The Cays to a Privacy Paradise

The sign along the empty beach was clear: “The iguanas on this cay are an endangered species and are protected by law. Do not touch, catch, chase or harass these creatures.” Violations, it said, would be reported “to the Bahamas Defense Force.”

Yet there was little guidance on what to do if a 3-foot-long iguana turned its attention toward us. As one was doing now.

The scaly denizen of the Exumas’ Bitter Guana Cay clawed ponderously in our path, leaving a furrowed wake in the soft white sand. Too bad iguanas can’t read.

The iguana was likely more curious than threatening, but my wife, Emily, and I were on vacation. We’d come to the Bahamas to relax, not to visit Jurassic Park Lite. And there was no way I wanted to become the subject of lurid stories with headlines blaring, “Angry Lizard Attacks Tourist....Man Arrested by Bahamas Defense Force.”

So we walked to the far side of the beach and maintained a respectful distance, flaunting our evolutionary development. Our rented 13-foot Boston Whaler bobbed offshore, afloat on water the color of an empty Coca-Cola bottle. Not a sound could be heard, save for occasional calls from distant white-tailed tropical birds or black-faced laughing gulls. We reveled in the solitude--as long as we knew where the iguana was.

We had two weeks to spend in the Bahamas last summer, and we split our time between Eleuthera’s Harbour Island and the Exumas’ Staniel Cay.

North of Eleuthera and separated from it by a two-mile-wide channel, Harbour Island is a favored vacation spot, thanks to its pink sand beach and pastel clapboard houses. In contrast, the empty, sun-drenched beaches of the Exumas’ several hundred cays (pronounced “keys”), stretching across 100 miles of glittering ocean, provide ample opportunity for quiet relaxation.

After arriving at the Nassau airport, we had several hours to wait for our Bahamasair flight to Eleuthera, so we sat and watched smartly dressed Bahamians and scruffy tourists scurry about the terminal. The Bahamasair check-in counter had only two conditions: madhouse and deserted. An hour before each flight, Bahamians stormed the counter, creating a 30-minute flurry of people, suitcases and boxes. Afterward, the counter workers looked bored and listless in the suddenly empty hall. Our flight was delayed, but then came the interesting part: a much smaller plane would pinch-hit.

Our flight from Nassau to Eleuthera’s northern airport took about 45 minutes; then we piled into a taxi and headed for the small powerboats that cross the channel to Harbour Island. The first thing we noticed about Harbour Island (pronounced “Bur-Island” by locals) was the golf carts. Everybody had one, it seemed, and we saw few automobiles.

Our guest house, the Bahama House Inn, was two blocks from the jetty, so we hiked under mercifully cloudy July skies to reach our temporary home. The 200-year-old building, renovated during the last few years by Denver expatriate John Hersh and his wife, Joni, originally housed Harbour Island’s first justice of the peace, Thomas W. Johnson.

Our spacious room was the color of raspberry sherbet, tastefully decorated in white wicker and local artwork, with a huge bathroom. In the inn’s adjacent sitting room, shelves held hundreds of paperbacks and magazines for reading on the veranda or at the beach.

Harbour Island’s main town, Dunmore, covered a dozen and a half square blocks and offered a mix of pastel cottages and churches of various denominations along its quiet streets.

Walking along Goal Lane, we passed the pink administration/police/post office building on our way to the beach. Flame trees and bougainvillea splashed orange and fuchsia blossoms against deep blue skies and monstrous white clouds. We saw few palm trees on the island, the result, locals told us, of Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

We spent most of our time on Harbour Island’s Pink Sand Beach, which really was pink. Actually, the sands were tan mixed with specks of red coral, but when the sun came out, there was no doubt how this miles-long beach got its name. Complementing the rosy sand was a reef-protected sea of dark jade.

Because we arrived in low season, beachgoers were sparse; the nearest ones were several hundred yards away. Just behind the beach were large and mostly empty homes, looking like Cape Cod houses moved to a rouge-tinted Hawaiian shore.

Our dinner choices ranged from the short-order atmosphere of Angela’s Starfish Restaurant to the elegant Harbour Lounge, across from the jetty. At Harbour Lounge we enjoyed our best meal of the trip: marinated grouper, perfectly grilled, with seasoned rice and crisp fried vegetables in a cinnamon glaze.

But wherever we went, there was always one constant: conch. Conch salad, conch fritters, grilled conch....We were afraid to look at dessert menus for fear of seeing conch ice cream. Fortunately, every restaurant had its version of another local specialty: Key lime pie. We often started the meal with an ice-cold Kalik beer or some type of rum concoction, like a fruit juice and coconut Goombay Smash or a Kahlua-flavored Bahama Mama.

The toughest part of traveling in the Bahamas was getting from island to island. Bahamasair flew into several of the largest, but only via Nassau. Mail boats also plied the waterways between island groups, but their schedules were capricious. The most expensive option, and often the only practical one, was chartering a private plane. With all three choices in mind, we bit the financial bullet in exchange for maximum island time and arranged with a pilot to fly us directly from Eleuthera to Staniel Cay for $300.

Over scrubby cays and sweeping waterscapes extending west across the teal shallows of the Great Bahama Bank and east into sapphire blue Exuma Sound, we buzzed into two-square-mile Staniel Cay, which sits roughly in the middle of the Exumas chain.

We felt a bit out of place staying at the Staniel Cay Yacht Club, as most everyone else arrived on a 40-foot powerboat or an ostentatious 100-foot yacht; but the staff welcomed us warmly, perhaps appreciating our non-yachtie status.

The yacht club offers lodging in four brightly colored waterfront bungalows and one beached houseboat, and has half a dozen piers where the more affluent seaborne traveler can dock. We had chosen the club for two specific reasons: its location, in the middle of some of the Exumas’ prettiest and most remote cays; and its rentable Boston Whalers, compact open boats that we used for exploring the cays at our leisure.

Every day except one (when the water was too choppy), we grabbed a packed lunch cooler from the yacht club and headed the Whaler into the ocean frontier before us. Our only goal was to find a beach to call our own. Once again it paid to arrive in low season; we never shared a beach with anyone else the entire week we puttered from cay to cay.

At Sampson Cay, just 15 minutes north of the yacht club, a sandbar grew to several acres at low tide, then disappeared as the tide returned, re-creating an entire cove of aquamarine water to play in. Off Black Point, the Exumas’ second-largest settlement with 300 people, one of the few coconut palm beaches in the Bahamas beckoned to us. But we contented ourselves with anchoring in crystal clear shallows offshore, where again several sandy islets--each big enough for one or two people--were revealed with the ebbing tide. Somehow these reverse oases of sand surrounded by water provided the relaxation we craved and made our toasted ham and cheese sandwiches tastier than any other lunch I could think of.

Twice we visited the iguanas at Bitter Guana Cay, a short distance south of Staniel Cay. The first time, we heard rather than saw them as they thrashed through the brush to avoid us. The second time, I knew Emily had gotten a little too close to an iguana when I saw her do an about-face 50 feet away and walk quickly past me, pointing over her shoulder. Sure enough, a gray-green iguana with rosy cheeks, a scaly wattle and bright black eyes wobbled onto the beach to see what we were doing on its turf.

This iguana--I dubbed it Fred--was a poser. When I started snapping photos of him, he tilted his head left, then right in true supermodel fashion, except supermodels don’t have flies buzzing about their heads. He was curious and surprisingly unafraid; no matter where we walked, Fred followed. I wondered if there was a hidden camera somewhere obtaining evidence against us for the Bahamas Defense Force.

On the one day we stayed on Staniel Cay, we rented a golf cart to explore the island. Within our first few minutes we nearly had a 5-mph collision with the only other golf cart we saw.

Like the other cays we had seen, Staniel was dry and brushy, resembling Southern California’s chaparral-covered foothills. The population numbers about 80, and only a handful of houses--most of them appearing recently built and quite vacant--sprang up along the shore. Our cart was electric, noiseless, and the silence was unnerving. It was good to hear the occasional clicking of a wary insect or the quick buzz of a passing bee.

The main village covered about two blocks, and its few stores opened on owner’s whim. Across from the peach-painted Baptist church stood a blue-green house that appeared to be the social center of Staniel Cay, as there were always a half-dozen or more people sitting out front. We found out later it was the home of 81-year-old “Skipper of the Century” Rolly Gray, who had won more than half the annual Bahama Regattas since 1954. In a nation of born sailors, one of the best grew up right here.

Around a watery corner from the yacht club, though more than a mile away by rutted inland paths, stood Club Thunderball. Named for the cavernous Thunderball Grotto a few hundred yards away (itself named after the James Bond movie filmed here in 1964), the club was popular with tourists and locals alike for its Friday night barbecue. When we dropped by, a junkanoo band was keeping the joint jumping with its distinctive whistles and cowbells leading an infectious beat from half a dozen goatskin-covered drums. Feeling festive, I hoisted several Kalik beers in tribute to the Thunderball’s hard-working band.

We left the Bahamas a few days later. Tanned and relaxed, we again waited in Nassau’s teeming airport terminal, unconsciously distancing ourselves from the blotchy pink, duty-free-bag-clutching hordes who had never ventured beyond Nassau’s mega-resorts. We had found something much more real and, we think, much, much better.

Guidebook: Balmy Bahamas

* Getting there: From Los Angeles, American flies to Miami with a connection on US Airways Express to Governor’s Harbour on Eleuthera. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $764.

Between Nassau and North Eleuthera Airport (the airport closest to Harbour Island), Bahamasair offers twice-daily flights costing about $50 per person each way. A taxi and motorboat to Harbour Island will cost a further $15 per person. Bahamasair also flies daily between Nassau and George Town on Great Exuma Island for about $60 per person each way.

Flying from George Town to Staniel Cay will set you back about $300 per flight. Direct air charters between Nassau and North Eleuthera, North Eleuthera and Staniel Cay, or Staniel Cay and Nassau cost about $300 to $350 per planeload, depending on the pilot and aircraft.

* Where to stay: On Harbour Island, Bahama House Inn, P.O. Box 27060, Harbour Island, Bahamas, can be reached at (242) 333-2201, fax (242) 333-2850, https://www.bahamahouseinn.com. Rates for bed and breakfast (double) are $95 to $120 per night from May to August; $125 to $145 per night between November and April.

Staniel Cay Yacht Club, 2233 South Andrews Ave., Fort Lauderdale, FL 33316; tel. (242) 355-2024, fax (242) 355-2044, Internet https://www.stanielcay.com. Cottage rates (double, no meals) are $95 per night between June and mid-December and $125 per night the rest of the year.

There are only a few other places to stay on Staniel Cay, such as Happy People Marina, Staniel Cay, Exuma, tel. (242) 355-2008, or one of the few guest houses found by searching the Web.

The Bahamas Out Islands Promotion Board specializes in helping tourists discover the islands beyond Nassau’s bustling New Providence Island. Tel. (800) 688-4752 or https://www.bahama-out-islands.com.

* Where to eat: On Harbour Island, at Harbour Lounge on Bay Street, local tel. 333-2031, entrees cost $16 to $25.

A homier atmosphere is found at Angela’s Starfish Restaurant, Dunmore and Grant streets, Harbour Island, tel. 333-2253. Dinners are generally less than $10.

Some of the tastiest cheeseburgers in the Bahamas are at Ma-Ruby’s Restaurant, Tingum Village, Harbour Island, tel. 333-2161. Huge cheeseburgers are $6 and a platter of fries is $3.

On Staniel Cay, Staniel Cay Yacht Club, tel. 355-2024, serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. Dinner is $18 to $22.

* For more information: Bahamas Tourism Center, 3450 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 1204, Los Angeles, CA 90010; tel. (800) 439-6993, fax (213) 383-3966, https://www.bahamas.com.