About a mile north down the Queen's highway past Tryphema's Club Thompson's Bay there is a telephone pole with little silver numerals-108. Some cruiser's refer to this spot as mile post 108, but that can not possibly be correct. Long Island is only 90 miles long and besides this spot is the middle of the island. Other boaters have festooned the spot with colorful buoys to alert the traveler that this post marks the start of a trail to the ocean beach.
The trail is well marked. It passes through scrub and is heavily scented with goat's urine. Much of the trail is sharp limestone and takes a toll on Crocs or flip flops. It winds about half of a mile to a “summit” of probably 150 feet. The view of the blue Atlantic Ocean to the east and the green Bahama Banks to the west is spectacular. The trail then quickly descends to a lush forest and over an old stone wall. Locals call these ancient stone walls 'margins.' They mark old land boundaries. Along with the rest of the land they have been left unattended for decades, if not centuries. In the small forest were the largest butterfly and the smallest birds I have ever seen. The birds were some sort of finch and would have left room in a shot glass. Desiccation does strange things to nature.
The ocean beach at the end of the trail is as breathtaking as it is uninhabited. The ocean waves crash over and around sculptured limestone and was up onto the softest finest sandy beach anywhere. In the water is every imaginable shade of blue-green and turquoise.
Typical of beaches these days that are neglected and uninhabited there is plastic debris everywhere. Most of the plastic is above the high tide mark and is in the surrounding sea grass. Jan and I saw plastic grates and grills, floats, crates, and bottles, jugs and jars of every size and shape. There was both a baby's car seat and a child's toy car. There was very little glass thankfully. Most worrisome was extensive netting that seemed a danger to larger sea life. We dragged several specimens well above the high water mark. At least the stuff won't float back out to sea. There was enough trash to fill several large dumpsters. At this point most blogs would denounce the evil polluters, careless trash tossers, and every one who uses plastic products. But if the Bahamians can not pick up their beautiful, remote beaches, neither can I. And why ruin an otherwise wonderful day at the beach with plastic angst? Besides I can not believe that the plastic will last long if left exposed to the tropical sun. Nothing plastic exposed to the sun lasts more than several years on the deck of White Pepper. We did pack out a few beer bottles. They will be disposed of back in George Town, Great Exuma.
From the high water mark sloping well out into the ocean is the softest, cleanest, finest white sand imaginable. Jan found some prize sea shells. We picnic-ed and swam in the shallow end. By the time we had hiked back out, down the Queen's highway, back across the trail to the dingy and landed back on the boat, we had had quite a day at post 108 beach.
The pictures are a visual depiction of our walk to and from post 108 beach.
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