Day 5 - Wednesday

We got up early today for breakfast and our planned trip to the main island. We arrived at the boat dock at 8:45 am and our rental car arived right on time at 9am. We were pleasantly surprised by the rental car, a small 2007 4 door, perfect for us. Very fuel efficient too! We paid our $65 for hte day and were given a cell phone number to call when we were ready to return the car.

We started the day with a trip south to Dean's Blue Hole, the world's deepest know blue hole with sea water. It wasn't too hard to find, but just as we got within a couple of miles of the beach where we would find the blue hole, the bottom fell out of the sky as a summer thunderstorm rolled in. As you leave the Queens Highway, most roads are gravel or sand. After a few minutes of rain, the gravel/sand road leading to Dean's became a holding space for water. A couple of times we were unsure if we would be able to make it through the water, but we made it with no issues. It was still raining as we got to the blue hole, so we just jumped out and took a couple of pictures with my water proof camera (will upload photo soon, haven't downloaded pics from that camera yet!)




After the blue hole, we moved back north as we headed for a few beaches we heard were 'must-see's'. First, we hit Stella Maris Beach Resort with also had a nice restaurant where we had lunch. The boys and I each ordered burgers and Mom had a tuna sandwich. We were very pleased with the food. Many times we have had problems finding foods we are familiar with when stopping on the outer islands to find a quick meal, this menu had many options we were comfortable with and the prices were not too far fetched. One note about the restaurant though, we were surprised to see crabs crawling around on the floors in the main dining area. We saw some waitresses trying to shoe them out, but we thought it was kind of fitting for the island atmosphere, and they were kind of cute.

After lunch, we headed back to the entrance road where we saw an sign that interested us...

There are many caves on the island, some of which you can find guided tours through. We chose not to seek any of those out on our trip, but when we saw the sign for this one, we decided to go see what we could find. Turns out, the natural cave had been converted into a bar, although it didn't look like it had been used in a while.

After Stella Maris, we drove to the northern tip of the island to Cape Santa Maria

The beach was named by Christopher Columbus after one of his ship in the Mayflower fleet. It is believed that This area of Long Island was one of the stops made by the Mayflower fleet on Columbus' voyage to discover the new world in 1492. Cape Santa Maria beach is noted as one of the Top 10 most beautiful beaches in the world.

Next, we back tracked closer to Stella Maris where we originally missed our turn to the Coral Gardens. We had read that the Coral Gardens was a great snorkeling spot, although with the wind and rain off and on throughout the day we were fairly certain there would be no snorkeling today.

The Coral Gardens are on the Atlantic Ocean side of Long Island so the water is much deeper and the beaches are much rockier. The walkway down to the water was a sight in itself, a long narrow boardwalk leading through the brush leads to a hand carved stairway into the water. Unfortunantly, the weather did make the water too dangerous to snorkel, so we stayed only a few minutes to take pictures and check out the scenery. It really is a beautiful sight, and I am certain the snorkeling would have been amazing.

Finally, we had seen all of the main attractions on our short list and were ready to stop for fuel and groceries. We called the rental company and they met us at hte boat dock quickly. All in all, a very long, but enjoyable day. Certainly worth the rental and time.