Nassau & the Best of the Bahamas

By Paris Permenter & John Bigley

This Hunter Travel Guide stimulates readers' senses immediately with its lively description.... Fully indexed, the guide delivers an insider's view to what the authors call 'the most hospitable islands in the world.' Not a typical guide, the book is as mu

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hunter Publishing
• Release date: Jun 15, 2007
• ISBN: 9781588431981

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Bahamas

Geography

The Bahamas lie scattered across more than 100,000 square miles of the western Atlantic Ocean. From a point roughly 70 miles east of West Palm Beach, Florida, the great archipelago extends some 750 miles southward toward the northern Caribbean, almost to the island of Hispaniola.

The islands that make up the Bahamas are generally low and flat. The highest point in the entire archipelago, on Cat Island, is just 206 feet above sea level. Except on Andros, the largest island of the chain, there are no rivers or streams. Apart from New Providence - where fresh water is shipped in daily from Andros, pumped from wells dug into the underlying rocks - fresh water is abundant.

The Bahamas from space

Because the islands are no more than the exposed top portions of the Great Bahama Bank, an extension of the North American continental shelf, there are only three deep-water channels suitable for the passage of large vessels.

Of the 700 islands and 2,000 islets, called cays (keys), making up the archipelago, only about 30 are inhabited. Some are little more than boulders that appear and disappear with the rise and fall of the ocean. Some are long and thin and stretch for many miles. Still others are home to thousands of busy people. The vast majority of the islands, however, are deserted, with pristine beaches and tropical forests that are untouched by humans.

With a total combined land mass of less than 5,400 square miles, the islands of the Bahamas constitute one of the smallest countries in the world.

Tourism has brought prosperity to the Bahamas. But it hasn't spoiled the great natural beauty of the islands. In the early days, as in the coastal boom towns of Florida and California, little attention was given to the damage unrestricted exploitation was inflicting on Nassau and New Providence. Today, there's a new feeling in the islands. A feeling that the unique beauty of the archipelago must be preserved. Conservation is the new watchword of the Bahamas.

Nassau

The largest and best known city in the Bahamas is Nassau. Located on the island of New Providence, it boasts a population of more than 175,000 people. In times gone by, Nassau was an international playground for the rich. Today, the first city of the Bahamas attracts not only the affluent of the world, but vacationers of every class and culture, especially from America. The city has become a tax haven - Nassau has more than 400 banks - and is a popular location for international business conferences and meetings.

Nassau is also a microcosm of the nation's history. Visitors can explore its narrow streets, the old British forts, climb the Queen's Staircase and wander through outlying villages dating back to the days of slavery and beyond.

Throughout the Christmas and New Year's holidays, at the height of the Bahamian tourist season, Junkanoo - a spirited, Mardi Gras-style celebration born of slavery - explodes across the islands, but nowhere is it quite as exciting as in Nassau.

Paradise Island

Paradise Island Bridge

Paradise Island, a long, narrow barrier island connected to Nassau by a toll bridge, is as different from Nassau as Key West is from Miami. While Paradise Island is a world of hotels, restaurants and exciting nightlife, it's also a world still quite unspoiled where you can enjoy the sea and beaches that lie close to the bustling streets of the city.

Freeport

Freeport, on Grand Bahama Island, is the second largest city in the islands. With a steadily growing population, now more than 50,000, Freeport, which adjoins the Lucaya Beach area, is a more modern city than Nassau. The carefully planned, landscaped streets are a product of the sixties, and of the dreams of American entrepreneur and financier, Wallace Groves.

Grand Bahama

Grand Bahama, through the efforts of ded–icated individuals and institutions such as the Rand Memorial Nature Center and the Lucayan National Park, has become something of an environmental headquarters for the islands. With its miles of sandy beaches, excellent shopping, two casinos, a dozen or so large hotels, a waterfront district and many restaurants, Grand Bahama is quickly becoming a major vacation destination.

The Out Islands

There's another world beyond those two major tourist destinations: the Out Islands of Abaco, Andros, the Berry Islands, Bimini, Cat Island, Crooked Island, Eleuthera, the Exumas, Harbour Island, Long Island, and so on. The Out Islands have long been a popular destination for sailors, sport fishermen and divers. Today, due to some aggressive marketing and increased accessibility, they are fast becoming popular with other active travelers.

Far away from the bustling streets and tourist attractions of Nassau and Freeport, the rest of the Bahamian population, some 40,000 people, pursue their everyday lives. They live in sparsely settled little towns and villages from one end of the island chain to the other. Most Out Island residents have never left their island.

The little towns and villages are an odd mixture of the old and the new. Here and there across the Out Islands you'll find impressive colonial manor houses right alongside half-finished concrete structures that will one day, as money permits, become the homes of fishermen and farmers.

In the many villages of the outer islands to the southeast, the traditional pattern of farming and fishing prevails. Fruits and vegetables are grown throughout the Out Islands, along with pigs, sheep, goats and turkeys, while crayfish (Bahamian lobster), lumber, and pulpwood are exported, chiefly to the United States.

Thick vegetation, mostly shrubs and bushes, covers most of the Out Islands. Each is a tiny land of dunes and rocks, sea grass, spider lilies, seagrape, mangrove, casuarina and palm. Each is a land of endless shores, tiny bays and rocky inlets, where the colorful families of the ocean live, play and die in the crystal-clear waters of the reefs.

Marsh Harbour, on Abaco Island, is the third-largest city in the islands. This dusty little town is somewhat reminiscent of an American frontier cattle town of the 1880s. In contrast, the neat little painted villages of Hope Town, on Elbow Cay, and New Plymouth, on Green Turtle Cay, might well have been lifted up and flown in straight from New England.

If it's seclusion you're after, you'll find it in the Out Islands. The flat terrain and the long dusty roads, often devoid of travelers and always in various stages of disrepair, lend themselves well to walking or bicycling. Anglers no longer will need to tell tales of the one that got away. The bonefish here fight each other to take the hook and big game fish aren't as wary as they are off the coast of Florida. Shipwrecks, coral reefs, and mysterious blue holes dot the vast stretches of empty flats and shallow reefs. There are beaches where the sand is the color of pink champagne and there's not an empty soda can to be seen anywhere; where you can wade in the shallow waters, lie in the sun, or cast a line into the gently rolling surf. You might hook a chunky snapper and bake it over a small fire as the sun goes down. Get lucky and you could be eating fresh lobster instead of snapper.

The people of the Out Islands are friendly. They are real people, people without pretensions, their roots anchored firmly in the past. They say God bless you rather than good-bye, and think nothing of letting a stranger into their home to use the bathroom, or for a drink of water. They are a jolly people who look forward only to the next day, and are grateful for it.

Perhaps you'll meet the tourist guide who lives alone with her small son and drives an aging Chevrolet that rarely starts. It doesn't phase her a bit. She carries on with life, never complaining, knowing that, one way or another, she'll get there in the end; and she always does.

Maybe you'll meet the taxi driver whose small, three-bedroom home shelters not only him and his wife, but five grown-up children and six of his grandchildren as well. Far from being harassed by the situation, he'll tell you how happy he is that they are all around for him to enjoy.

These aren't isolated cases. Of course, you'll find the occasional bum lounging on the beach, and there are certainly some strange characters wandering the streets of Nassau. There's a certain amount of petty crime on the islands and everyone wants more money. But on the whole, there's an overwhelming air of tranquility, a don't worry; be happy attitude that pervades the islands, and it's infectious. Visitors returning home often find the easygoing Bahamian ways, the shrug of the shoulders, and an almost overpowering desire to put everything off until tomorrow, has returned with them.

Only a few of the Out Islands offer any sort of tourist accommodations. Some are small hotels where the air-conditioning is nothing more than the soft trade winds blowing in through the window, and the only telephone is a lonely pay phone somewhere in the vicinity of the hotel office. There are also rental cottages, villas, luxurious hotels, private islands, and even resorts.

History

Early Settlement

Before the Europeans arrived, the Bahamas were inhabited mostly by Lucayan Indians. Christopher Columbus, on his way to the New World, made landfall on San Salvador - so it's generally accepted - in 1492.

The islands became known as Bahama, from the Spanish baja mar, or shallow sea.

Almost immediately, Europeans began enslaving the Lucayans. By the turn of the 16th century, they had almost been wiped out and a new source of cheap labor was needed. As early as 1503, the Portuguese were enslaving Africans and for several years they controlled the burgeoning industry. By 1520, however, white slave traders of assorted nationalities were going directly to the source.

In 1649, Captain William Sayle and a band of Englishmen arrived in the islands from Bermuda. They came with slaves of their own, seeking religious freedom. They called themselves the Eleutherian Adventurers, hence the island of Eleuthera. The