Touring in Long island

We rented a car today, along with friends Maryann and George.  We've toured Long Island before and like it.  The car rental was today from noon to noon on Sunday.  It was almost 1:30 when the car finally arrived, so the nice guy gave us until 4 on Sunday to have it ready to be picked up.  That's really like a day and a half for us!   We did the southern half of the island today

First!  It was Farmer's Market day.  We left our dinghies at the dock and started the rather long walk to the market building.  Very quickly, a truck came by and gave all 4 of us a ride to the market.  What a help!  I bought a hand of little home grown bananas, 3 sour oranges (can be used instead of lemons or limes), and a package of red lima beans to make soup.  The farmer's market is held in what seesm to be an old 1 room school house.

 Lunch - at Max's, our favorite little tiki hut conch bar on the island.  Here we are, along with Max, our conch-meister.

Next, to Dean's Blue Hole.  Here is the explanation.

And the blue hole... that would be the dark blue.

Dean's Blue Hole is apparently becoming world famous for free diving competitions. Last year there was an international competition with over 200 participants. The record free dive is 455 feet! Can you imagine that?

After the blue hole, we went further south to Clarancetown, one of the more southern settlements on the island.  Father Jerome built two chuches here - one as an Angelican priest, the other as a Roman Catholic priest.  The first church, built by architect Father Jerome has two tall steeples where you can actually climb to the top.

The second one is just a simple church, but still very pretty.

There are angels garding the gates into the church...

Tomorrow we'll tour the northern half of the island, complete with Loyalist ruins and maybe the Chistopher Columbus "landing site" memorial.  By the way, Luke did a GREAT job of driving on the "wrong" side of the road!