Four islands out of the thirty that are inhabited, strung together the way Bahamians actually travel — which means back through Nassau every time, because almost nothing connects to anything except the capital. Nassau first rather than as a transit lounge, then Andros and its blue holes, Eleuthera end to end with Harbour Island on the side, and the Exumas last. It leaves out Abaco and Grand Bahama, which are still rebuilding, and the resort strips, which do not need a route.
Nassau
Most people cross Nassau in a taxi between an airport and a beach. Give it a day on foot instead. Vendue House on Bay Street was the auction house where enslaved people were sold; since 1992 it has been the Pompey Museum of Slavery and Emancipation, named for the man who in 1830 led about forty of Lord Rolle's people on the Exuma estates in refusing to be shipped to Cat Island and sailed to Nassau to petition the governor. Up the hill behind it, the Queen's Staircase is sixty-six steps cut down through solid limestone in the late eighteenth century, and Fort Fincastle sits at the top of them. The National Art Gallery in Villa Doyle is the other hour worth spending. Check the cruise port schedule before you plan the morning: on a four-ship day Bay Street holds tens of thousands of people who will all be gone by six.
Potter's Cay and the west end
Under the Paradise Island bridge, Potter's Cay is where the mail boats load for the Family Islands and where the conch stalls are. Watch a boat being loaded for somewhere with three hundred residents and you have understood more about this country than any beach will tell you. Then the Retreat Garden on Village Road, eleven acres of palm collection and the headquarters of the Bahamas National Trust, which is the private charity that runs the entire national park system. Afterwards drive west to Clifton Heritage National Park, where Lucayan tool sites, a Loyalist plantation and the village its freed people built afterwards sit on the same headland above the drop-off.
Over to Andros
Fifteen minutes in the air and you are on the largest island in the country, which almost no visitor sees. Andros covers more ground than the three next-largest islands combined and holds perhaps eight thousand people, most of them strung along one road on the east coast. Land at Andros Town, then Fresh Creek: the Androsia workshop has been printing and dyeing batik cotton here since 1973 and will show you the vats. Offshore, the barrier reef runs the length of the east coast, over 160 kilometres — usually ranked the third largest fringing barrier reef anywhere, after Australia's and Belize's — and a few hundred metres beyond it the seabed falls off into the Tongue of the Ocean, more than two kilometres deep. The US Navy has run an underwater test range in that trench since 1963 and the base is on your left as you drive south.
The blue holes
Andros has the densest concentration of blue holes on earth — flooded cave systems in the limestone, inland and offshore, connected to each other and to the sea. Blue Holes National Park was declared in 2002 over a block of pine forest and the caves under it; Captain Bill's is the one with a road to it, a platform and a rope swing, about eight kilometres of rough track in off the Queen's Highway. The water is fresh at the top and salt below, and the layer between the two is visible. Divers go instead to the ocean holes on the reef, which need a guide and are not a beginner's dive. Afterwards, the flats: Andros is the reason bonefishing exists as an industry and the guides here are booked months out.
North to Red Bays
Sixty kilometres up the east coast to Nicholl's Town and then thirty west across the island on the only road that crosses it. Red Bays was settled in the 1820s by Black Seminoles who left Florida by boat rather than be returned to slavery, and it stayed effectively cut off until a road reached it in the 1960s. The village still makes the straw baskets and the sponge trade still matters here. Coming back, look at the map and notice what is missing: the road down the east coast stops at Behring Point, because the island is cut through by tidal channels called the bights and the southern half is reached by boat or by air. The West Side, on the far shore, is a national park of something over a million acres with no road into it at all.
Nassau, then the ferry to Harbour Island
The first flight back to Nassau, then across to North Eleuthera and a water taxi over from Three Island Dock. Two ways to do the second leg, and the choice is not cosmetic: the Bahamas Ferries fast boat from Potter's Cay takes about two hours and is the better journey, but it sails early in the morning, so it only works if the Andros flight lands before it goes — check both timetables together, and assume you may need the twenty-minute Nassau–North Eleuthera flight instead. Harbour Island is five kilometres long and has no reason to let a car onto it; everyone drives golf carts and everyone gives way. Dunmore Town was laid out by Loyalists in the 1790s and is still a grid of clapboard houses with the paint kept up. The beach on the Atlantic side is pink because the sand is mixed with the crushed shells of a single-celled organism that lives on the reef, and it is genuinely pink, not a marketing claim, though it reads best in low light.
The north end of Eleuthera
Back across on the water taxi and hire a car. Preacher's Cave, on the north shore, is where a company of English Puritans from Bermuda sheltered in 1648 after wrecking on the reef offshore. They had drafted their Articles the year before in London — a written constitution for a colony that did not yet exist, with liberty of conscience in it — and this is where the first permanent English settlement in the Bahamas began, badly and hungry. Further south the island narrows to a rock wall with a road on top: the Glass Window Bridge, deep blue Atlantic on one side and pale green bank on the other, a few metres apart. Storm waves have shoved the span bodily out of line more than once. The Queen's Bath, the tidal pools in the ironshore just north of it, has killed people who went in on the wrong swell — look at the sea for ten minutes before deciding.
Governor's Harbour
South down the Queen's Highway to the island's administrative centre, a half-moon of harbour with a hill of colonial houses above it. The Haynes Library, built in 1897 and still lending, is the building people photograph. Outside town the Leon Levy Native Plant Preserve, opened in 2011 and run by the Bahamas National Trust, is the best place in the country to have Bahamian bush medicine explained by someone who uses it. French Leave beach is a short walk over the ridge and usually empty. Friday night is the fish fry at Anchor Bay, which is a genuine local institution rather than a scheduled event for visitors.
South to Lighthouse Point
The Ocean Hole at Rock Sound is an inland blue hole in the middle of the settlement, connected to the sea somewhere underneath, with the tide moving in it and reef fish that come and go. From there it is another hour to the southern tip and the last three kilometres are a limestone track that will punish a low car — take the high-clearance option or take a local driver, and do not attempt it after heavy rain. Lighthouse Point is a headland of pink cliffs with the reef running out from the foot of it. Disney bought the site in 2019 after years of argument about who the point belonged to and opened a cruise destination on part of it in June 2024, so the headland is now split between a ship terminal and the ground left outside it; what you can reach on foot depends on whether a ship is alongside. Ask in Rock Sound before you drive down. Evening flight from Rock Sound or Governor's Harbour back to Nassau.
George Town, Exuma
Fifty minutes south-east by air. George Town sits on Elizabeth Harbour with Stocking Island closing it off, and the island opposite is ten minutes away by water taxi — a sand spit with a beach on the ocean side, a hole through the dunes called the Hole in the Wall, and Chat 'N' Chill, which is where the cruising fleet that winters here comes ashore. In the town itself, the straw market under the tree by Lake Victoria is the one that still makes what it sells. Exuma's other layer is the land: Rolleville is thirty kilometres north up the island and Rolle Town eight south-east, both named for the absentee lord whose Exuma estates Pompey came from, and the commonage land around them is held collectively by his freed people's descendants and cannot be sold. Whether Rolle ever actually deeded it is argued about by historians. The commonage exists either way.
Up the chain by boat
A long day north through the cays in a fast boat — Staniel Cay is a hundred kilometres up the chain from George Town, which is about two hours each way at speed and the reason this is a dawn start rather than a morning out. Worth doing with an operator who runs it as a route rather than a checklist. Thunderball Grotto at Staniel Cay is a collapsed limestone dome you swim into at slack water, shot for the Bond film in 1965 and best at low tide. Nurse sharks come to the dock at Compass Cay and are handled far more than any wild animal should be. The pigs at Big Major Cay were put there by people and are fed by people; several died in early 2017, the causes were argued about, the operators are now licensed and there are rules about what may be given to them — follow them. Be clear about where you are not: the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park begins at Conch Cut, a few miles further north, and reaching its headquarters at Warderick Wells means chartering or staying up at Staniel rather than turning round at lunchtime.
Little Exuma
Over the bridge at Ferry for the last day. The Tropic of Cancer beach at Pelican Point is a mile of empty sand on a road with nothing on it. At Williams Town a stone beacon on the ridge marked the salt ponds for the ships that came for them, which was the island's entire economy before it collapsed; the ponds are still visible as pale rectangles in the scrub. The Rolle Town tombs on the way back are three eighteenth-century graves in a field above the settlement, the largest of them a young woman buried with her infant child, the stone dated 1792. Then either fly out of George Town, which has a handful of direct international departures, or take the afternoon flight back to Nassau — check which before you book anything, because the direct flights are seasonal and thin.
Good to know
Most European, North American, British and Commonwealth passports enter without a visa for stays of up to 90 days, and the immigration and customs declaration is filed electronically before you travel rather than on a paper card handed out on the plane — do it online, keep the confirmation on your phone, and note that it is per person including children. Departure tax is already inside your airfare. The currency is the Bahamian dollar, pegged one to one with the US dollar and used interchangeably with it: you will pay in one and get change in the other, sometimes in the same transaction. Draw a small amount and spend it, because the Bahamian dollar is not convertible outside the country and no bank at home will take it. VAT is 10 per cent, most hotels add a levy or service charge on top, and prices on the Family Islands are higher than Nassau because everything on the shelf arrived by mail boat. Cards work in hotels, restaurants and supermarkets; boat charters, taxis, straw markets, roadside conch and the man at the blue hole are cash. Driving is on the left, which surprises people, and the surprise is compounded by the fact that most cars are left-hand-drive imports from Florida — so you sit on the wrong side of a car on the wrong side of the road and every overtake needs a passenger to look for you. Roads on Eleuthera and Andros are single carriageway, unlit and shared with dogs and land crabs after rain; do not drive them at night. Nothing on this route connects directly to anything else — Andros to Eleuthera, or Eleuthera to Exuma, means going back through Nassau, and building the itinerary any other way will cost you money rather than time. The mail boats from Potter's Cay are the cheap alternative to the domestic flights, cost a fraction as much, take between eight and eighteen hours depending on the island, and run to a schedule that moves; they are a genuine experience and a bad idea if you have a connection to make. Bahamas Ferries runs the fast boat to North Eleuthera daily in season and less often out of it, so confirm the sailing rather than assuming it. The Bahamas is in the Atlantic and not the Caribbean, and its storm exposure reflects that: hurricane season runs 1 June to 30 November with the risk concentrated from August to early October, and this is a country that has been hit at the top of the scale — Dorian stalled over Abaco and Grand Bahama from 1 to 3 September 2019 as a Category 5 and killed at least 74 people with hundreds never accounted for. That is the main reason this route does not go to either island; both are functioning and both would rather have visitors than sympathy, but they are still rebuilding and deserve a route written for what is actually open. Nassau tap water is desalinated and treated and residents drink it; on the Family Islands most supply is rainwater cistern or small reverse-osmosis plant, quality varies house to house, and bottled water is what everyone buys. There is no malaria and no yellow fever requirement unless you arrive from a country with transmission. Sandflies on the beaches at dawn and dusk are the real biting problem and ordinary repellent barely touches them — the local answer is baby oil, and it works. In the water, know the fishing rules before you get in: fishing from your own or a chartered foreign boat needs a permit and the bag limits are counted per vessel, spearguns are illegal for everyone and Hawaiian slings are restricted, Nassau grouper is closed across the winter spawning months from December to the end of February, and the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park is a total no-take zone where even a shell picked off the sand is an offence. Queen conch is the national dish and also a CITES Appendix II species under serious pressure; eat it, and check your own country's customs rules before buying a shell to take home. On safety, Nassau's firearms homicide rate is high and it is concentrated almost entirely in specific Over-the-Hill neighbourhoods south of the ridge, between people who know each other. Bay Street, Cable Beach, Paradise Island and the residential east are ordinary and walkable by day. The line between the two is a short walk and locals do not cross it at night, which is the whole of the advice. The Family Islands have almost no crime of any kind and doors are frequently not locked.
Shorter or longer?
Four or five more days. Bahamasair flies Nassau to both. Dean's Blue Hole at Clarence Town drops to 202 metres a few strides off the beach and is where the freedivers hold their competition; Cat Island has Mount Alvernia, the highest ground in the country at 63 metres, with a stone hermitage on top built by hand by a priest who died there in 1956. Both islands are quieter than anywhere on the main route and neither has a resort worth the name.
Two days in Nassau, then the ferry to Harbour Island and Eleuthera end to end. Keeps the two best days of history on the route and removes every domestic flight, which is most of the cost and all of the schedule risk. Cuts Andros and the Exumas entirely.