Lucayan National Park - Bahamas

Welcome back to day three of ETC's Bahamas kayaking adventure! We took to land on Grand Bahama Island, rented a (very small) car, and drove from our resort 15 minutes over to Lucayan National Park.

The park is about 40 acres, includes a couple of really cool underwater cave entrances (with stairs down to them), and a boardwalk path over a creek and mangrove swamp towards one of the prettiest beaches on the island.

These caves make up on of the longest explored underwater cave system in the world. We actually saw some scuba divers (you need a permit or something) coming out of the water and packing it up for the day...awesome. There were some peaceful bats, hardly anyone there (a tour bus showed up but they didn't last long), and it basically felt like you were wondering around Jurassic Park (Amber didn't really feel the Jurassic Park vibe but she probably hasn't watched it as much as I have...looks like she has some catching up to do back home).

Here's the little car we rented - probably a cost effective idea (versus a cab) since our resort had them right there. I talked her into renting a Chery QQ instead of a Jeep Wrangler...I believe my words were, "this will make such a better blog post".

The Chery was pretty small but had enough room in the trunk for the inflatable kayak and all of our stuff. It seemed like most cars on the island had the steering wheel on the left (which made it a little tricky since they drive here on the left as well). Nothing like throwing your passenger out into traffic right before you pass a truck!

We drove all day and only used about 4 gallons of gas. Gas was $5.28 a gallon when we were there (at the time gas on the West coast US was $4.00), not too bad. Chery QQ!

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The park wasn't that big, only 40 acres, but was totally worth the drive. There was someone there at the parking lot who you could pay the $3 entrance fee (per person), however, we had read that you needed to purchase the tickets in town before you get to the park, which we did. It was a nice mix with the caves on one side and the beach walk on the other. In our next post we'll show you the beach...it was sweet.
~Paul & Amber   ETC

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