Spanish Wells

4/4 - 4/7: Spanish Wells, an island as much as a town, is truly remarkable in all the Bahamas.  There is no other place like it.  It was settled by some of the original Eleutheran Adventurers more than 200 years ago.  When the Loyalists abandoned agriculture in most other locations in the Bahamas, the original families of Spanish Wells stayed on.  The community remains almost 100% white and the 1500 residents are all descended from the same four or five families.  Everyone is a cousin of everyone else.  To solve the problem of who to invite to the wedding, everyone on the island is invited.  To show how closed and culturally isolated the community is, the people refer to Eleuthera as 'the mainland'.

Spanish Wells is probably the wealthiest and most homogeneous community in the Bahamas.   There is not a single abandoned or ill-kept home on the island.  Although there are no showcase homes, even the shabbiest would be a fine cottage on the seashore in New England. This house is one of the more modest homes in Spanish Wells and would do anyone proud.

Tourists are welcome in Spanish Wells.  This is Pineapple Cottage, one of the oldest homes in town and now a bed and breakfast.  The shaded porch would be a fine place to while away an afternoon caressed by the smell of the flowers surrounding the house.

So where does all the wealth come from?  There are 25 or 26 lobster boats in the harbor, each supporting a crew of fifteen or so.  The crews own the boats in shares.  The boats go out for 4 - 6 weeks at a time throughout the season.  They fish the waters between Andros and Cuba.  Each boat is accompanied by as many as ten runabouts or skiffs equipped with a crew of two or three and a GPS.   Once they are on site the skiffs go out to the traps and the crews dive on them with compressed air to harvest the lobsters.  The traps are completely unlike those used in New England.  A Bahamian lobster trap is a piece of corrugated roofing tin to which have been nailed several 2x4's.  This contraption is held on the bottom by a cinder block.  The lobsters crawl under it, thinking that it is a great place to hide.  Little do they suspect that the developer of these Levittown like tract homes will be returning to capture all of the residents.  A new member of the crew on a reasonably successful boat can make $40,000 per year.

Since the community is wealthy, there isn't land for ostentatious homes, and there isn't anyplace to drive to, the locals have found other ways to demonstrate their prosperity.  One way is to have a beautiful fresco painted on the exterior of one's stucco home. 

Two of the many exterior frescoes to be found on the homes in Spanish Wells.  In order to shoot these pictures from the street I used my long lens.

While in Spanish Wells we made a side trip to Harbor Island on the east side of Eleuthera.