An Epic Kayaking Adventure— Part Two
Shipping our kayak to the Bahamas!
This is part two of a kayaking adventure that I went on with an ex-boyfriend back in 2001/2002 when I was 24 years old. To read part one, click below.
Thanks again to the Globetrotters team of editors Gerald Sturgill, Adrienne Beaumont 🇦🇺 and JoAnn Ryan, and to Anne Bonfert for her June writing prompt Flow Like Water, which inspired my writing of this story.
So we were off! We and our 21-foot (6m) kayak hitched a ride to Homestead with the electricians and got them to drop us off at a campground. Leg one was finished, now we had to figure out how to make the next hop.
We spent a couple of days at a pretty cool spot and met some other travelers, but we were thrilled when we met a guy that told us he would be happy to drive us further up the coast.
Unfortunately, these days, I can’t remember the campground, but when we looked at it on the map, we could see that it had a river or creek running through it. We thought that we may be able to paddle our kayak down it and back out to the water, making our way to Palm Beach that way.
The man dropped us off at a campsite and shortly after we went to see about our plans to paddle out to the water. We quickly realized that the small creek that ran through the campground was not sufficient in size for us to paddle down, so we knew that we would have to find another ride.
Lucky for me, my ex-boyfriend was a sweet talker, and within a day he had found somebody to take us up to Palm Beach.
The man’s name was Mr. Vanier and he was from the French part of Canada. He spoke just enough English to communicate with us, and they insisted on having us over for dinner so that they could hear our travel stories so far.
We really connected with them despite the fact that they were old enough to be our grandparents. The next day he whisked us up to West Palm Beach where we settled into a municipal campground.
I have to say, municipal campgrounds in the middle of cities are weird and they attract the strangest people. I won’t get into the specifics about the people, but we definitely had a few strange encounters. However, here we were, well inland, with our kayak and our tent, perched right out in the open for all to see. I’m sure people were wondering what the hell WE were doing.
I guess maybe we fit in with the weirdos after all!
After arriving at the campground the temperatures took a dive again and it was hovering around 0C (32F). It was at this time that we became a bit sick with a cold. One camper that was near to us realized that we had no way to stay warm, so he lent us a plug-in heater. I can’t tell you how amazing we slept that first night of having that thing blaring in our tent. We cranked it up and felt like we were in a sauna!
Through numerous calls on the campground payphone, we learned how we could get our kayak shipped to the Bahamas. One day we decided to go on a scouting mission to the port. We somehow figured out the bus route, and then set off. As two small-town kids from Canada, we had an eye-opening experience on the Florida bus system.
At one point we stopped by a prison and picked up the prisoners who had been released. A man got on the bus and his wife was there to greet him. She handed him a brown bag immediately and he consumed it without taking even a breath, I’m pretty sure.
We watched another woman basically beat her child with her slipper meanwhile telling it that if it didn’t stop crying, she would give it something to cry about. The poor kid could barely get a sob out before she’d clobber him again. He had a terribly runny nose and no shoes. Did I mention how cold it was?
We made it over to the area that the shipping company was in and got off the bus. We had just crossed the street when a man made a beeline across the intersection to us. He was walking quickly and I could sense his urgency from a distance.
“I don’t know what two white kids like you are doing here but you are not in a good part of town. Best you get back on the next bus and get out of here.”
We stared at him wide-eyed and dumbfounded. It was then that we looked around us and could see that we were, in fact, the only ‘white kids’ to be seen, and many people, young and old, were standing around burning barrels to keep warm. They eyed us up suspiciously.
Now, I feel like I need to add here that this wasn't the first time that either of us had been in a place where we were the only white people around. While traveling overseas, this is a common occurrence. So, to us, we didn’t really understand what the big deal was, and we didn’t understand why it would put us in danger.
As two people from small-town Canada, we had never encountered a part of a town or city where it was too dangerous to be. I mean, maybe at night you would have your wits about you, but never in the day. We never could have imagined that the US would be so different.
Looking back now, and being better versed on the racial divide that exists in America, I can now see the issue. But I still find it hard to believe that in all the countries that I have traveled to, the scariest situations have been in the US.
“Well we need to go to the port, we need to arrange something,” we told him.
He pointed us in the right direction and told us to be careful. We hastily made our way the few blocks to get there.
We finally found the place and told the man what we wanted to do. He gave us an estimate of the cost but told us that we needed to bring the kayak there first so that they could assess the load.
Unfortunately, I can’t remember the total cost to ship it, but it wasn’t much. I feel like $100-$200 was the maximum.
My boyfriend did some sweet talking around the campground that night and found a man with a truck that would give us a ride over there. It was much nicer arriving at the port by vehicle, that much was for sure.
Dropping that kayak off really felt like freedom. We put much of our gear inside it and left ourselves with only our backpacks and tent gear to deal with. It would take a few days for the ship to leave, so we had time to organize a flight for ourselves and get settled in Nassau before it arrived.
Our flight to Nassau was from Ft. Lauderdale, and I seem to recall that we rode the bus down there from Palm Beach, directly to the airport. As we winged our way east, the bright turquoise waters started to glimmer below us. We were giddy with the anticipation of the warm tropical waters that we would encounter and were so relieved to be leaving the hustle and bustle of Florida.
Since we had already been to Nassau, we were familiar with the layout of the city. We knew that we couldn’t afford any of the hotel rooms, so we opted to pitch our tent on a beach in the middle of the city. We later learned that Nassau is one of the more dangerous capital cities in the Caribbean! I’m telling you, I now see how damn stupid that was, but hey, we survived. We did have a couple of strange encounters in the nights, though, but nothing that was dangerous, thankfully. Mostly, I think it was drunk guys wondering what the hell a tent was doing on the beach.
One night a guy even started opening our zipper in the middle of the night! I don’t know if we scared him more than he scared us, but when he heard voices inside, he made a grunting noise and that was the end of it.
On the day that our kayak was meant to arrive, we packed up all of our things and made our way to the port. We didn’t know what time the ship was going to come in, but as we rounded the corner we came across this scene.
They were just unloading our kayak, and we were ecstatic! Our visions of freely paddling around the Bahamas for months were coming to fruition. But, not so fast! We first had to clear it through customs, which would not prove to be an easy task.
Of course, the customs office was not near the port, so we had to get directions and navigate our way over there with our import document that they had provided us with. We arrived at the office sometime in the afternoon, I want to say around 4:00, and of course, the officer was gone for the day.
Sadly, we had to slink our way back to the beach and set up our tent again. We were not pleased.
The next morning we got up early and made our way out to the office. Inside his office were stacks of files and mountains of papers. Not a computer was to be seen. I marveled at how anyone could possibly get anything accomplished in such chaos.
We gave him our document and it was then that he told us that we had to pay an import fee to bring our boat into the country. Of course, the paper simply said “21-foot vessel” and didn’t specify what type of vessel. We tried to explain to him what our vessel was, but he didn’t understand. We also told him that our plan was to paddle around and camp on the beach.
“There is no camping allowed in the Bahamas!” he stated boldly.
It was then that I started to cry. It wasn’t a helpless female cry, it really was a cry of frustration. I think much of it had to do with the fact that we had barely been sleeping on the scary beach for the few nights that we had been there. My boyfriend looked at me sullenly, and the officer didn’t know what to do. I just felt so helpless. Here we had made this great plan, and we weren’t able to do any of it. We couldn’t afford the import fee (I seem to recall it being in the thousands of dollars), and we weren’t allowed to camp.
What were we going to do?
We left his office feeling very melancholy and made our way back to the beach.
At some point in the night, I figured that maybe the officer just needed to be shown a picture of our kayak, then he would understand. It didn’t negate the fact that we weren’t allowed to camp, but at least we could get our kayak from the shipping yard and figure out some sort of plan.
The next morning we went to a film development place (yes, this was that long ago) and got a roll of pictures developed. We made our way back to the customs office and pleaded our case again.
Once seeing the photo, the officer was more sympathetic and understanding to our plea. He reassessed the import fee and promised that when we brought it back out of the country, we could get it back. I think we had to pay about $300.
“But you are not allowed to camp in the Bahamas!” he insisted.
“Okay, no problem. Thank you so much. We will just paddle it around here,” we told him.
With our approval in hand, we skipped our way back to the shipping yard.
We wasted no time in dropping our kayak straight off the concrete ship dock. We each held a line, bow and stern, and slowly lowered it down the 10 ft (3m) distance to the water. We then climbed down the immense tires that acted as fenders so the boats wouldn’t crash into the dock.
Finally, getting in the kayak and pushing away from the chaos of Nassau was exhilarating! We had done it, and we were FREE!
To be continued……..
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