Last time we were in the Exumas, jason and I hiked to the top of Booboo hill. It was a super cool place and we really wanted to do it again and do some hiking in general! The island has quite a few trails on it and after taking a picture of the hand drawn trail map at the office we were on our way! The hike starts at the usual: Booboo hill, the blow holes, and the creek.
The view of the boats from Booboo hill is always nice. This time though we wanted to do a much longer hike! So we headed down to Booboo beach and followed the trail roughly along the coast along the island. There were rock stacked cairns that marked the way so it wasn’t too bad. However towards the end the trail gets less and less obvious. At one point we’re just climbing rocks along the water hoping for the best. The map showed a wall that cuts across the island to the other side. That seemed like a good point to turn around. Luckily the wall wasn’t too hard to find. One fun side note about the Bahamas is that they have Poisonwood trees that cause an itchy painful rash if you touch the leaves or trunk. Obviously to be avoided! However once we turned inland they were everywhere… made for a slow and cautious hike!
Given the amount of signs you would think finding the trails would be easy but like 10’ away from the sign the trail is gone and you’re pretty much just guessing where to go. Luckily we found the wall pretty easily and made it to the other side of the island to a gorgeous soft sandy beach.
Just up the hill from the beach was a spot marked “ruins”. Or course we had to check that out! They looked like tiny huts with rock walls. No idea what they were originally for as the informational sign was long gone.
All of the rocky beaches were spectacular!
At this point it’s almost noon and the weather has definitely heated up. I’m ready to head back so we start walking back towards the mooring field along the other side of the island. However this part of the trail sees even less use than the other part and the trail was practically nonexistent except for the occasional stack of rocks. We were guessing most of the way and went up a hill and down to a beach and back up and down for what felt like miles. Dodging between poisonwood trees and scrambling along sharp lava rocks the entire way! It was NOT an easy hike! I’m glad we got to see the rest of the island but I was very glad to be back to the boat after 4 hours of scrambling around in the heat!