Green Turtle Cay , The Abaco's 

Green Turtle Cay, The Abacos

The Abaco islands located slightly more than 100 miles north

of Nassau and 200 miles northeas of Miami, are gradually outgrowing their status as "out" or Family Islands in the Bahamas. Marsh Harbor, on Great Abaco, is a developed commercial center. Walker's Cay and Treasure Cay are luxury resort areas. But Green Turtle Cay, a short ferry ride from Treasure Cay, retains much of the charm of its late-18th-century origins, especially in its main settlement of New Plymouth, a storybook village with narrow streets and old New England-style clapboard buildings painted in bright whites and delicious pastels. New Plymouth provides a delightful trip back in time, while other aspects of Green Turtle Cay are perfect for the vacationer who wants to enjoy the water activities of the Bahamas, without the high life of shopping and gambling.

Like much of the Abacos, Green Turtle Cay was settled in the late 1700s by British Loyalists who exiled themselves from the United States after the revolutionary war.

Descendants of the Loyalists and their slaves are the main inhabitants of the island today, where such family names as Lowe and Sawyer are still predominant. Again in the Abaco tradition, Green Turtle was once known for its fine boat building. Pineapple farming was also a major activity. But today the restful island depends largely on fishing, services, and the small tourist trade.

New Plymouth is situated on a small peninsula with a main harbor at one end and the smaller ferry dock facing in on Black Sound. As we approached the town on the tiny Green Turtle Ferry, we could have been sailing into an old fishing village on the northeastern coast of colonial America. On every little immaculate street, hand-painted signs request Keep GTC Clean, and people comply with such thoroughness that it leaves a modern city dweller dumbfounded. A stroll through this genuinely quaint village takes you along tidy, paved streets that are essentially broad sidewalks, past the whitewashed picket fences that surround private gardens ablaze with colorful flowers.

Neatly appointed houses sport gaily painted dormers and gingerbread trim. Children, many of whom look very much alike because of the close family ties, ride by on bicycles.

And a few tiny cars and minivans move slowly down the streets. The town includes several stores, a few restaurants, a fascinating museum, and a half-dozen churches representing several different denominations.

Much of the tourist trade is concentrated on White

Sound, across the bay from New Plymouth, where the Green Turtle Club and Bluff House welcome the largest number of aquatically inclined guests. From New Plymouth it is a short ride on the Green Turtle Ferry or a long, hot walk around Black Sound. But if you walk, you can take a detour to the ocean side of the island for the best shelling.

 

(Note: if you walk, be sure to ask for specific directions to wherever you are going. And ask again until you are sure, for Green Turtle's roads branch off in many directions. We walked in circles on the way to Bluff House, ending up at the back of the Green Turtle Club three different times.) Just beyond the two resorts, crescent-shaped Coco Bay sits with calm shallow waters in a palm-lined cove.

Activity peaks on Green Turtle on New Year's Day, when locals celebrate the capture of "Bunce," a folkloric figure who hid in Abaco's forests; in May, during the annual fishing tournament; and during the week of July 4, for the sailing regatta. But for most of the year, the sense of harmony and well-being is undisturbed on this Bahamian Family Island. You step into a way of life that is determined not by the whims and fancies of high-rolling tourists, but by the modest needs and traditional patterns of Green Turtle Cay's peaceful residents.

NOTEWORTHY

Miss Emily's Blue Bee Bar, in New Plymouth on Parliament Street, is famous for the Goombay Smash, a fruity rum drink that Miss Emily blends according to her own secret recipe.

The simple two-room bar is the most popular watering hole in New Plymouth, and hundreds of off islanders have left their business cards tacked to the walls. And the ice-cold Goombay Smash is as delicious and potent as Miss Emily is charming.

The Albert Lowe Museum is housed in a pretty, 150-year-old, green-trimmed white building near the New Plymouth Club and Inn. It is owned by Alton Lowe, a renowned Abaco painter whose work depicting the Abaco people and their way of life is featured on the island's stamps. Exhibits include artwork, shell collections, artifacts from the earliest days of settlement, and ship models built by Alton's father, Albert Lowe.

The Loyalist Memorial Sculpture Garden, across the street from the New Plymouth Club and Inn, was dedicated on November 14, 1987. It features 24 bronze busts of early Loyalists, arranged in the pattern of the Union Jack around a central pedestal with two female figures, one white and one black. The garden is testimony to the degree that this settlement reveres and stays close to its historical roots.

Rooster's Rest Pub and Restaurant, on a low hill on the outskirts of New Plymouth, is the hot spot on weekend nights.

The local band, the Gully Roosters, plays Caribbean dance music, mostly soca and reggae, that keeps the spacious bar jumping with a large, integrated crowd of dancers. The energy of both the band and the patrons seems boundless, but anyone needing a breather steps out on the broad deck and rests beneath a black sky studded with millions of shimmering stars

 

FROM MY JOURNAL

A traveling Pentecostal crusade has set up its striped tent on the vacant corner lot across from the New Plymouth Inn. Only two dozen worshipers attend the Saturday night revival. More curious onlookers are standing around in the street. The village's established churches are holding their own services tonight, as well, the sermons and choir music wafting from open windows into the warm night air.

Walking down the dimly lit streets, we arrive at Miss Emily's Blue Bee Bar. Here's the action. We order our Goombay Smashes and continue walking under the moonlight. Over the hill at Rooster's Rest, the crowd is feverish. Dancing to the Gully Roosters. We watch, dance, then step outside for air and watch the stars. We walk again, out along the still harbor and through the tranquil back streets of New Plymouth. Homemade ice cream at Laura's. It's wondrous that places like this even exist. The air is like velvet, the night is magical, the sense of peace carries us away.