Matthew Town, Great Inagua, Bahamas

The Bahamas Defense Force came into the small basin at sunrise - big boat!

We had made the appointment for Mr. Nixon to meet us at the dock at 9AM for an island tour.  This island is 50 miles long, so we couldn't reasonably tour it on bikes.  We all got really cozy in the crew cab pickup.

To get to the Iguana National Park, we had to drive through the Morton Salt factory salt ponds....more on that later.

As we got onto the cart path/road into the preserve, we stopped on the side of the road and plucked a piece of cotton growing wild on the side of the road.

The plants grow wild, leftover from failed attempts long ago to grow cotton in the poor soil.

After about a half hour of extremely bumpy riding in the truck, we made it to the edge of the park.  We couldn't go much further because the path had been washed out in a hurricane and has not been repaired.

 But we did see some birds!  These look like flamingos, but they're actually rosy spoonbills. 

Beautiful birds!!  You can almost make out the spoon - shaped bill on this photo.  Pretty weird looking!

And we did see a few flamingos....not as many as we'd hoped.  But good to see them.

On our way back we stopped by the Morton Salt plant where Leslie had called about a tour.  

We stopped at the gatehouse and got our passes.

Note the "glass free zone" - there is no glass allowed apparently because it is impossible to distinguish from salt crystals and they can't afford any contamination.

 This is the canal that carries the salt water that is pumped in from the sea to the vast salt evaporation ponds.

 Huge mountains of finished sand waiting to be loaded onto a cargo ship.

Here is a crystal from one of the salt mountains.

Then we drove out through the salt ponds.  There are 3 stages of evaporation.  The various ponds had different shades of pink.

This pond is almost ready for extraction.

 And here they are simply scooping up the sand and hauling it away.

And then it's loaded by conveyor into the cargo ship for final delivery for consumption and for things like road-salt. 

Beautiful place for a cargo ship!

And just after sunset, the Defense Force boat departed.

Lovely dinner "Taco Tuesday" was on board Now & Zen.