May 8, 2004
Ragged Islands & Duncan Town

Here is where things got a little less... simple. We were no longer alone as we discovered one night when chopper noises droned overhead. It had been another uneventful day on Buenavista Cay, chasing down a granddaddy of a jack: fish that refused to come out of his cave to get speared - he actually had a member of his family posted on guard who would duck back in every time we swam by! and so when a chopper flew overhead that night, low enough to spray leaves and sticks into the water, we were more than a little curious. And the next day, as we moved to Nurse Cay we were again intrigued by more visitors, this time in a small skiff. The single boater passed by us and went to the island e had just left, then motored past us again, this time with 3 guys on board, to the island in front of us. Then the drama accelerated.

A chopper came back twice during that day, with a massive camera and all sorts of electronic equipment on board, taking pictures of our faces and boat as we swam in the water. As it again swept low over the island, brush and debris littered the air and water until it was satisfied with it's search and went on to the next island. Not an hour later, while Maciek was out in the dinghy hunting an elusive snapper and I was sunbathing with, ah, less than nothing on, the skiff came out of hiding, this time with 6 men on board and heading for our 'Blue! I scrambled to get clothes on and some dignity about me as a crew of rough looking (not rough as in pirate, rough as in not having slept or eaten in a few days) came up to me and asked if I could spare some water. I handed them a bottle and asked what they were doing here, and they responded, "Goat hunting". Right...

The chase continued for the next few days until we reached Duncan Town, last stop at the very tip of the Ragged Islands. As the US Coast Guard chopper and US military choppers were flushing out this crew of 6, they were bouncing from island to island wherever we went. It was almost comical that we should be caught up in the middle of this "game" of hide and seek, though to them it was doubtless not funny.

Duncan Town is best described as paradoxical. All the houses were, as usual, tumbledown poor and the police station had a bulldozer growing weeds on it's front lawn. The people of the town had an ongoing job to re-pave the one street, but as cement hadn't come in on the mailboat that week, they were instead employed in cutting down the weeds at the side of their half-made road with machetes. There was one extraordinary exception to the poverty, and that was a huge house in the middle of town and a comparatively luxurious motel with 3 rooms next to it. We didn't wonder where the money for that extraordinary house came from for long, our questions were answered that day by a new friend in the unlikely form of a Canadien from Montreal who came in to the BaTelCo office to install a new system.

We made fast friends with this man and his crew of 2 and they kindly let us use their laptop to send some hasty emails. We swapped stories about our adventures and then he pulled out a set of pictures that somehow didn't catch us by surprise: a raid that had happened just the night before.

The 2 choppers that had pursued our men in the skiff these last 4 days had flushed them out at last, landing in the middle of the night right in the center of town to deal out some law and order at that magnificent big house. We heard that there were at least 12 soldiers from the choppers that ran through the streets in full armor, their guns drawn closing in on the house, conducting a search and cuffing its occupants. It was a rather satisfying conclusion to the whole chase I guess.

After we left the next day (having spent the night on the floor of the hotel room of our Montreal friend - thanks!) we had one more surprise. Making our last fire on a beach before we sailed that night to Cuba, I was again the object of a certain skiff's attention. The same guy who had pulled up and asked me for water a week ago now pulled up and dropped off in our dinghy some Bahamian water - Bacardi Aged Rum and a cold 6-pack of Coke. He said that we'd saved their bacon that day by giving them water and they wanted to show how much they appreciated it. I was flabbergasted. How do you tell a drug-runner that it was the only humane thing to do, and that we hadn't meant to help them on their misguided careers in flouting the law?

An interesting twist to the tale in the Bahamas, but that's nothing compared to the culture shock of Cuba. Si Senor!

(T)