocean, miles from land. It is too bad recycling plastic is not paricularly profitable; the residents of Eleuthera would be rich.

The walk back from the beach was starting to seem a lot longer and hotter than we remembered when we heard a car pull onto the road behind us. We didn't signal it, but I knew it would stop anyway. Offering rides to people is a common courtesy here.

A white Cutlass stopped beside us, and an ancient Bahamian woman with an enormous straw hat was tucked behind the steering wheel, chewing on a scorched ear of corn. She motioned for us to get inside.

The car was about twenty degrees hotter inside, and I started sweating immediately. The driver had on long sleeves and pants in addition to her hat, and she commented on the hot weather, but she didn't roll down the window any further.

We told her about the johnnyckae we'd tried for the first time, and she said, "It's good with souse." The radio was playing rather loud reggae music, and I wasn't sure I heard her corectly, so I murmured something that could have been taken as agreement. We've been eating it with chocolate frosting, of course.

According to my dictionery, souse is pickled pork trimmings, but I prefer the description for souse and scrapple given by Chad Holley down in Greensboro: "When they're done butchering all the useful parts of the pig, they sweep the floor..." Makes you want to run out and buy a packet, eh?

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