Exploring Lucaya National Park

Lucayan National Park- Gold Rock Beach

Lucayan National Park and Gold Rock Beach, located 20 miles from Freeport, are definitely worth the trip. The highway is open and well paved with little traffic most of the time.

It was a day for a walk in the woods, so I started out early at Lucayan National Park . Grand Bahama obviously was back on the cutting edge again: The park was using a compost facility for its restrooms instead of just drilling the waste into the ground. A smart move, too, with Ben's Cave just a few yards away.

Part of a huge underwater cave system, Ben's Cave at times has been closed because of concern for the underwater stalactites and stalagmites. It's open again but only to certified cravers under the supervision of UNEXSO.

Ben's Cave is actually an inland blue hole with a surface layer of fresh water and salt water below. A biologist in the late 1970s found a previously unknown class of crustacean there.

The tiny opaque, centipede-like organism apparently had been living blind, in the darkness of the Grand Bahama cave system, for millions of years before its discovery.

A short distance beyond Ben's is a second limestone cavern, Burial Mound Cave . In 1985, archeologists found four skeletons on the floor of Burial Mound Cave, about 6 feet underwater. A stairway here leads inside the cavern to a platform just above the water level.

These caves are only one of the 6 ecosystems found in the park, which is heavily forested in Caribbean pine. Caribbean pine is a surprisingly rare species, found on only four Bahamas islands and apparently nowhere else in the world. The forest reminded me of Florida 's spindly sand pines, only not quite as bent over.

I crossed the ramshackle boardwalk that spans the mangrove system of Gold Rock Creek, a popular kayaking site. Gold Rock Beach was as picture postcard perfect as it appears in Grand Bahama 's tourist brochures.

At low tide, hundreds of yards of washboard sand bottom lie exposed. Those sandbanks may have been treacherous for early explorers but they're a glorious playground for us today. Yet only a handful of people were here, probably because of the distance, about 25 miles from Freeport.

I returned to Freeport to hunt for the Rand Nature Centre which at 100 acres is more than twice the size of Lucayan National Park. Still, it wasn't easy to find. Instead of being off by itself, it was located on a main road and surrounded by development.

I meandered along the hiking trail, through more thick pines and native plants. The first visitor of the day, I found the resident flamingos out of the water, strolling the path ahead. Seeing me, they herded into their pond, staying in the shade, well away from the observation platform.

The birds didn't mind when I approached and sat on the shady bank next to them. As the flamingos dragged their heads through the water, feeding just a few feet from me, I watched a great blue heron stalk the opposite side of the pond. More birds that I couldn't identify rustled in the trees behind it. For all the traffic rushing by outside, this was a remarkably peaceful place.

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