Jenkins drops me off near the Nippers bar. I have a few hours to kill, and I want to soak in as much about Great Guana Cay's settlement as possible. I’ll be writing about this place for the next several years. I decide to explore Guana with my binoculars on foot. The late afternoon sun shines sweetly on the old loyalist homes, tempered by the shadows cast by tree leaves.
I start walking downhill from Nippers, cross a few streets, then walk uphill again. I see an off-road golf cart coming down the hill. It is occupied by two very large men, so large they make the cart look like a rickety thing from the Flintstones. The driver is smoking a large cigar. He is drunk. He says, “You going that way?” pointing to the direction I am going. I tell him I am. He says, “you gonna have a lot of trouble getting up that hill.” I say I didn’t think it would cause me any trouble. He laughs at this and starts saying all sorts of drunk things I can’t understand.
And, this is always a great way to get rid of drunks: I walk up to him and give my high-five hand. I say, “yeah!” And then I slap his hand. I say, “rock on, man!” really loud.
He belts out a sort of woohoo, and then kicks his golf cart back in motion, which causes the fat passenger to lurch forward. I turn around and realize that I’m looking at a Baker’s Bay Club golf cart.
I go down to the harbor, and walk out into it at low tide and watch a little blue heron wading. Little blue herons are brighter, sleeker animals than their great blue relatives, and the way they run along the shallows after a fish can be dazzling.
Great Guana Cay was where I first began identifying animals as a sort of game. Unlike most North Americans, I started with fish instead of birds. I learned my grunts, my angelfish, my soldierfish, my rays and skates. I kept tabs of the fish I had seen in the wild.
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 Detail from Great Guana Cay reef |
I even began learning my reef invertebrates, my corals, and my sea mammals on the reef of Great Guana Cay. The act of collecting species' names is a joy shared by millions, but the process of doing so, all those years ago, has now made me equipped to write about Great Guana Cay - small places are rarely so rich in such a diversity of species. Because of Great Guana Cay's position as a bulwark between the Caribbean and the Atlantic, because of its unique shape and its unique protected reef, it has always been a magnet for diversity. Today, I want to get an idea of the land diversity of the island.
From the harbor, I walk without direction - across to the Atlantic beach, then on a narrow path where I notice an even narrower path. I find myself inside a part of Great Guana Cay's settlement I never knew existed - a secret series of gardens: tomatoes, peppers, bananas, citrus, coconuts, squashes. I have no idea if I'm on private property, or if these are some sort of public gardens - but the gardens are rich in bird life. Bananaquits, West Indian woodpeckers, Cuban emerald hummingbirds.
I slowly make my way to Docksiders Restaurant, where members of Save Guana Cay Reef wait to tell me their story, and what's going to happen next.
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