The Exuma Cays

Staniel Cay & the swimming pigs

Big Major Cay

The famous ones. A colony of feral pigs that swims out to meet arriving boats.

Big Major Cay's pigs have become the image the whole archipelago is sold on, and they are genuinely worth the trip — but go early. Charters out of Staniel Cay reach the beach before the day boats from Nassau, which is the difference between a quiet half hour and a queue. Most operators cap at twelve guests; the smaller boats run five.

Thunderball Grotto

Staniel Cay

A collapsed limestone cave, lit from above, that appeared in two Bond films.

Named for the 1965 film shot inside it, the grotto is entered by swimming under a rock ledge at slack tide — the light comes through holes in the roof and turns the whole chamber blue. Time it wrong and the current through the entrance is genuinely dangerous, which is the argument for a captain who knows the tide table rather than a rental skiff.

Compass Cay nurse sharks

Compass Cay

Standing in waist-deep water among a dozen habituated nurse sharks.

Nurse sharks are bottom feeders with no interest in people, and the ones at Compass Cay marina have been gathering at the dock for decades. It is the single most photographed thing in the Exumas after the pigs, and the least understood — they are wild animals, and the marina asks that you not touch the gills or tail.

The Bahamian rock iguanas

Bitter Guana Cay

An endangered endemic species found on a handful of cays and nowhere else.

Cyclura cychlura figginsi survives on a few Exuma cays in numbers measured in the low thousands. Bitter Guana and Allen's Cay are the usual stops. Feeding is increasingly discouraged — the grapes tourists bring cause real health problems — so the better operators now bring native leaves or nothing at all.

The disappearing sandbars

Pipe Creek

Miles of white sand that exist for four hours a day and then are gone.

At low tide the banks between the cays drain and leave sandbars standing in open water, ankle deep, with nothing on the horizon. There is no fixed location to give you — the good ones move, and knowing which bar will surface on which tide is the actual expertise you're chartering.

Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park

Warderick Wells

176 square miles of no-take marine reserve — the first of its kind anywhere.

Established in 1958 and made fully no-take in 1986, the park is why the Exumas still have grouper and conch worth seeing. Warderick Wells has the headquarters, a sperm whale skeleton on the beach, and a mooring field with no shore power, no shops, and no phone signal. Bring what you need.