Bahamas

Hello and greetings from Grand Bahama Island and the town of Freeport.  I wouldn't have guessed this is where I would find myself this week but a last minute decision and a deal we couldn't refuse and here we are for two glorious weeks.
First impression of the Bahamas? Let me just say that I am eternally grateful for my home's natural disasters. In a blizzard you make a pot of soup, open a bottle of wine and snuggle.  Don't get me wrong, I realize there are people who get hurt, even people who die and lots of property damage and I am not minimizing this, it's devastating, but looking around my home for the next two weeks at the wreckage from Hurricane Matthew, I am grateful I don't live here.
Matthew was an extremely destructive tropical storm which became the first category 5 Atlantic hurricane since Felix in 2007. 2016 was an active season with thirteen named storms, five hurricanes, two of which were considered major. In Matthew's wake came widespread destruction and catastrophic loss of life as it journeyed across the Western Atlantic, including Haiti, Cuba, Dominican Republic and here in the Lucayan Archipelago, into the United States and the Canadian Maritimes.  It is estimated that over 1,600 people lost their lives, making it the deadliest hurricane since Hurricane Stan in 2005.  There is an estimated $13.5 billion CAD in damages, which makes it the 10th costliest Atlantic hurricane in history. So what does that have to do with snow storms? I am just glad that I didn't have to live through Matthew.
The evident destruction around me is hard to reconcile with what I came to do, sit on the beach and swim in the ocean. Upon driving up the drive of the condo Brett and I have rented the entire front yard is a shambles. It looks like a war zone, trees ripped out by the roots, devastation everywhere, and here at the Cannes Village, they got off easy, with very little damage.  There are still many houses, condos, and apartment buildings that have not been so lucky and don't seem to be under any repair. Metal roof panels peeled off, clay tiles smashed and missing, houses removed from their foundations and set down again and the contents of an entire condo development deposited in the bushes along the beach, when the roof was ripped off and the sucking force of the hurricane inhaled people's personal belongings and spit it out into the ocean, only to have the ocean cough it back out onto the point by our condo. And garbage, everywhere debris, and ruins and piles of detritus waiting to be picked up and taken somewhere other than here.
The Bahamas seems like a poor island, there is a decent standard of living, but everything is expensive, at $18 for 6 rolls of paper towel, I can only imagine what building supplies cost. I hope the people of Grand Bahamas can recover, but I can't imagine the heartbreak of having to rebuild storm after storm. More tomorrow.

Cheers
Rachel