Thunderball Grotto
Why this is the first thing I do every time I land in Bahamas.
Read MoreHarbour Island’s pink sand
A closer look at one of Bahamas's most rewarding experiences.
Read MoreExuma swimming pigs
Where to go next once you have seen the headline sights of Bahamas.
Read MoreThe Bahamas taught me that turquoise is not a single color but a whole spectrum, shifting with every sandbar and cloud shadow across the shallows. I’ve sailed the Exumas, anchoring near swimming pigs on Big Major Cay and snorkeling through Thunderball Grotto where light drops through a cave ceiling like something staged for a film. Nassau has its own history, colonial forts and straw markets, pirate lore layered under cruise-ship crowds, but the real character of this archipelago lives in its Out Islands, where the population thins and the water gets impossibly clearer. Over seven hundred islands and cays scatter across these waters, and I’ve never managed to see more than a handful, which is precisely the appeal: there is always another cay worth the boat ride.
Chapter One
The Exumas by boat
Chartering a boat through the Exumas remains one of my favorite ways to spend a week anywhere. The cays are close enough together that you can hop from swimming with nurse sharks at Compass Cay to feeding the famous pigs at Big Major, then anchor for the night in a cove with no other lights visible. Thunderball Grotto, named for the Bond film shot there, opens into a cavern flooded with shifting sunbeams at midday, best explored on a falling tide when the currents ease. I’ve eaten conch salad prepared boat-side by a fisherman who’d caught it twenty minutes earlier, lime and pepper the only accompaniments it needed.
“The Bahamas make the ocean feel like it’s showing off, and somehow it never gets tiresome.”
Chapter Two
Nassau and beyond
Nassau rewards a morning of wandering past Fort Fincastle and the Queen’s Staircase before the cruise crowds fill Bay Street. But I always push onward, whether to Harbour Island, where pink sand runs for three miles and golf carts outnumber cars, or to Eleuthera, quieter and rougher around the edges, its Atlantic side pounding surf against pink cliffs while the Caribbean side stays calm as glass. The contrast between the two coasts of a single narrow island still surprises me each time. Andros, larger and less visited, holds the third-largest barrier reef on the planet just offshore, mostly to itself.
The Short List
Do not miss in Bahamas
At a glance
Bahamas in numbers
- Capital
- Nassau
- Language
- English
- Currency
- Bahamian Dollar (BSD)
- Best time
- December to April
Did you know
The Bahamas is home to the third-largest barrier reef in the world, off the coast of Andros.