Ilsa ’26 and Sophie ’26, recount the groups down island tour, a natural limestone cave exploration, and swimming at Cocodimama Beach.
We were off to an early start with a 6:30 wake-up and a beautiful sunrise. Today was our DOWN ISLAND TRIP!!! Counterintuitively, we drove UP the island for the day and during our first two stops we stocked up on delicious cinnamon rolls and cool souvenirs from local shops (Sophie got a yellow pineapple hat).
The big adventure of the day was going spelunking (aka cave exploring). We arrived at the top of the cave and one of our group leaders, Claire, mentioned how the sand we were standing on had blown over from the Sahara Desert all the way to Eleuthera during a wind storm. After that fun fact, we began our journey into the cave. We timidly turned our headlamps on to see the graffiti and signatures written on the walls of the cave – some of them dated back to the 1800’s! We ventured in further when our other group leader, Murph, lead us through an exercise where we sat in silence in the pitch black for about 7 minutes. This meditative experience was extremely peaceful and a highlight of the day where we all were able to reflect in a moment of quiet.
At our next stop we visited the famous Glass Window Bridge, which divides the rough and stormy Atlantic waters from the clear and calm Bahamian bay. After that, we went to another cool sight – the Queen’s Baths, which were eroded pools that provided a gorgeous view of the ocean.
We were very hungry after all of our adventuring, so we stopped for lunch and some souvenir shopping (Ilsa got a cool shirt) overlooking the ocean in Gregory Town. Our final stop of our Down Island Trip was at a spectacular beach called Cocodimama. The group participated in a friendly, yet competitive, game of monkey-in-the-middle and took some really cool photos. On our way back to the Island School, we jammed out to some low key fire beats in the back of the vans.
During our exploration time back on the island school, most of us took a group bike ride to the marina ten minutes away from the Island school. Unfortunately, we arrived a couple minutes too late to get ice cream, but we got to see the bull and reef sharks that we had seen yesterday. Grant made friends with some local fisherman while we watched the sharks.
Dinner time rolled about at 6 where we ate delicious mac and cheese and chicken nuggets (fan favorite). Our final activity of the day was a fish identification competition against the New Hampton school where we DOMINATED all categories and took home the trophy!
