t Colorful houses down near Nassau’s dock, looking out toward Paradise Island
g The Bahamas g Contents
Almost two-thirds of the nation’s populace live on New Providence, and Nassau is the Bahamas’ bustling capital city. The gritty yang to the calm yin of the Out Islands, Nassau is awash with cruise-ship passengers and a rum-happy party crowd. But it is also blessed with old Georgian buildings, fine beaches, and a fistful of intriguing museums.
Spend a day exploring the historic downtown, beginning at the Welcome Center that adjoins the cruise piers. One block south, Parliament Square is pinned by a statue of Queen Victoria and surrounded by government buildings. The lively Straw Market is interesting, and beyond it is the Pompey Museum of Slavery & Emancipation, housed in an 18th-century mansion where slaves were once sold. The enthralling Pirates of Nassau is nearby, an interactive museum that transports visitors back to 1716 with light and sound shows and eerily real exhibits. Rising atop Bennet’s Hill to the southeast, Fort Fincastle was built in 1793 in the shape of a paddle-wheel steamer; reach it via the Queen’s Staircase, hewn by slaves from solid limestone.
Farther west is the more grandiose Fort Charlotte, built in 1788 and commanding fine views over pearly white Cable Beach. Don’t miss Clifton Heritage National Park, where trails wind through a variety of ecosystems and past the remains of a pre-Columbian Lucayan village. Visitors can also rent snorkel gear and swim to the Sir Nicholas Nuttall Coral Reef Sculpture Garden, the world’s largest underwater gallery of sculptures.
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⌂ Bay St § 242 356 0495 # 9:30am–4:30pm Mon–Sat (till 1pm Thu)
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⌂ Cnr King & George sts # 8:30am–5:30pm Mon–Sat, 9am–2pm Sun ∑ piratesofnassau.com
EXPERIENCE The Bahamas
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Eat Cafe Matisse Housed in a centenary mansion with patio dining, this spot serves Italian cuisine plus creative fusion dishes, such as shrimp in red curry sauce. As expected, the walls are hung with Matisse prints. ⌂ Bank Lane, Nassau ¢ Mon & Sun ∑ www.cafematisse.com \\\ The Fish Fry This no-frills beachfront enclave of small stalls and a restaurant is a favorite with locals for its all-things-conch menu, including a delicious ceviche, plus other seafood. Try D’Water Café, which has live music in the evenings. ⌂ Arawak Cay, West Bay St, Nassau ∑ fishfrynassau.com \\\ |
Dominating the western end of Grand Bahama – a low-lying isle covered in scrub and casuarinas – the sprawling twin cities of Freeport and Lucaya were laid out in the 1950s as a duty-free destination to lure early pleasure-seekers. The uninspiring grid of soulless buildings and wide streets is somewhat enlivened by the International Bazaar, a duty-free enclave entered by Torii gates and teeming with cruise ship passengers. Inside, the highlight is a visit to the Fragrance of the Bahamas perfume factory, which is located in a pink 18th-century mansion and offers free tours.
A wealth of beaches lines the south shore. Closest to downtown is Xanadu Beach, where eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes holed up for his final years, inside the now-faded Xanadu Resort. Today’s beachfront action centers farther east in the Lucaya suburb. Lucaya Beach, the island’s most popular sand strip, is served by watersports and the Port Lucaya Marketplace, a marina and tourist complex.
A five-minute drive east of Freeport, the Garden of the Grove botanical garden offers a lush respite from the sand of the region; trails weave through tamarind groves and past artificial cascades. Beyond, the paved Grand Bahama Highway strings along the southern shore through a virtually uninhabited morass of scrub and marsh.
t Colorful houses down near Nassau’s dock, looking out toward Paradise Island
Linked to Nassau by twin bridges, Paradise Island is the capital’s hedonistic little sister, and is synonymous with wild bachelor parties, over-the-top weddings, and unabashed ostentation.
Shaped like an ox-jaw, the entire length of the isle’s north shore is lined its with 4 miles (6 km) of white-sand beaches. Excursion boats will run visitors a short distance offshore to Blue Lagoon Island (bahamasbluelagoon.com), a long sliver of land that offers an aquapark and watersports. Paradise Island Golf Course and nearby Versailles Garden – a terraced garden spanning the isle north to south – provide distractions from the beach.
Undoubtedly the island’s biggest draw, however, is Atlantis Paradise Island Bahamas, an ocean-themed mega-resort, as fun-filled and extravagant as any product of Las Vegas, Walt Disney World® Resort, or even Hollywood. Opened in 1998, the huge resort includes a massive casino that sits alongside a vast Aquaventure waterpark. The park is home to the largest open-air aquarium in the world and (for confirmed thrill-seekers only) a Mayan Temple’s Leap of Faith waterslide that propels riders through a shark-filled lagoon. You can also see the predators close up through an underwater Plexiglass walkway, and the resort offers a variety of marine-based adventures.
⌂ 1 Casino Dr
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Pete’s Pub & Gallery, Abaco
∑ petespub.com
A waterfront pub with metal sculpture foundry and its own signature rum cocktail.
Miss Emily’s Blue Bee Bar, Green Turtle Cay
∑ missemilysbluebeebar.com
Renowned for its Goombay Smash that is sold by the gallon, this hole-in-the-wall also serves delicious meals.
End of the World Saloon, Bimini
⌂ Queen’s Hwy, Alice Town
A tiny, sandy-floored bar, where locals play dominoes and – supposedly – Hemingway once caroused.
Nippers Bar, Abaco
∑ nippersbar.com
This colorful beach bar is party central; its Nipper Juice cocktail is particularly potent.
t A snorkeler skirting the S.S. Sapona wreck off the coast of Bimini
Perched at the edge of the Gulf Stream just 50 miles (80 km) from Florida, tiny Bimini – comprising North Bimini, South Bimini, and a sprinkling of uninhabited cays – is renowned as a former base for Prohibition-era rum-runners. It was also a favored hangout for Ernest Hemingway, who was lured here by the region’s first-rate sportfishing.
Today raffish Alice Town, Bimini’s sole settlement, has been outclassed by the new Resorts World complex, with its swanky casino overlooking a pristine pearly beach. Divers delight in exploring Bimini Road, where underwater formations resembling giant building blocks inspire fantasies that this could be the fabled Atlantis.
Alice Town, in Bimini, was briefly the busiest port in the Bahamas due to Prohibition-era rum-running.
Hidden Gem
Located at the southern end of Great Abaco, this park was created in 1994 to protect the endangered Abaco Parrot. About 1,000 of the birds remain, nesting in limestone cavities at the site.
The largest and wildest of the Bahamian islands, Andros is a flat-as-a-flounder wilderness of pine forests, palm savannas, and sprawling wetlands pitted with “blue holes” – deep, water-filled sinkholes – and freshwater lakes. Half a dozen small settlements speckle the eastern shore, centered on Andros Town. Androsia, a workshop there producing hand-made batiks, is worth a visit.
Most vacationers come for sensational bonefishing or to dive blue holes and coral reefs. To the east, the world’s third-longest fringing reef plunges to more than 6,600 ft (2,000 m) off the Tongue of the Ocean wall.
Northwest of Andros Town, Blue Holes National Park has many trails along which visitors may spot Bahamian endemic birds.
One of the prettiest Out Islands, Long Island is a slender sliver of land and a study in contrasts. Atlantic waves crash against cliffs that tower over its eastern shore, while the calm lee side is scalloped with pink- and white-sand bays. Dean’s Blue Hole, near the main settlement of Clarence Town, is the world’s second-deepest blue hole and occupies a beach-fringed bay. Hamilton Cave is a draw of a different sort, displaying well-preserved indigenous Lucayan pictographs. In the far north, Stella Maris Resort is famous for its dives with sharks and to the Comberbach wreck.
t Pretty Elbow Reef lighthouse, located on one of the Abacos’s “Loyalist Cays”
Rich in history, the boomerang-shaped Abacos chain comprises Great Abaco and the necklace of Abaco Cays. The cays shelter the calm Sea of Abaco, to the delight of yachters. Although hardly a metropolis, Marsh Harbour is the third-largest town in the Bahamas. Boats depart its marina for the four small “Loyalist Cays”, named for the British Loyalists who settled here after the American Revolution of 1776: Green Turtle, Great Guana, Man o’ War, and Elbow. With their picture-perfect gingerbread cottages lining narrow lanes overflowing with bougainvillea, the cays are the Abacos’s main draw. Elbow Cay is the most significant, centered on pretty Hope Town. Its harbor is pinned by the candy-striped Elbow Reef Lighthouse, the most iconic of Bahamian lighthouses; climb the 101 steps for a bird’s-eye view over Hope Town.
On Green Turtle Cay, the Albert Lowe Museum displays model ships and historic artifacts in the former home of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Nearby, the Loyalist Sculpture Garden is laid out in the form of the Union Jack, and displays busts of prominent Loyalists.
Claiming 365 reef-fringed cays and isles scattered like pearls across the jade waters of the central Bahamas, the Exumas are haloed by footprint-free beaches and are renowned for luxurious resorts and excellent diving. Great Exuma and Little Exuma – with resort hotels, Loyalist ruins, and the Family Island Regatta in April – are the populous pendants at the southern end of the Exuma Cays. A significant swatch of this chain of gorgeous, mostly uninhabited cays is protected within Exuma Cays Land & Sea Park, which teems with marine life and is perfect for kayaking and snorkeling.
A tendril-thin bow lined for much of its length by blush-pink sands, Eleuthera has long been a favorite of high-class socialites. Virtually the entire population lives in the small lobstering community of Spanish Wells at Eleuthera’s northern tip; or in irresistibly quaint Dunsmore Town on Harbour Island. Visitors to the latter are delighted by its pretty 18th-century clapboard cottages and appropriately named Pink Sands Beach. Chic boutique hotels line sands the color of rosé, made even more striking by electric-blue waters lapping at their edge. At Glass Window Bridge, just south of Harbour Island, the Prussian-blue Atlantic is separated from the turquoise Bight of Eleuthera by a mere 30-ft (10-m) span.
EXPERIENCE The Bahamas
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Stay Graycliff Hotel & Restaurant Old-world elegance at a classy Georgian manse, which features the town’s finest restaurant. ⌂ West Hill St, Nassau ∑ graycliff.com \\\ Resort World A stylish mega-resort with three pools, a huge casino, and the biggest marina in the Bahamas. ⌂ North Bimini ∑ rwbimini.com \\\ Pink Sands A boutique hotel comprising 25 cottages. With patio dining and superb beach views, it oozes romance and relaxed sophistication. ⌂ Chapel St, Harbour Island, Eleuthera ∑ pinksandsresort.com \\\ |
t A bright flock of flamingos wading through a river in Great Inagua National Park
A far cry from the upscale resorts, watersports, and luxurious treatments found elsewhere in the Caribbean, the Inaguas are all about ecotourism. They are the southernmost isles in the Bahamian chain: offbeat, semi-arid, salt-encrusted Great Inagua and uninhabited Little Inagua. More than 80,000 flamingos tip-toe the saltwater lagoons of Great Inagua National Park, which covers almost half the island. And some 140 other native and migratory bird species can be seen here, including the endangered Bahama Parrot. Other wildlife also abounds; the endemic Inagua slider turtle clings to life in rare freshwater pools, while green and hawksbill turtles haul ashore to nest on Inagua beaches. Anglers can cast for hard-fighting bonefish, arranged through Great Inagua Outback Lodge. Sun-beaten Matthew Town, the Inaguas’ only community, thrives on salt production, and the vast site of the Morton Salt Factory can be toured.
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⌂ Matthew Town § 242 339 1300
Cat Island is little troubled by tourists, despite its 8-mile (13-km) Pink Sand Beach to rival that of Eleuthera, and a lifestyle steeped in traditional Afro-Bahamian culture. The narrow, hook-shaped isle is freckled with small limestone homes, built around the ruins of former Loyalist cotton plantations. Retired islanders play rake ‘n’ scrape music beneath trees festooned with bottles to ward off evil spirits – an obeah (spiritualist) belief. Trails wind through rolling hills that rise to Mount Alvernia, the highest point in the country; studded by a Medieval-style mini-monastery. Sleepy Arthur’s Town, in the north, was the childhood home of Sidney Poitier, who became the first Caribbean actor to win an Academy Award in 1964.
Picture Perfect
Flamingos are shy birds and may fly away if you get too close, so to capture a sharp photograph you will need a telephoto lens. The stunning color of the flamingos is best shot in the morning or evening light.
The outermost Bahamian island is small, but plays an outsized role in history. Five monuments commemorate Christopher Columbus’s landfall in the Americas here on October 12, 1492 – these include a large stone cross at Long Bay, where the explorer is thought to have first stepped ashore. He named this isle “The Holy Savior,” and it is ringed its entire length by beaches and coral reefs. There are more than 50 diving sites in the area, including the S.S. Frascate wreck, which sank here in 1902.
The island interior is a morass of briny lakes that comprise Great Lake Preserve, established to protect the endangered San Salvador rock iguana. A perimeter road leads past several ghost settlements, Loyalist plantation ruins, and the Dixon House Lighthouse.
t A striking statue of Christopher Columbus in San Salvador
EXPERIENCE The Bahamas
t Depiction of Columbus landing on San Salvador in The Bahamas
Everyone except residents of Turks and Caicos agrees that Christopher Columbus first touched land in the Americas in The Bahamas, visiting several islands. But exactly where he first stepped ashore is unknown. Many ancient scholars argued that a direct route west from Europe to Asia was possible. Genoese explorer Columbus was the first to seek a sailing route to the Indies. He set sail in August 1492 and in October, stumbled upon the unknown Americas, believing he had reached the Indies (hence the Caribbean islands are today called the West Indies). He made three other Americas voyages, in 1493, 1498 and 1502, but never returned to Bahamian waters.