Long Island and Cat Island

We arrived at the town of Salt Pond, Long Island, late Saturday afternoon. Our plan was to go to Tiny’s Hurricane Hole, a bar / restaurant / laundromat, on Sunday to do our laundry. Tiny’s doesn’t open until 2PM on Sundays, so we walked around to check out the town first. Like Eleuthera, almost all businesses were closed on Sunday.

At 2:00 sharp, we were at Tiny’s with our laundry only to find out they got out of the laundry business. We ended up going back to the boat and try to find where the next laundromat is.

The next morning we headed back into town to hit the grocery store, and was surprised to see it was as well stocked as any of the stores in George Town. And yes, they had hummus too, so I picked up a couple more tubs.

After our grocery run, we pulled anchor and headed to the northern tip of Long Island where we spent the night at a protected but rolly anchorage.

The next morning we headed across the ocean to the southern end of Cat Island and the town of New Bight.

We wanted to spend a full day in New Bight because there were a couple sites we wanted to see, and we also wanted to have lunch at one of the restaurants in town.

In the morning we took the dingy to town and beached it in front of the police station. There was a policeman standing in the parking lot and I asked him if okay for me to park there. He chuckled and said it’s probably the best place in town to leave your tender.

The sites we wanted to see were Mount Alvernia, at 207 feet, it’s the highest “mountain” in the Bahamas. The second site was The Hermitage, which is a small scale monastery built by the famous Father Jerome.

After visiting the sites, we hitchhiked to the grocery store to pick up a few more items then we stopped at a restaurant for lunch.

While we were eating lunch, two couples also came in to dine. While we were chatting with them we mentioned that we’re from Chicago. One couple said they’re from a small town north of Bloomington. I jokingly said Chenoa. They looked surprised and said yes. For those who don’t know, I lived in Chenoa until we moved out in ’77.

The couple we met moved into town a few years after I had left, so there was no overlap, but we know a lot of the same people. I got to find out what happened to the businesses, the schools, and some of the folks I remembered. It was great.

What are the odds that we’d meet each other on one of the more remote Bahamian Island. Chenoa has less than 2000 people. For all the years I’ve lived in Chicago, I’ve never met anyone from Chenoa. And, one of the guys even remembered Sue’s brother-in-law from when he went to high school in Morton, IL.