After a couple of days at Normans Cay, we were ready to move on and head south to Shroud Cay, the beginning of the Exuma Land and Sea Park.  The park was established by the Bahamas National Trust in 1958 and is a no take zone which means all of the land and water is completely protected from any kind of fishing or hunting; this wouldn’t really matter to us since we couldn’t seem to ever catch any fish, but nevertheless Claudia’s first big catch will have to wait.

This has been on our “must see” list for a while and we were very excited to visit for a few days. We picked up a park mooring near the middle of Shroud Cay, just across from the entrance to the mangrove-lined creek that crosses the island to Exuma Sound.  We launched the dinghy to check out the Enchanted creek that led to the ocean side.  We waited for high tide so we won’t need to worry touching the bottom. Claudia said the Enchanted creek reminded her of the lazy river in the Atlantis resort and she thinks Atlantis probably modeled their lazy river after this creek. Winding through mangroves in crystal clear water, we were up close to untouched natural beauty and some stunning species of wildlife. We took our time to look both up and down, round every corner as an abundance of birds and fish decorate the creeks. We were lucky to be able to see some sea turtles and manta rays swam directly beneath us.
We rounded the last turn and beheld perhaps the most beautiful view we’d ever seen. On the Atlantic Ocean side of the island, the brilliant aquamarine surfs rushed into the Enchanted creek, lined with coral reefs, forming a whirlpool like a washing machine running in delicate mode. It truly took our breath away. Unfortunately, the wind was too strong to allow us to ride our dinghy through this whirlpool ride.

Later we hiked a trail from the beach, climbed up a hill through the woods, to the middle of the island that had an old fresh water well. Very strange to see a man-made water well in the middle of a deserted Island. We sampled the water and it tasted better than any fancy bottled water from the store. We continued our hike but the bugs from the densed woods got the best of us, we retreated back to the beach for a sunset swim.

Tomorrow we head for the headquarter of the Exuma Land and Sea Park, Walderick Wells Cay, about 20 NM south. This is the favorite place our friends Marie-France and Denis had told us about when they sailed here a few years ago. We’re hoping to get a spot there since only 22 moorings are available and very few anchoring spots nearby. Crossing our fingers.