Best Conch salad EVER!

Kristen here – today is Wednesday 5/27/09. Yesterday, after school and lunch everyone went into town to have a look around. We first headed for a little gift store, but it was very expensive, and we don’t have much room for trinkets, so just the four of us moved on. We found the Piggly Wiggly which, like it’s namesake in the states was a grocery store. It was a large store for this island, but nothing like the huge Piggly Wigglies at home. After walking around a bit more, we started to get hungry, and headed for a conch salad stand.

The stand was right on the beach where old wooden rowboats were tied up, fishing boats were tied to piers, and all sorts of slime and jellyfish were out due to low tide. Behind the shack, at the waters edge was a pen where they kept the conch alive until it was time to make another salad. To order, you placed your name on a pad of yellow paper sitting on the counter, and wrote what you wanted next to it. They were quite busy and told us it would be about ½ and hour before our salads would be ready. I had found a nice conch shell earlier, so Kaitlin and I went wandering on the beach to find a string to carry it with. We found one pretty quick, but I couldn’t figure out a way to tie it onto the shell. Then…jackpot we found a bunch more conch shells under a dock. I was now up to 5 of them total. I need at least seven to make conch horns for all of my nieces and nephews.

We wandered back to “Queen Conch”, the conch salad shack, and I was eyeing up the huge pile of discarded shells next to the pen. Chris had been chatting with the lady making the salads, and she was quite friendly. I told her that I needed some shells for my relatives, and asked if I could grab two from the pile. I hated to ask, because right next door, they were selling the cleaned shells, and I’m sure they didn’t like people just grabbing free ones. But the Queen Conch lady said no problem, and my conch horn supply was now complete!

While at the conch stand, we met Eric and Jenny from Atlanta. They were an extremely nice couple who were on vacation for a week. They spent the past three rainy days at Paradise Island (where Atlantis is), and the final three days here. When we met them they were on their first day of Harbor Island. We must have chatted with them for an hour or so. They were fascinated by our cruising, and we just love to tell our story. They even chatted with the kids for a while, and the kids had a great time talking about cruising from their perspective. Another man was listening, and he started asking questions as well. He said he always wanted to cruise, but his wife was not into it. He didn’t seem sad at this fact, but knowing what we’ve experienced, I felt bad that he or anyone for that matter has missed out.

After the conch salad, we went back to the boat for a bit. I cleaned up the conchs I had found, and soaked a couple in a bucket to wash again later. After a while, the rest of the crew came back to their boats. They had gone to the beach for the afternoon. We all decided on a laid back dinner of pizza at a local place with everyone. We haven’t had pizza in quite a while, and by US standards, this was probably not that great, but it was wonderful to us!