5.9 – Thursday

We wanted to stop at Mermaid Reef this morning, which is purported to be great beginner snorkeling. It was about half an hour from the Marsh Harbour anchorage – just on the outside of the harbor. However, it’s not a very protected area and as we neared the anchorage it looked too rough for snorkeling. Hopefully we’ll hit it on the way back because I’d really like to stop.

Instead, we continued on to Tahiti Beach, supposedly one of the most beautiful beaches in the Abacos, plus it’s only accessible by foot or boat. We dinghied over to Tahiti Beach and wandered around. The floating bar was anchored out, but beers were $6 each so we stuck with our house beer (we’d brought some All Day IPAs with us in a cooler). We explored the coast, then we took the dinghy and did some further explorations along the coast. We’ll come back with a camera tomorrow morning when the beach isn’t so busy.

5.10 – Friday

We were not the first people to the beach, but there weren’t many other footprints.

I did find a live sea biscuit! They are….surprisingly ugly when they are alive. It’s illegal to take them if they are alive because they’re so important to the ecosystem! I’d love to find a dead bleached one to bring home, they are like 3D sand dollars. (Technically, they are in the same sea urchin family as the sand dollar.)

Kyle spotted a ghost crab so I got up close and personal with this beauty.

There is a chunk of something aerospace washed up on the beach, I looked it up to see what it came from. It’s crazy to think that a piece of a SpaceX rocket is washed up on the beach here! An article Kyle read said that SpaceX intends to come pick up their litter late May, hopefully they follow through.

We wandered over to the breakwater, since it was low tide we could explore a lot more territory. This is an inlet, so the swell on the other side of the breakwater was pretty rough.

So far I’ve been disappointed by the lack of sea life around the beach, the reviews said it was a great snorkeling area but we haven’t seen anything living in the area yet. But then: shark! It had to be around 5 ft, hanging out in the shallows of the breakwater, waiting for a snack to wash out. And the photo turned out surprisingly well for how far away we were, I caught him right in an incoming wave.

We headed back to the boat and Kyle suggested we do yoga. There is a ton of boat traffic in this area, it’s kind of a bottleneck due to shallow areas so nearly every boat passes through here. The constant boat wakes make balancing poses extra fun! But it felt great to stretch out, it’s been a while since we did the full yoga routine. After we did yoga, I cajoled Kyle into posing for the camera.

We got a little antsy in the afternoon so we went ashore again, this time to walk towards town. One of the ActiveCaptain reviews said the best ice cream in the Abacos was a 20 minute walk north. Well, we walked and walked and the only commercial building we saw was a marina. On the way back we stopped at the marina to ask about ice cream, and they said we could take the shuttle to Hope Town and get some. We continued back to the boat.

There are tons of beautiful flowers growing everywhere, tropical plants galore! This one is not a flower, but the intense purple leaves are almost prettier than a flower. It’s called Moses-in-the-Cradle. I hope you know how much research I do for these blog posts, otherwise I’d never bother to look up what kind of crab or what kind of plant we see.

The roads on this island all look like driveways – narrow and a little rundown. There seem to be more golf carts than cars on the island, distances are given in time via golf cart.

Oh, and as for Tahiti Beach only being accessible by foot? The road goes right up to the beach, and there’s a little parking lot for golf carts. I’m pretty sure there was even a tour group out on the beach this morning.

So, Tahiti Beach is beautiful, but I don’t think it lives up to the hype of the guidebooks. In reality, it’s a small spit of sand that extends out into the channel, and every day a bunch of tourists show up on power boats or golf carts and drink expensive light beer from a floating bar. I don’t see it being a snorkeling destination, and the “secluded” part doesn’t exist. It’s still a great anchorage and a fun area to explore.