Previous
An ecotourist's playground
WELCOME BAHAMAS FREEPORT - 2008
An ecotourist's playground
The varied faces of Grand Bahama
Grand Bahama may be just one island, but it is home to worlds within worlds, each waiting to be explored by the adventurous traveller._
Deep in its heart it is a preistoric kingdom, created in the last ice age. Rain falling on the porous limestone of the island filtered down through the rock until it reached sea level, where it floated, forming a layer of slightly acidic fresh water that, over thousands of years, ateaway a vast network of caves. As the temperature dropped, the sea level sank even lower. Now the water that descended through the rock fell in drips and splashes from the roofs of the caves, leaving behind tiny deposits of dissolved limestone and slowly frming stalagmites and stalactites that would eventually be drowned when the world warmed and the sea rose again.
Officially, the cave network under Grand Bahama is the second largest ever discovered, but according to Grand Bahama Scuba's Fred Riger, whotakes properly qualified divers down into it, that is only because exploration was halted in 1982 in the name of conservation. "About eight miles of passageway had been mapped out by then," he says. "But most of the people involved went off to Mexico, whee they've been exploring ever since."
Now Riger and a handful of other guides are allowed to take four visitors at a time a maximum of 200 feet down into the major cave openings. Although there are certainly insects and, in the summer, there may be nursig bats at the mouths of the caves, the underwater chambers seem at first more like great, abandoned cathedrals, beautiful but lifeless.
However, an entirely new species of animal, Speleonectes lucayensis, resembling a blind, swimming centipede, was discvered here as recently as 1981. The water is fresh to a depth of 25 feet, before a diver swims through a blurry layer, the halocline, which marks the transition to salt water.
It is certain that these inland caves and blue holes-Mermaid's Lair, Owl Holeand Ben's Cavern-connect to the sea, wending their way beneath the different ecosystems of Grand Bahama, although nobody has ever found the route. The water in some holes are known to "boil" and "suck" with the tide.
Ecotouring Grand Bahama
Erika Gates,owner of Grand Bahama Nature Tours, has been guiding visitors through the plants and wildlife that live above these mysterious caverns for 15 years.
She says there are six distinct ecosystems to be found on the surface of the island. The circular blue hoes-which are the collapsed domes of limestone caverns-are nestled in a central, yellow pine forest of a sort that can only be found on Grand Bahama, Andros, Abaco and, to a lesser extent, New Providence.
It can be a harsh environment, often bearing the arks of recent fires. "The pines need fire to survive," says Gates. "It clears the ground of hardwoods, so that the pine's seeds have light to germinate." The pines themselves survive because resins in the bark explode in intense heat, extinguishing any fames that get too close. And hidden among the pines are pockets of dark, fertile earth where there has been no fire for a number of years. These blackland coppices-once much-prized by local farmers-are thick with hardwoods, often canopied by strangler fig.
For the last three years, Grand Bahama Nature Tours has provided off-road excursions by jeep into the pine forests. "But visitors always get out and walk around," says Gates. "So they can experience the ecosystems directly. We try to educate on our tous about the natural beauty, the ecology and the culture of Grand Bahama. And I think this is what visitors come for these days. They have luxury resorts all over the world, but when they get to a destination they want to experience the unique natural envionment and the history."
Her expert guides point out the forest's secrets, such as the century plant, which may live 20 years but blossoms only once, just before it dies, when it becomes a feast for nectar-feeding birds such as the yellow-breasted bananauit and emerald hummingbird, as well as attracting insects and the mockingbirds and thrushes that feed on them.
Gates, who is a certified birdwatching guide, organizes half a dozen specialist birding tours every month. "Next to Abaco, which has the parrt and the West Indian woodpecker, we have the largest number of species in The Bahamas," she says. "We have birdwatchers coming from all over the world because, among the 200 species that live or migrate here, 18 of them do not occur in the US, Canada or urope."
Many of what Gates calls "the area's bird specialities" are found among the pines, from the tyrant flycatcher that hunts among the branches, to the Bahama swallow that nests in the cavities of dead trees.
Fringing the pine forest to the north ad south is a habitat known as rocky coppice, which may be flooded at high tide. The protected West Indian red cedar, one of only two coniferous trees on Grand Bahama, is found here, along with mahogany, buttonwood and the native ming tree, a kind of naturl bonsai, which could take decades to grow only a few feet.
Exploring the mangroves
After the rocky coppice come some of the richest and most fascinating habitats of all-the mangrove swamps and swashes. "The difference is that water flows through a swas, like a tidal creek," explains Tansey Louis of Bahamas EcoVentures. "So it isn't stagnant."
Since July 2007, when she launched Bahamas EcoVentures with her husband Joanel, Tansey has been taking visitors out to the mangrove swashes around Water Cay, a mle-long island north of Grand Bahama.
"People used to rip out the mangroves," she says, "before they realized that they're a nursery for marine life and a habitat for nesting birds. [They] protect the coast against hurricanes and help stop salt water frm intruding into the island's fresh water supply."
Salt-tolerant plants such as buttonwood and giant fern grow among the mangroves, and between March and August there are 20 different species of orchid, including the endemic dancing lady, named for its esemblance to a tiny figure holding up the edges of a ball gown.
"People can expect to see wildlife like herons and plovers, turtles, and a lot of fish," says Tansey. "Barracudas, green snappers, mangrove snappers-you would think [that to see] all that yu've got to snorkel, but you can just look down and see everything, the water is so crystal clear."
But the most surprising thing about the Bahamas EcoVentures tour is the mode of transport-an airboat-and the way the wildlife reacts to it. "You'd think hey would be afraid," says Louis, "but they just stay and watch." Even the notoriously wary bonefish seem more curious than afraid of the airboat.
The Louises spent three years researching the best vessel to explore mangrove swashes without disturbing thm. "We've made every effort to mitigate damaging anything," says Joanel. "With an airboat the engine exhaust vents into the air, not the water, so there's less pollution. And the propeller only makes a lot of noise when we get up speed, to take us out. Whn we're there we're idling, and it's just like a big fan." Tansey adds: "And the airboat is ideal for the northern shore, because at low tide the water may be only four inches deep. Instead of grounding, we just skim over the surface."
At Grand Bahama Naure Tours, Gates uses kayaks to take her guests into the mangroves of Golden Creek, which borders the Lucayan National Park. This is also how she prefers to get to Peterson Cay, the 1.5-acre island just half a mile off Barbary Beach that is the smallest ntional park in The Bahamas.
"We snorkel there," she says, "and in the kayaks we circumnavigate the whole island and bring up sea organisms for people to see, like sea cucumbers or lobsters. We may even handle a small shark, and release it- a unique expeience."
Hiking and biking
On the northern shore the mangroves lead directly into the sea, but to the south they transition into whiteland coppice, an area of white sand and composted leaf litter where hardwood trees thrive and colonies of land crabs di their burrows.
"This is where you find all the early settlements," says Gates, "because the ground was soft and fertile and they could farm cassava, corn, potatoes-almost anything they wanted. However, it is a very narrow strip of land."
Gates organizs hikes and bike tours in these areas, and the jeeps come here before heading inland. They visit the remains of early European settlements at Williamstown and Smith's Point and stop at Taino beach, named for the pre-Colombian Taino people who locally calld themselves Lucayans.
The southern coast also boasts miles of otherworldly rock landscape known as "iron shore," which occurs when limestone is eroded by wind and sea into exotic, pitted shapes. Barren at first sight, the iron shore is host to a number f plants that Lucayans and settlers alike found useful, including wild thyme, the branches of which were burned to repel insects.
There are of course other ways to discover the beauties of the coast, from swimming to simply taking a stroll. Perhaps one o the most satisfying is on horseback, courtesy of Leo (Eleonore) Munnings at Trikk Pony. Munnings' eight gentle-natured mounts carry riders safely over rock and sand and even into the surf at Barbary Beach.
If underwater nature is your interest, you canobserve the brilliant coral and fish life at Deadman's Reef on the southwest coast of the island. Paradise Cove Beach Resort offers direct access to this teeming reef, along with snorkelling gear and, for the non-snorkellers, easy-to-use glass- bottom kaaks.
With Peterson Cay shimmering on the horizon, and the only sound the splash of water and snort of horses, this is definitely a more sensual, less cerebral way of experiencing the natural world here. But there are any number of ways of getting to knw Grand Bahama again and again, but as poet T S Eliot said, always for the first time.
CONTACT INFORMATION
E-Mail: Click here
Internet: https://
Disclaimer:
Information in editorial and listings is subject to change at any time.