We leave CSM with some sadness in our heart. It is such a lovely place and the beach, water, and staff are magnificent.

We have chartered a plane to get us to Exuma and Joel, the pilot, tells us it is a 13 minute flight. Well, the winds are so strong, it turns out to take us only 10 minutes. Mr. Dudley Rolle, who has lived in Exuma his entire life, picks us up and takes us on a 20 minute ride to the Palm Bay Beach Club. I highly recommend him (242.464.2408). Check in is very smooth and we are in our room, “Princess Palm” in 5 minutes. The room is quite nice, very clean. We have a kitchenette, 1 ½ baths and two queen beds.

We have dinner at Splash restaurant, on-site at Palm Bay. The food is fine, but the wind is now blowing at about 40 mph. We stay after dinner and have a couple of rum drinks (killer!), and we are the only people in the bar.

We get up and decide to rent a car and check out the island. Yes, we like to explore! Thompson’s Rental is right across the street. We get our car, with rear-view mirror (see part 1) and head to town because Palm Bay is not serving breakfast yet (we are too early for busy season). But we have done our research and head to Towne Cafe. Yikes, they are closed. So we head to Club Peace and Plenty – closed. But the girl at the desk calls around to some other restaurants – closed.

We end up back toward Palm Bay, next to Coconut Cove (closed) at a hotel which had just changed names. We ate a really nice breakfast there and off we go. We drive all the way south and all the way north. It's a fun drive. We want to check out some of the other digs on the island, so we drive into February Point, Grand Isle and by the old Four Seasons. There is NO ONE on this island. We have a nice lunch at one of the Fish Fry shacks. The wind is still blowing about 40 mph.

We go into Georgetown and ask about trips to Stocking Island. It’s too windy for rental boats and the ferry is not going because of the waves. It looks like the weather is going to be like this for the entire week. Bummer.

We buy some groceries in Georgetown and now it is raining cats and dogs.

Now, the whole reason we came to Exuma is for the trips to Stocking Island and other cays and for the beaches. The weather is definitely not cooperating. Being the son of a meteorologist, I go on the US Navy weather website and see that the winds are going to be between 35 and 45 mph for the rest of our trip. Grumpy.

So, after a long discussion over rum and pizza, we sadly decide to leave Exuma and head home early. We have never left the islands early, but we feel it is best for us. So, the next morning we check out, Mr. Rolle comes to pick us up, we hop on a plane to Nassau (with an unexpected detour to Cat Island to pick up one passenger) and home to SFO.

Now, we had done our research and knew about the FS closing. We also realized we were going earlier than we had wanted due to family matters, but felt we would take that chance. It backfired on us due to weather, limited activities and restaurant closures. It was our mistake. Palm Bay seems like a very nice place to stay on Exuma, the people on the island are very gracious and I would like to return.

As a side note, we did stay on vacation. We told no one we had returned and headed to Napa and Sonoma for the rest of the week!