Life on a Boat - shopping in exotic places

When we were living in Tampa we could go to the grocery store at any time and it was always a mile or two from where we were. Often we could shop at Publix just for a meal that very same day!

Living on a boat is so different and right before we left Fort Lauderdale we provisioned a ton, knowing how expensive and challenging this would be in the islands.  Fitting all of this food on the boat takes a lot of time to get right.  It feels like a big Tetris game.

Here in the Bahamas every single store is different, for example most stores don't have AC, often there's dust on the canned food but the people are friendly.  Many of the stores we have recently gone to are tiny, run by a family and unique to that island.  Another different thing is that the food only gets to the stores on certain days. When we were in Green Turtle the wind got really bad one week and the boat that carries the food over couldn't get to the island. This meant that all the local grocery stores were pretty much empty of anything fresh.

This our big provisioning run that we did in Marsh Harbour this weekend. It was the first store we have seen that is similar to Publix. 

The prices here are way different than the USA as the local food such as lobster and crab are much cheaper but other food like chips and cookies are expensive.

We paid 50 dollars for 20 pounds of crabs – here is what the first 5lbs looked like.

Sometimes, on the more popular islands, local food stands would open and sell things like fresh papaya, warm French bread, arugula, spring mix, and tomatoes. There are no coupons here, no by one get one free and they usually only take cash.

This was a local market on one of the small islands. 

In the future we are headed down to the Exumas, where we probably won’t cross many grocery stores in the next few weeks.  To prepare we did the same type of provisioning we did in Ft Lauderdale but had to take a taxi to get home!