2024 Bahamas: Mt. Alvernia Hermitage

 31 March 2024 Easter Sunday
Cat Island Land Exploration

 Clark had special plans for today to walk around the town of New Bight and climb up to the top of the Mount Alvernia (Como Hill) to see the Hermitage.  This stone monastery was built by hand by Father Jerome, a hermit, and is only accessible via a climb up a steep rocky road. I found visiting this religious site to be most appropriate on an Easter Sunday.

 Since we have not been here before, I did not know what to expect as far as getting the dinghy and us to land. We were fortunate in Long Island to find dinghy docks. Other places we have had to bring the boat up to the shore and jump off into the water then anchor the dinghy off. Not knowing what to expect, I prepared for either situation. I brought water shoes and towels. Thank goodness I did as they were needed.

Clark securing the dinghy at the beach. 
He attached a pulley to let it out and pull it in.

The jetty coming out into the water and the old dock at the end were not hospitable at all.

Can't climb off dinghy onto that!

Once we got the dinghy secured (not an easy task as we needed to set an anchor fore and aft to keep it from beaching itself), we set off to explore. We started out walking up a paved road.

As we strolled along the road, the hermitage on top of the hill came into view.

It looks large from down on the road.

As we walked, we came across a herd of goats. The baby ones were so cute!

Baby goat and observant parent

Shortly afterwards, we passed a lone flower growing out of rocks which impressed me in the rather unforgiving conditions. Nature is quite marvelous like that.

 

The paved road eventually gave way to a coral / rock road.  This rugged terrain eventually led us to the beginning of the walk up to the hermitage structure.

Keep climbing!

 

Coming to the entrance of the property

 

Como Hill - highest point in the Bahamas

Enter at your own risk!

As we made our way up the hill we came to a Y in the road. We followed the path going to the right as it had signs on it that led us that direction.

Stations of the Cross
Completed in 1941

The path with the stations of the cross on it became even more rugged than the previous stretch!

As we climbed we passed the Stations.

I

II

III

With each station the climb became progressively more challenging. For a while I held Clark's hand to help me up the "steps". Eventually I shrugged off his hand and basically crawled up the rocks because it felt safer.

Scary steps up to the monastery

XIII

Taking a break from the climb, I took a few minutes to admire the view from up here.

Look at the harbor from the hill

Quite a nice view!

This is what we climbed up to get to the monastery

Having crawled up the rocks to get to the monastery, I wondered how I would manage the trip down again!

Replica of Christ's Tomb

Not quite there yet

Getting closer to the top ...

Chapel and Bell tower

Chapel on right
Living Quarters on left

When I got to the monastery, I declared success and sat down outside the building. Sitting there I noticed a lone flower growing out of the rock. Again I marveled at the strength of nature in unforgiving terrain.

Clark found this one!

While I sat in awe of the climb I had just made, Clark went into the monastery to scout around.

He signed the guest book

Small windows in Chapel

Narrow doorways

Chair for one in the Chapel

Font? (EW)
Candle Holder? (CW)

Living quarters

Everything looked so big from at the bottom of the hill.  Here it looked exceedingly small!

Steps up to the chapel and
down from the living quarters to the back exit

View from back of monastery
showing entry to bell tower

Inside bell tower

Sleeping quarters on right

The hermit's bed

Chapel on left and living quarters on right

I sat admiring the view and the flower beside me and wondered what Clark had found inside to keep him busy. I looked at the steep climb and decided he should not have all the fun, so I crawled up the hill and went inside as well. When I made my way out the far side of the structure, I had Clark take my picture to prove I made it through!

Notice the narrow door behind Ev

It was a very good thing I decided to continue upwards and onwards through the monastery. As we found a trail down the hill on the backside of the monastery that was much easier to traverse than the way up had been. Thank goodness I didn't have to crawl backwards down the rock stairs!

Before we left the property, we found one more building. I suggested it might be the outhouse as it was away from the rest of the structure.

Sign on "outhouse"

We knew we had found a good way down when Clark found the Y where we started our tour of the Stations of Cross.

We passed our friendly family of goats once more.

Busy chewing!

Males were tethered; Female and kids were not

Finally we made it back to the road and to where we could spy the water through the trees!

Upon arrival at the beach, we found ourselves at the police station where Clark asked directions into town. We had two "parallel" roads to choose from. The officer said to take the lower path. Clark took the upper one first for fun.

Leading up to the Y in the road ...

"Our People", "Our Island", "Our Voice"

Billboard at edge of town

Reverse side of billboard

Edge of town

Sights along the upper path ...

Old Church

Twin dogs at gas station
Each with their own car

As we walked by the Roman Catholic Church at 11:30, we saw that service was in progress having commenced at 11:00. When we arrived at the beach at 10:00, two other couples were climbing out of their dinghies on their way to the church for Easter services.

Eventually we came to where the upper and lower roads joined and found a similar tower as we saw at the other end of the road.

As it was Sunday and Easter, most of the businesses in town were closed for the day. We got to see a lot of closed shops.

Love the colors!

Someone's Garden?!

Roosters took over the main street

Humorous! Town restrooms!

Sorry! No ice cream today!

We did find two open restaurants. I turned down the first one we saw but agreed to try to second, and last, possibility for lunch.

Views from the restaurant's deck ...

After lunch, we walked back towards the dinghy and found an oversized chair for Clark to sit in. There were no people around to take a picture of the two of us.

"Tingem dem"

As we made our way back to the dinghy, we saw the church "dinghy crowd" going into Olive's Bakery. Clark was interested to see what Olive offered. We decided to poke our heads in to see what was available. It turned out to be Almond-flavored pound cake, Coconut pastries, or homemade bread. I had just made bread on the boat, so we did not end up buying anything. I do not need that many calories in my diet!

When we got to the beach, we found a "crowd" preparing to depart in their dinghies. Clark had a long conversation with the owner of the dinghy with wheels!

Dinghy on beach has wheels on the stern 
to help get it back out into the water.
It still looked like a lot of work, but they managed to push it out.

We changed back into our water footwear to retrieve the dinghy. As we left the island to return to Sunset Delight, I looked at my phone's health report to see that we had hiked almost 4 miles today.

We relaxed and read for the rest of the day, got the requisite sunset picture for the blog, and watched an episode of Remington Steele before calling it a night. We plan to move islands in the morning and need to get an early start for the long ride to Eleuthera. Weather, interest in what's next, and the desire to get home to New Jersey in May keep pushing us onwards.