A few years ago, we saw a Netflix documentary about a fraudulent super music festival in the Bahamas called “Fyre”. Never in a million years we would have imagined coming to the location of this festival, an elaborate hoax music festival that was scheduled to take place over two weekends in the late spring of 2017. It was advertised as an ultimate party in paradise taking place on a private island in the Bahamas once owned by Pablo Escobar.

The exclusive island once poised to host the demised festival is Norman’s Cay, exactly where we’re headed. With the state of the tide and the angel of the sun guiding us, we threaded the needle of the coral heads, reefs, and rocks, arrived safely and dropped anchor, ready to see what all this fuss is about.

Norman’s Cay served as a strategic location to transport large amounts of cocaine from Colombia into the United States. The small aircrafts used can’t make the direct journey from Colombia to the United States. So, the smugglers used Norman’s Cay as a hub in which planes could refuel before entering the U.S. The goal was to set up a base that was an easy flying distance to and from Florida, but remote enough to be bypassed on the radars of the authorities.

Our first task is to find the famous dive site of an old DC-3 aircraft, a nearby large twin-engine transport plane that crashed in the 80s. Stories about its demise – the most popular tale being that the plane was too overloaded with kilos to fly, with its pilots high on coke. That’s the story we have chosen to make our adventure even more exciting.

We dinghy over to the sunken plane wreck with our snorkeling gear. The plane crash-landed in just 12 feet of water. After our last drug-running plane wreck we didn’t have high expectations. But this one turns out to be brilliant for snorkeling over. The top of the fuselage is gone but otherwise still very recognizable as a complete plane, lying upright in the shallow water. The fish all around it and hiding under it are quite a sight. Claudia, the brave one, swam directly into one end of the fuselage and came out the other end. I was like a Remora fish attached, hanging next to a mother shark, following right behind Claudia. It was an amazing and eerie feeling going inside and through the plane. We snorkeled around and took pictures for quite a while, until we finally gets a bit too chilly. It’s our best dive in the Bahamas yet.

Later on we invited a couple Mim & Denny from the sailboat “Mimsical” for a sundowner. We first met them in Bimini, then again in the Berry Islands. They are from Minnesota and they are the most amazing couple we’ve ever met. Mim is a retired nurse with utmost caring personality; Denny is a retired pilot and had a flight training school until his eyesight deteriorated. Dennys never said this but I am guessing he is legally blind. He can only see color contrasts around his boat. It’s truly amazing to see their partnership in action in the high seas. Mim is the ship navigator while Denny is behind the helm. She is his eyes. They sail, they anchor, they fish, they dock, they swim, they go for sundowners, they do everything cruisers do. They have absolutely the most positive attitudes and they are determined to sail and cruise as long as possible. They even rode out a storm at anchor last week while we were sitting comfortably at at resort marina. How do you not be awed by them. We are grateful to have met them and humbled by their friendship.

Today we will finish exploring and hiking Norman’s Cay before leaving tomorrow for Shroud Cay, part of the National Park. We’ll also try out McDuffs restaurant, famous for the best burger in the Bahamas.