On Thursday, to give everyone a rest from sun and sand, I planned a day touring the island. Here was my chance to do “the tourist thing” and see all of the sights I read about in our cruising guides. We waited outside while the clerk pulled the rented jeep up to the door at Scooter Bob’s. Wayne opened the door and put a leg in.
“Not ready,” the clerk said.
He went inside and came out with a small compressor, then began filling a tire on the other side.
“It’s got a flat tire?” my mother whispered to me. She looked worried.
“Where’s your sense of adventure?” I laughed.
Wayne took the driver’s seat; I took the passenger, and the three of them squeezed into the back.
We wound up the hill to Leaward Highway and made a right. A loyalist plantation called Cheshire Hall was our first scheduled stop. Thomas Stubbs grew cotton and later, sisal, there. Production and exportation thrived until he was forced to abandon the effort due to land deprivation, insect infestation, and finally a hurricane in 1813. The slaves he left behind settled here and their descendants still occupy the Caicos Islands. The plantation is now a national park.
We slowed down, looking for the entrance while cars tore past us. By the time I spotted it, we’d passed it. No worry, we’d stop on our way back.
Next destination—the bakery, highly recommended by one of my cruising guides. We pulled into the parking lot of a small shopping center.
“Is it open?” Wayne looked at the darkened windows.
“I don’t know. I’ll check.” I jumped out of the car and Grace followed me.
I tried the door and it opened. But instead of the odor of fresh baked bread, the smell of ammonia stung our nostrils. We looked around at the empty shelves as a woman entered from the kitchen. “Closed ‘til Monday.”
“Okay”, I said, “two down, twenty to go.”
“What’s next?” Grace asked, when we got back into the car.
“The Tiki Huts of Atlantis. They should be really cool! This beach was only accessible by water, until some French Television producers bull-dozed a road through the bush. The Tiki Huts were a game-show set.
The jeep bounced over a pothole and everyone grunted, but I continued undaunted.
“Contestants dove into an underwater cage that still sits in twenty feet of water off the beach. Inside the cage, plastic pearls shot out of a giant, manmade sponge while the players tried to snatch as many as possible. They could buy air from mermaids, but had to watch out for “bad” mermaids who would swim away without giving them any.”
In spite of its cheesy history, the beach was purported to be secluded and beautiful with easy snorkeling nearby. My plan was to check out the beach on this day in anticipation of taking a cab there the next. Grace, Dexter, Mom and I could spend the day shaded by the Tiki Huts and give Wayne a day off from family obligations.
Wayne grew up in a small, city house with three sisters. I was an only child and had the whole upstairs of our modest cape cod to myself—bedroom, bath, and large sitting room. Wayne enjoys his private time and space. I enjoy having a crowd in my home. Wayne, like Ben Franklin, thinks that guests are like fish—after three days, they start to smell. I have fond memories of waking to the smell of bacon and my mom and her sisters chattering in the kitchen when they came for an overnight visit. I rarely grow tired of a guest. Wayne likes quiet-soft voices, soft music. I like noise—the volume turned up high on the stereo, Oprah or reruns of Frazier on the TV while I’m cooking dinner or folding clothes.
Actually our boat is rather small with five people and all of their gear on board. So, although he did not request it, I thought Wayne might need a day off. That’s why I came up with this great plan to scope out Atlantis.
We drove to the end of Leaward Highway and turned off on Blue Hills Road, the old highway that runs along the northern coast of Provo, past the settlement called Blue Hills. The road ended at a dirt road carved into the bush. Wayne drove the jeep through the dirt and dust, trying to avoid pot-holes and boulders that seemed to bubble up from cracks in the hard, dry ground. I glanced back to see Mom rising from her seat, her head approaching the ceiling, while Grace was on her way down, and Dexter was somewhere in between.
Pot holes grew to wide cracks and crevices. Wayne drove on the wrong side of the road to avoid them.
My mom stared ahead, her hands gripping the seat in front of her. “Watch out!" She landed in her seat again. "Oh."
“It can’t be much further,” I found a map in the cruising guide, but there were no legends to tell me how far it was, nor any land-marks to help along the way. No other cars, just the windy dirty road in front and behind us and tall cactus and low growing shrubs on either side.
“My tail bone’s getting numb,” my mom complained.
“How much further is it?” Dexter asked.
“I’m worried about that tire,” Wayne added.
I got out the cruising guide and started reading out loud in a futile attempt to generate some enthusiasm for our adventure. I read about the game show. I read about the beauty of the beach. I read:
“You can reach the Tiki Huts by car, but it must be a four-wheel drive vehicle.”
“I think we better give this up,” Wayne said, turning the car around and heading back. Back-tracking on the dirt road, through Blue Hills, back to the Leaward Highway, we found the entrance to Cheshire Hall.
Parking was not provided, so we left the car in the lot of a strip mall, and crossed the busy highway. The sounds of the city faded as we moved on foot up a shady, tree-lined lane. Arriving at the entrance gate, we could see bits of the stone foundation through lush vegetation and a narrow, winding path that led to the ruins. It looked inviting after the dirt road and the busy highway, but the gate was locked. Seems you must call ahead to schedule a tour, a fact not mentioned in my cruising guide.
I kept the smile on my face, but inside I was thinking, First, we miss the ruins, then the bakery was closed, then we couldn’t get to the Tiki Huts, now this! What a disaster.
“Oh, well,” I said, “Let’s go shopping”.
We crowded back into the jeep, onto the Leaward and towards the resort area of the island. Here, we found Ports O Call, the shopping area. Mom bought some coffee.
“Bill will like this coffee.”
Dexter bought cigars. Then we girls wandered in and out of small boutiques. Mom bought an animal print sarong.
“Bill says I purr like a kitten.”
Grace scrunched up her face. “Too much information.”
Later, we found Dexter and Wayne sitting in a bar watching tennis on TV. They must be bored, I thought as their eyes moved from left to right, right to left with the tennis balls.
“I’m hungry,” Grace said. We checked the menu, but no one was thrilled with it. Checked two other restuarants in the complex. Both closed.
“Let’s go to Smokies on Da Beach,” I said. “It’s nearby.”
Back in the jeep, we followed our tourist map to a dirt road, then headed towards Grace Bay. The road ended, but there was no restaurant. We turned around and tried another. No Smokies. And another.
“Ask those guys where it is.” Wayne nodded his head toware two workers just finishing their lunch.
“Do you know where Smokies on Da Beach is?” I called out.
“No Anglaise,” the Haitians said.
Now, I was really feeling like a failure. The next planned stop was the Conch Farm, but I couldn’t remember if there was a restaurant there, and I was afraid there might be a mutiny if I paraded my family around a aquaculture complex for two hours without feeding them. At this point, no one seemed too interested in watching a conch grow, anyway.
Back on the Leaward Highway, we found a pizza parlor and after thick slices of hot cheesy pizza, some of the crowd’s enthusiasm returned. All parties wanted to see “the Hole.”
The hole is a natural one, forty-foot wide and eighty-foot deep. Our cruising guide indicated that visitors could swim in the bottom of the hole if brave enough and able (I might add) to climb the ropes. We drove into a residential community on the southeast end of the island and only made one wrong turn before finding a dirt drive among the paved ones.
Graced jumped out of the jeep as soon as it stopped. “Come on, Dex!”
“OK,” he said, picking up his pace to catch up.
We came along behind. There it was—a big jagged crevice. We walked the irregular perimeter. I tried to find a spot where I could look inside without getting too close to the crumbling dirt and rock near the edge. My heart was in my throat, as I watched Grace and Mom venture much closer than I would have liked. On land, they were both much braver than I. I caught glimpses of the stagnant water at the bottom. In spite of the heat, no one was interested in swimming in the hole. Relieved, I herded everyone back to the jeep.
The next attraction on the “Autotour from Hell” was Sapadillo Hill. We headed south looking for the abandoned Mariner’s Hotel.
“I read about Sapadillo Hill,” Grace said, “that’s where ship-wrecked sailors from the 19th century carved their names in the rocks.”
”They were probably twentieth century real estate agents.” Wayne said.
“One of the rocks is hanging on the wall in the airport,” Mom said.
I hope that's not the only one I ever see, I thought, but I said, “Today we're going to see them in their natural habitat.”
Wayne parked the jeep on the shoulder of the road, just off the beach, and after taking a few moments to stand in the shade of a casarina and look out over the tranquil waters of Sapadillo Bay, we headed on foot up a bumpy dirt drive. The cruising guide indicated that we should find the hotel and then climb the hill adjacent to it. The hotel was multi-leveled and tucked in the side of Sapadillo Hill. We walked its creaky wooden decks, looking for a path on the perimeter. One room was occupied. Clothes hung from a cord slung between the supports, and potted plants lined the porch.
“Someone is living here,” my Mom said looking worried again, “we should go." Wayne and Mom started back down to the air-conditioned jeep. I didn’t see Grace and Dexter anywhere. Then I heard a voice that sounded like it was coming from very far away.
“Mom! Mom!”
I looked up to the top of the hill, but saw nothing.
“Are you alright?” I shouted through my cupped hands.
No answer.
“I started up the hill on what might be a path, but really wasn’t. It was a maze of palmettos and cacti. Stones and dirt dislocated by my platform sandals, broke away and showered down the slope behind me. The sun beat down on my head. This looks like a fine place for a snake, I thought as I scanned the area. I remembered speculating at Norman’s Cay about whether the vegetation would be lusher as we moved from the sub-tropics to the tropics. The answer turned out to be “no.” Except for areas land-scaped for the benefit of tourist and ex-patriots, Provo (like Mayaguana) is barren and desert-like. The land is dry and dusty or hard and cracked. The plants are sparse and prickly.
“Mom, Mom.” The voice closer, now.
I stopped for a moment to catch my breath and wipe the sweat from my face. At the very top of the hill, I saw Grace.
“Look, Mom!” she said, a big smile in her voice.
I climbed the last hundred feet to meet her.
“Wow,” was all I could say when I arrived at her side. We were on top of the highest hill in Provo. On two sides there was view of the pale green bay and its tiny cays. We seemed so close to the azure sky and big puffy clouds, I felt like I could put out my hand and touch them. Although, there is beauty in the layered hues of brown earth, the greens and rusts of shrubs, and the unexpected splashes of blooms, it can hardly compete with the cool soothing shades of sky and water. If this were a painting, I would say to Wayne, “I don’t like those acrylics, the color are too vibrant. They don’t look real.”
I turned in a slow circle. Behind us, the milky brown salt flats of Chalk Sound lay as smooth as glass. Dexter came up behind us.
“Look.” Grace pointed to the ground.
We followed her finger and saw flat rocks at our feet, some intricately carved, some crudely. There were names and dates, etchings of sailing ships, and country cottages. The oldest one we found was from 1816.
“This probably looks just about the same as it did in 1816.” I looked out over the water again.
We stood there a few moments longer, and then Grace said, “We better go. Grandma is probably convinced we have fallen into one of those holes.”
Back in the air-conditioned jeep, we tried to describe what we saw, but I don’t think our words did it justice, because if they had, Mom and Wayne would have exited the jeep and headed up the hill. Instead, we moved on.
On this end of the island, there were supposed to be two fish houses and we wanted fresh, local fish for dinner, not twenty dollar a pound farm-raised salmon from the IGA.
“Bill likes fish.”
We drove up and down more dirt roads, past abandoned quarries and a large gasoline depot. Here the terrain looked like the strip-mined hills of Appalachia. The squiggly black lines on the map indicated un-named roads. We couldn’t tell road from driveway.
“Give me that,” Grace commanded. I handed her the map. She was certain that the navigator was the problem. Grace and Dexter and finally, my mom studied the map and directed the driver back down the same dirt roads. There was no one anywhere to ask.
Finally, we gave up and headed back towards the now familiar Leaward Highway through one of the original settlements known as Five Cays. We passed a complex of weary concrete buildings. They bordered a small parking lot and courtyard.
“Turn around,” I ordered. Passing by, I’d noticed words above the open door of one of the structures. They were a sloppily painted, but legible—Fish House. We pulled in and piled out of the jeep. Young Haitians sat on a crumbling, concrete wall. Their faces were angular and stern. They stared. Wayne and I crossed the lot and entered the building. Inside, the eight by eight cement cube were two chest-type freezers and a scale. We walked back outside, and found our family staring at tadpoles swimming in muddy water in what was once a fountain.
Mom looked worried again, probably intimated by those unfriendly faces. We returned to the fish house and looked inside the freezer at the fish. Finally, a young woman arrived. There were bags of strawberry grouper and grunts—four dollars a pound for any kind. We bought some of each. Then, we moved on and stopped at the IGA and loaded up on food and beverage for the rest of the week. Not unlike my last guided tour in a rental car, the one at Georgetown, we were all glad when we arrived back at the boat.
Bill had answered Mom’s email. She tried to use her calling card to phone him, but it wouldn’t work in the nearby phone booth.
“Call him.” I offered my satellite phone.
“But it’s so expensive.”
“Go for it,” I said, “up on the bridge. The reception is better.”
Ah, young love!
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