Fort Charlotte to Ardastra Gardens Zoo and Conservation Center

We walked to Fort Charlotte and then to Ardastra Gardens Zoo and Conservation Center today, we had a wonderful day and here is some history of both places we went to!

Fort Charlotte, constructed during the governorship of Lord Dunmore, and it was said he named it in honor of the wife of King George III, but there are those who say he named it after his wife whose name also was Charlotte! There are actually three forts: Fort Charlotte, the eastern section, Fort Stanley, the middle section and Fort D’Arcy, the western section. The building of the forts, out of solid rock, was begun in 1787 and completed in 1819. A dry moat surrounds Fort Charlotte and is spanned by a wooden bridge on the north side. The forts and military installations in New Providence and throughout The Bahamas, formed such an insurmountable defence system that potential invaders were discouraged and as a result these forts never fired a gun in battle.

Pierre

Fort Charlotte 

Fort Charotte

View from the fort

Fort cannons

Lots of almond trees, must have been a grove at one time!

Ardastra Gardens, Zoo and Conservation Centre in Nassau opened in 1937 though the work of the Jamaican horticulturist, Hedley Vivian Edwards.

From the Latin Ardua astrum, Ardastra means "Striving for the stars", the 5-½ acre park is part jungle, part gardens and home to hundreds of beautiful mammals, birds and reptiles from around the world, including many endangered species from the Bahamas and the Greater Caribbean .

The Caribbean flamingo is the national bird of The Bahamas, so in 1950s the Bahamian government brought flamingoes with the intention of breeding, as they had become rare there because they had been almost hunted to extinction for their meat and feathers. Part of the genus Phoenicopterus, this delicate-looking bird takes its name from the mythological Phoenix that was reborn from its own ashes. The Bahamas has one of the world’s largest breeding colonies of Caribbean flamingoes which is found on the southern-most Bahamian island called Great Inagua.

Ardastra Gardens proudly breeds Caribbean flamingoes which freely roam the Zoo. In 1982 the gardens were bought by Bahamian, Mr. Norman Solomon, who started the first Bahamian zoo. The zoo is best known for its flamingos, and the undisputed highlight is the small regiment of marching West Indian flamingos, who strut their stuff! The zoo now has about 300 animals. It was a lot of fun and on the way home we stopped at a roadside market and I got some local fruit, sapodillas, they are DELISH! Then we rode our first Bahamian bus with the locals, it was wild, the bus driver told me to hang on to "what your mother gave you" not too sure what that means! Lol...