We have waves from the north rocking our anchorage of Calabash Bay in Long Island today, so we decided to take a hike to the Columbus Monument at Cape Santa Maria. To get there requires a dinghy ride into the tidal Hoosie Harbor to a dock in the settlement of Seymours followed by a 30 minute walk up a road (called Monument Road of course) to the monument. Christopher Columbus is a beloved figure here in the Bahamas. The islands debate where he stopped first on his 1492 voyage and the ones where he stopped all have some sort of commemorative monument. The consensus is that he stopped at nearby San Salvador first and Long Island was the third stop. Long Islanders counter the number by saying Columbus said their island was the most beautiful in the Bahamas. The Long Islanders just recently spent some big bucks upgrading the landmark with a new road, parking lot, and concrete stairs. From the overlook, the view from the cliffs over the cape is breathtaking.
