WHERE TO GO
The islands’ most popular destination is New Providence – site of the bustling capital Nassau. With its resort areas in Cable Beach and Paradise Island, the island offers glamorous accommodations, enticing nightlife and casinos, fine restaurants and shopping and, of course, great beaches; Nassau Harbour is also a fixture on the Caribbean cruise circuit. Nearly everyone who visits the Bahamas will pass through the capital, the hub of intra-island travel, and those killing time before journeying on to another island will enjoy a jitney ride through Old Nassau and its stirring British colonial architecture, or even a tour of the Atlantis resort’s 34-acre waterscape on Paradise Island.
Almost as popular as New Providence, Grand Bahama has been drawing tourists since the 1950s, when the resort town of Freeport/Lucaya sprung up expressly for that purpose. While the town of Freeport itself is of little interest, its seaside suburb Lucaya features several beaches and some of the most elaborate all-inclusive resort hotels in the country.
Many travellers prefer the quiet, remote charms of the Out Islands – essentially all of the Bahamian isles save for New Providence and Grand Bahama. Here the accommodation is often more rustic, the beaches and reefs virtually deserted and the vibe more laid-back. Andros, the largest island in the Bahamas, is fringed by the Androsian barrier reef, which presents wonderful snorkelling opportunities. Besides the reef – the third longest in the world – the island is celebrated for its blue holes and abundance of bonefish. Those who enjoy sport fishing will prefer the deep waters off the even calmer Bimini and Berry islands located due north, whose fishing was immortalized by Ernest Hemingway.
While there is certainly no shortage of beaches on the Bahamas, Eleuthera contains some of the very sandiest and most unspoilt of the lot, including the fabled Pink Sands Beach. The most populous of the Out Islands, Eleuthera is relatively untouched by tourism, though Dunmore Town, on Harbour Island just off its northern tip, boasts some of the Out Islands’ more cosmopolitan restaurants and finer hotels.
Exploring the Abaco and the Exuma island chains is comparatively more difficult yet repays the effort with their peaceful fishing hamlets and quiet, untrammelled cays. The clapboard houses, neat lawns and picket fences on the Loyalist Cays attest to the immigration to the Abacos after the American Revolution of those still loyal to the Crown, while birdwatchers will relish Abaco National Park and its population of endangered Bahama parrots. The Exumas consist of some 365 cays and islets, fifteen of which comprise the Exuma Land and Sea Park, whose sea kayaking in the cobalt-blue Exuma Sound and the Great Bahama Bank is unparalleled.
The rest of the Out Islands feel light years away from New Providence and Grand Bahama. Much of isolated Cat Island and San Salvador’s interior is dense and impenetrable, though the latter – believed by many to be the site of Columbus’s first landfall in the New World – offers great birdwatching if you can brave the mosquitoes. Long Island affords visitors the luxury of a few resorts in the midst of its rustic fishing settlements and untrammelled beaches, while Great Inagua is home to the 127-square-mile Inagua National Park and the West Indian flamingos it was established to conserve.
Independent of the Bahamas though of the same archipelago, the Turks and Caicos Islands have only become a tourist destination in the last twenty years. Since then, the majority of vacationers here have flocked to the resorts of Providenciales, most of which take advantage of majestic Grace Bay and its six-mile-long beach. The island is also the perfect springboard for day-trips to the beaches of the largely uninhabited Caicos Cays or more demanding jaunts to North Caicos or Grand Turk.
WHEN TO GO The southern Atlantic high-pressure system and constant trade winds make Bahamian weather consistent throughout the year, with temperatures in the mid-70s°F during the dry winter season from December to May, and 5–8 degrees warmer in the summer rainy season. Just as a steady cooling breeze moderates the hottest hours of the day, nights in the Bahamas are temperate and, in the northern islands, even cool. Late summer and fall comprise hurricane season, delivering the occasional menacing tempest as well as less destructive tropical storms. Luckily, the Bahamas are rarely in the direct paths of hurricanes, which usually bypass the islands to the south before hitting mainland North America directly.
Predictably, winter travel is a major draw, with December-to-May prices as much as 25 percent higher than during the rest of the year. Late spring and early summer travel are popular with bargain hunters, divers, and anglers and sailors drawn by the summer round of fishing tournaments and regattas. Travelling during the Christmas holiday season can be bustling and wearisome, with tourists thick on the ground and many locals taking trips to the North American mainland. Likewise, college students often crowd the major resorts during Spring Break in February and March, while other travellers escape to the Bahamas during late summer and autumn to enjoy a respite in that relatively tranquil period, the odd hurricane notwithstanding.
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