We woke up to a perfectly calm day at Caribbean Blue, finally!!!  The decision was unanimous, we were finally going to spend an entire day at  "home".  The boys immediately delved into a plan to get get some  fishing and  snorkeling in around Levi Island.  As soon as breakfast was over they were suited up on their way to Levi Island in the kayak.  Since it was still fairly early in the morning S and I figured we better get  our shopping duties out of the way.  We were getting low on just about  everything.  Our first stop was Island Farms where we stocked up with 2  more loaves of olive and herb bread, a loaf of raisin bread, salsa, salad dressing, marinade and lots of fresh veggies for salad and ceviche.  After  spending about $60 we figured we would make it till the next bread day (Friday).  On the way back through Governors Harbour we stopped at Eleuthera supply for a few necessities, then did the liquor store rounds grabbing a couple more bottles of wine, more Riccardo coconut rum, a bottle of whiskey and a case of Heineken, Kalik and Sands Light.  Yes our liquor bill was much more than our food bill, but come on we were on vacation in the Bahamas.  

Finally we made it back to Caribbean Blue, grateful that all the responsibilities were over will and we could chill for a while.   Caribbean Blue is in a fantastic location, you have a great view of Levi Island and you can see Cupids Cay in the distance off to the right.  The closest houses are a couple hundred yards away so you feel pretty isolated, plus it is just a quick jaunt to Governors Harbour when you need supplies.  Honestly of all the places we have stayed Caribbean Blue is definitely one of our top 3, it's position in the top 3 depends on which one of the four of us you ask.  It is hands down the most well equipped house we have stayed in, they have everything you could need.  Honestly when we moved to DaVilla we were almost a little disappointed in the lack of extra amenities compared to Caribbean Blue.  It was the little things, extra sunblock and bug spray left by other renters, citronella candles and mosquito coils, lots of dishes and kitchen supplies, wine glasses, water bottles, a water filter, soap and sponges, good cookbooks, island maps, etc.  They seemed to think of all the little things that make your stay much more pleasant.  Everything was really clean and comfortable and it was a great layout for two
couples.   Plus you had an amazing view from the front deck.  The  only downfall was there was really not much of a lounging area by the water.  It looks like they had sand there at one point, but it must have blown away.  We saw some outlines in the rock so maybe they are building a larger area or putting a little cabana by the water.  That would be fabulous!!

 Well anyway I digress sorry.  So as we were pulling up the driveway from our trip to town we thought we could see the boys out snorkeling in front of the house.   We saw what looked like black fins rising up in the water, like they were diving down after something.  As we were unloading the car we kept seeing the black fins, but no sign of D's red fins.  We soon realized the kayak was still gone so it could not be them.  We watched for a while from the deck and when we looked closer we realized it was more dolphins cruising around in front of the house.  It seemed like every time the water was calm in front of Caribbean Blue the dolphins came by at least once.  It was really wonderful. 

After watching them for a little while we put away the groceries and headed out toward the water with our books and lawn chairs.  Eventually the boys came back a little after lunch time after a very successful 4 hour excursion.  They bagged themselves 4 lobsters, 1 grouper and 3 lionfish.  We love lionfish and since they are an invasive species we would ideally love to predominantly eat lionfish while we are on Eleuthera.  We mostly find them on the Caribbean side so since wind had been blowing on that side so frequently they had not had an opportunity to get into them.  

We cooked up some sausages for lunch, and had a few cerveza's.  Once the boys had re-fueled and cleaned their catch of the day and I got a batch of lionfish and grouper ceviche marinating we headed out for a "family snorkel".  The water in front of the house was still pretty cloudy and churned up from all the wind of the past week so the snorkeling was not that great.  We did see a tiny school of squid but otherwise the water was full of sea walnuts and little jellyfish, with a few moon jellies mixed in.   We ran into the same thing out last trip.  It seems like there are a lot of these tiny 4" clear jellies with little blue spots in the middle on the Caribbean side in March/April.  We had swam through clouds of them last time and never got stung so we were not too worried about it this time and we could avoid the moon jellies easy enough.   It was still a little unnerving and since the water was so cloudy anyway S and I did not have much of a desire to spend that much time in the water.  We were still experiencing a cold front so the water temp was pretty cold, even the air temp had been in the 70's and overcast.  We had been in the Bahamas long enough to acclimate to the temperature so we were freezing, where if we were still in Montana we would think it was summertime. 

 S and I bailed on the boys and headed up to the house for some spunky monkeys and took turns warming up in the outdoor shower.   That is typically one of our rental requirements.  I cant think of many things I enjoy more than a nice warm outdoor shower.  The two nicest showers we have found so far have been at Blue Palms and 2-Sisters, because they had nice little enclosures around them.  But for what CB's shower lacks in privacy it makes up for with the view. 

The boys soon returned and we settled in for cocktail hour with a grouper and lionfish ceviche appetizer.  For dinner we grilled up the lobsters on the BBQ with some magic seasonings that D doctored up then served them over fresh green salad from our visit to Island Farms and topped with fresh croutons made from the old bread heels.  It was a heavenly meal and a great relaxing day at our home away from home. 

I use the lionfish ceviche recipe out of the Lionfish Cookbook.  Modified with the produce that is available on Eleuthera. 

We woke up super excited because our very dear friends D and S were scheduled to fly in to GHB around 1pm and we could not wait to see them.  They came with us on out first trip in 2010, for our wedding and fell as in love with Eleuthera as we did.  They have been back with us every trip since.  They could not pull off an entire three week stay this time so we enjoyed a little "couple" time before they arrived but we were definitely ready for our partners in crime to come play.  Since they were arriving mid-day decided we better stay in the vicinity of Caribbean Blue and the Airport while we counted down till their arrival.  It was a pretty brisk stormy day so there was not much to do around the house since obviously we cant sit still for long.  We decided would at least try to find somewhere calm for a quick snorkel why we waited for the second half of out tribe to arrive.

We started at good ole faithful, Twin Cove but it was way too stormy for even an extreme snorkel.   After Twin we worked our way north toward the airport.  After a few wrong turns and dead ends we wound up at the old dock at the far end of Alabaster Beach.  J tossed about the spinning rod for a little while, until a torrential downpour forced him to hide in the car.  After that we decided we would try to find the cove at the tip of James Point again since we were unsuccessful a few days earlier and it was not far from the airport.   Our first attempt did not take us to the cove but it did take us to really nice spot to get view of the cliffs.  The water was raging and the waves put on a pretty spectacular show as they slammed against the rocks.  We moved on pretty quickly and after a little more wandering we finally found the cove.  It was still way too rough to snorkel but it looked like it might be a nice spot for a calm beach day.  We never did get an opportunity to come back again, maybe next year.  Just down the beach there were about 10 hard working men hauling buckets full of rocks. They were filling up the buckets with mid-size symmetrical rocks from all around the beach and then dumping them in a huge pile at the end of the road.  We guessed they were probably going to be used for home construction, and as we were leaving a big truck was coming up to collect them.

After James Point We still had about an hour to kill so we got “the book” out to see what else was close to the airport and decided on Sponge Cove.  Despite how sheltered the cove was, the wind was blowing directly into the mouth of the cove so again it was way to windy to do anything but take a beach walk.  Sponge Cove has a significant amount of beach grass so I doubt it would have been a good place to snorkel even on a calm day.  As usual J brought his spinning rod with him, he never leaves home without it as you never know what might be lurking out there.  Of course since he had it with him he spots a 4-5 ft shark really close to shore.  It went back into the shelter of the grass before I could see it so he cast toward it to draw it back out.   I don’t think he actually expected it to bite, since it looked like a nurse shark at first, but it hammered his lure.   That shark dragged his line out so fast, I thought he was going to lose it all.  Luckily it stopped just before it dragged all his line out and when he gave it a tug the shark finally bit off the lure.   He was not rigged up to land something that big so he was lucky all he lost was his lure.  It was his lucky lure he had been using on every trip since 2010, but it was getting pretty worn out and I think he had so much fun watching that shark go for it he did not care.

The shark fulfilled our excitement quota for the day so we decided to head to the airport bar and grab a beer while we waited for D & S.   Earlier in the day Stanton had seen us drive by with our wiper blade flapping around in the rain so as soon as we pulled up he tracked us down in the bar to fix our wiper blades.  We were just wondering where we would be able to find new blades so we were pretty happy that Stanton had found us and fixed them.   He really did good by us this trip and we could not have been more pleased with the Jeep. 

D & S arrived right on time and were ecstatic to be back "home" on Eleuthera.   They had a very very long series of flights.  They took the red-eye out of MT at 7pm the night before, had a few hour layover in FLL then directly on to the flight to GHB.  S thought that they be able to sleep better on the red-eye if they both had isle seats, but she accidentally picked the ones behind the exit rows not realizing they did not recline. I don’t think either of them had slept at all in about 30 hours.  To top it all off I had texted them to say they served cocktails on the flight and that it had a restroom, but it turned out that was only on the larger weekend flights, not the weekday ones, oops.   They were pretty darn happy when they walked out of the airport and we immediately took their bags and handed them ice cold Kaliks.

We headed straight back to Caribbean Blue and soon we had them settled on the porch with a couple of spunky monkeys and we worked on whipping up some salad and pork chops for lunch.  The rest of the afternoon consisted of lounging around and cocktails on the deck.  We had a wonderful sunset meal of fish tacos made with the schoolmaster J got the day before.

Here is the recipe.  We pretty much wing it when it comes to cooking so I am just estimating how much of each ingredient I use.  Feel free to modify to your own tastes, we like things hot.

1-2lbs Fresh fish fillets: (grouper, snapper, lionfish, etc) seasoned with lime juice, chili powder and old bay.
Let sit and marinade while you prepare the rest of the toppings.

White Sauce:
1 cup mayo
1/2 bird or goat pepper finely chopped
Juice of 1 lime
1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp dill
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp chili powder

Spiced Tomatoes:
Chop approx 5 large tomato's, about 4-5 cups
1/2 bird or goat pepper
Juice from 1/2 lime
1-2 Tbsp finely chopped onion
1/2 tsp Chili powder
1/8 tsp Cumin
Salt to taste.

grill or pan fry the fish until flaky and break into mid sized pieces.

Put a couple of pieced of fish in a tortilla shell and top with white sauce, spiced tomatoes, thinly sliced cabbage and avocado slices (if you can find them).

I found soft taco sized flour tortillas at Burrows in the standing freezer closest to the register.  The only place we saw avocado's was at the roadside fruit and vegetable stands. 

After a year of planning we finally began our long two day journey to Eleuthera.  We departed at 5:45am on Friday and after two 40-50min stops we finally arrived in Ft. Lauderdale around 5pm on time and with all our luggage accounted for.  

We used my husband’s hotel points to get ourselves what we thought would be a swanky oceanfront room in FLL.   We did not realize that it would be spring break in Florida and that most the hotels were booked solid.  So of course the "free" room was the bottom of the barrel.   HA HA what were we thinking free and nice, yea right?   We wound up in the hotels old building with a dank run-down room, surrounded by spring breakers and complete with prostitutes on the corner.  Honestly the whole thing was rather amusing and it was free so we had a nice chuckle.  We did have a nice marina view where we could gawk at all the fancy yachts.   We also found a really fun bar on the water so we wound up having a pretty fun time holding up in Florida counting the minutes till we could go back to paradise.

We were up bright and early Saturday morning and after breakfast and a nice walk we headed off to FLL.   We have always taken the United (once Continental) connection from FLL to ELH or GHB.   Up to this point we had arrived at the proper airport 50% of the time, arrived typically 1-3 hours late every time, but we had always departed Eleuthera on time and from the proper airport.   The last time we flew it was a different airline, running the connections this time it was Silver Airways.   I have to say we were very impressed.   The planes are newer, cleaner and the weekend flights have larger planes that even have with bathrooms and drink service.  We arrived within 15 minutes of our scheduled time and it was a really pleasant flight.   We even had cocktails, I had a very classy mini bottle of Barefoot Pinot and J had Glenlivet.

We met Stanton Cooper at the airport to pick up our rig for the next 3 weeks.  He really hooked us up this time with a 1999 Jeep Grand Cherokee. There was plenty of room, everything worked and it had good tires and a roof rack.  It served us very well on our numerous adventures. 

We're staying at Caribbean Blue for the first two weeks which is just a few miles from the airport so we made a quick stop by the house, dropped off our luggage, and checked to see what supplies we needed to get through the next couple of days.  We grabbed a cooler and rushed out to get the shopping over with.   About 90 minutes later and $400 poorer we had a full tank of gas, Island Farms veggies dressing and sauces, enough groceries for breakfast, lunch and dinner for 2-3 days and and plenty of beer, wine and liquor.

We were back home to Caribbean Blue and in the water before 3pm.   After a nice snorkel, it was time for cocktail hour so we enjoyed a round of spunky monkeys (recipe below) on the deck then started working on dinner.   There was a light breeze so we were able to enjoy dinner at sunset outside on the deck.   We had an island farms salad with fresh lobster and fine herb dressing for dinner, accompanied by a glass of  Malbec.   We also met the two giant lizards (later to be named El Gordo (Zordo) and Gordette) who would frequent the deck in the daytime and beg for food.

Spunky Monkey Recipe: Fill a glass with Ice, add one shot dark rum, one shot Ricardo Coconut Rum, and a generous squeeze of lime. Fill with club soda, stir and enjoy. 

Liquor Prices: (as best I can remember). 
Trivento Malbec, and Malbec Blends from Bristols in Cupids Cay:  We found this to be the best wine value, it was around $12 a bottle and drank like a $8-9 bottle in the states.    We prefer Bristols by far for wine selection.  They also accept credit cards.

Beer: We paid $40 a case for Sands light and $46 for Kalik and Heineken.   We prefer Burrows for beer selection and prices. 

Liquor:  Rum ranged from $10-$15, Jameson 15 year was around $15, and Absolute was around $12.  We like to shop around for liquor but when we are in a hurry we always go to Burrows.