Bahamas Discovery Guide

The Bahamas is not one island but around seven hundred, spread over a hundred and eighty thousand square kilometres of shallow sea. The water is the point: the banks are so shallow and the sand so pale that the sea reads as a colour most people do not believe until they see it.

Nassau and Paradise Island hold the resorts, the cruise terminal and Junkanoo, the masquerade parade that runs through the streets on Boxing Day and New Year’s morning. Beyond them lie the Out Islands — the Exumas, Eleuthera, Andros, the Abacos, Long Island — which are quiet, thinly populated and where the Bahamas actually lives.

It is also one of the world’s great diving destinations: blue holes, wall dives off the deep drop-offs, wrecks, and the largest concentration of them at Andros, which sits alongside the third-largest barrier reef on earth.

If you have a week

Two or three nights in Nassau for Junkanoo, the fish fry at Arawak Cay and the colonial centre, then a flight to one Out Island for the rest. Trying to do several islands in a week means spending it in airports.

If you came to dive

Andros sits on the edge of the Tongue of the Ocean, a two-kilometre-deep trench, and has the world’s highest concentration of blue holes both inland and offshore. Bimini, Long Island’s Dean’s Blue Hole — among the deepest known — and the walls off Grand Bahama are the other draws.

If you want the Exumas

A chain of 365 cays with water that is the reason people come to the Bahamas. Boat trips run from Great Exuma and from Nassau; a charter or a few days on Staniel Cay gets you away from the day-trip route.

If you want quiet

Eleuthera and Harbour Island for pink sand and settlements that look Georgian; Cat Island for the highest point in the country and a hermitage on top of it; Long Island for the cliffs and the caves.

The Bahamas is an African-descended society with a British institutional frame and an American economic orbit, and all three are visible at once.

Junkanoo

The central cultural event and a genuine obsession. Organised groups spend most of the year building costumes from crepe paper on cardboard frames, then compete in a parade through Bay Street in Nassau from about two in the morning on Boxing Day and New Year’s Day, driven by goatskin drums, cowbells, whistles and brass. It descends from the short holidays allowed to enslaved people, and the rehearsal and construction are as much a part of it as the rush.

Island identity

Bahamians identify strongly with their particular island — a person from Cat Island, Andros or Long Island will tell you so — and the Out Islands regard Nassau with a certain wariness.

Church

The Bahamas has among the highest numbers of churches per head in the world, and Sunday observance is genuinely widespread. Dress and behaviour on a Sunday reflect it.

The sea as work

Fishing, sponging, wrecking, boat building and, at various points, rum running and other cargoes: Bahamian prosperity has always come from the water and from other people’s laws. The sloop regattas held across the islands are serious competitions in wooden boats built to a local design.

Nearly all visitors go to New Providence and Paradise Island, which concentrates the pressure and the money in one place. Spending time and money in the Out Islands — family-run guesthouses, local restaurants, island-owned boat operators — is the most useful thing a visitor can do here.

The reef has suffered badly from bleaching and from storm damage. Do not touch or stand on coral, use reef-safe sunscreen, and choose operators who use mooring buoys rather than anchors.

Swimming pigs and shark feeding are heavily marketed and worth thinking about. The pig tours at Big Major Cay have led to animal deaths from being fed the wrong food; if you go, go with an operator that feeds appropriately and keeps numbers down. Feeding sharks alters behaviour and is regulated for a reason.

Conch is the national food and is in serious decline from overfishing — stocks have fallen sharply and a closed season has been introduced. Eat it sparingly and ask where it came from.

December to April is the dry season and the high season: warm, sunny, low humidity, and the calmest seas. It is also the most expensive period, with Christmas, New Year and the American spring break at the peak.

May and November are the shoulder months — still good weather, noticeably cheaper, fewer cruise ships in Nassau.

June to November is the wet season and the hurricane season, with the greatest risk between August and October. The Bahamas sits directly in the track and takes a serious hit every few years, so travel insurance covering weather disruption matters here more than in most places.

Junkanoo runs in the early hours of 26 December and 1 January — groups rush from around two in the morning until after dawn. It is the single best reason to be in Nassau, and accommodation books out well ahead.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost across the islands

The Bahamas is expensive. Almost everything is imported and carries a substantial duty, and inter-island flights add up quickly — a multi-island trip costs considerably more than it looks on a map.