Exuma Cays

I was on a small prop plane from Nassau to George Town, Exuma, when the pilot dropped altitude somewhere over the chain and said over the intercom: “Take a look.” Below us, the Great Bahama Bank was laid out like something someone had spilled — a wash of blue and green water over white sand, interrupted by limestone islands barely above sea level, their edges so sharp and thin they looked like they might dissolve. The channels between them ran every conceivable variation of turquoise: pale aquamarine in the shallows, then bright teal, then a deeper blue-green that had no name I could reach for. I pressed my face against the window and forgot to feel embarrassed about it.

On the water, the scale reasserts itself. The chain runs ninety miles from Sail Rocks in the north to Great Exuma in the south, and the protected stretch in the middle — the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park, established in 1958 — contains some of the most pristine coral and marine life in the Atlantic. The park is accessible only by boat and has no shops, no hotels, no moorings except a limited number of designated buoys. I spent two days anchored off Warderick Wells, the park headquarters, watching nurse sharks drift beneath the hull with their characteristic lack of urgency. The water there was so clear I could see their shadows on the sand at eight metres depth. At night the bioluminescence in the anchorage made every movement through the water trail a dim blue-green light, and I went swimming at midnight specifically to experience it and cannot adequately describe what it felt like.

Compass Cay, in the middle of the chain, has a marina where the owner, years ago, began feeding the resident nurse sharks, and now the sharks return reliably and mill around the dock in a slow congregation. You can get in the water with them — they are large and prehistoric and entirely indifferent to humans in the way of animals that have decided you are not food. I got in. Stocking Island, just offshore from George Town, has Chat ‘N’ Chill, a beach bar that is famously the end of long sailing passages and the beginning of many delayed departures. The cracked conch there — battered thin, fried fast, sweet from freshness — is the meal the Exumas hands you as a benchmark. Everything else you eat for the rest of the trip will be measured against it.

When to go: January through April is the sailing season and the peak time for water clarity. The Exumas are doable by small plane and charter boat year-round, but the best snorkeling and diving visibility runs December through May. Late spring (April–May) offers warm water and lighter crowds before the summer charter season begins.