A NEW LEAF

Lee Stocking, Exumas 23º46.28N | 76º06.32W

Small cove on northwest corner of Leaf Cay.

Sometimes guidebooks lead you to wonderful places, enticing you with the amazing things you'll find there.

Sometimes they lead you to wonderful places, where you find none of what's promised but fall in love with it anyway.

This was the case with Leaf Cay, a wisp of an island north of Lee Stocking Island owned by Nicolas Cage and completely uninhabited. The guidebook prattled on about shy pink iguanas, an oceanside beach awash with sea beans and a small pond "alive with butterflies."

Butterflies: Not even one
Sea beans: Zero
Pink iguanas: Check, but they were not shy.

Pink Iguana on Leaf Cay. Large. Fat.

The cove we pulled up in would make a perfect movie set (Nic), brilliant turquoise water lapping on a crescent-shaped white sand beach (see first photo).

The water was so buoyant with salt, that I could sit in it.

Sitting in salty water.

From the rugged oceanside beach, a short walk around the northern tip, you can see hue after hue of blue water strewn with rock islands and Exuma Sound in the distance.

Looking northeast from Leaf Cay.

No sea beans? No worries.

I'm sure the day the guidebook author visited Leaf Cay, there were indeed butterflies and sea beans, and, in retrospect, I'm glad about that for it was those very things that even in their absence, made me visit this little slice of Nic's paradise.