The Exumas are a chain of 365 islands and cays running roughly north to south between Nassau and Long Island. Most are uninhabited. Great Exuma, the largest island, holds the main town of George Town and the primary airport. Little Exuma connects to Great Exuma by bridge. The Exuma Cays stretch north from Great Exuma toward Nassau, and that is where most visitors spend their time.
- Nearest airport: Exuma International Airport, George Town (GGT / MYEF)
- Climate: Tropical. Warm and dry December to April, hot and wet June to October.
Why people visit the Exumas
The most recognized attraction in the Exumas is Big Major Cay, an uninhabited island in the northern cays also known as Pig Beach. A colony of feral pigs lives on the beach and swims out to meet arriving boats. No confirmed account of how the pigs arrived exists. The leading explanations are that sailors left them as a food supply and never returned, or that they swam ashore from a nearby shipwreck. However they got there, the pigs have made the Exumas one of the most photographed destinations in the Bahamas.
The Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park protects nearly 130,000 acres of cays, reef, and open water in the northern part of the chain. Established in 1958, it was the first marine protected area in the Caribbean. No fishing is permitted inside the park boundaries. The result is some of the healthiest reef and the densest marine life in the Bahamas. Endangered Bahamian rock iguanas live on several cays inside the park. Nurse sharks gather at Compass Cay marina and can be entered in the water.
Thunderball Grotto, near Staniel Cay, is an underwater cave with an entrance hidden below the waterline. It can be entered by swimming through during low tide. The cave appeared in two James Bond films, Thunderball in 1965 and Never Say Never Again in 1983, which is where it gets its name.
The Tropic of Cancer runs through Little Exuma. Tropic of Cancer Beach, on Little Exuma, sits directly on the line. The water on either side of it is the same temperature and the same color, but the geography is exact.
What made the Exumas
The Lucayan Taíno were the first people here. After the Spanish removed them, the Exumas were resettled slowly. Lord John Rolle, a British Loyalist, received a large land grant on Great Exuma after the American Revolution and brought enslaved Africans to work it. When slavery was abolished in 1834, Rolle freed his enslaved people and gave them the use of his land communally. His name passed to them. Today, a significant portion of Great Exuma's population carries the surname Rolle, all descendants of those freed people. The Rolle Town Tombs on Great Exuma are the burial site of some of the island's earliest Loyalist settlers.
What you find
The Exumas divide naturally into three parts. Great Exuma and Little Exuma in the south hold the towns, the airport, George Town's Elizabeth Harbour, and Stocking Island across the water. The Exuma Cays in the north hold the park, the pig beach, the grottos, the private islands, and the sandbars. The water throughout the Exumas is shallow over limestone banks and runs colors from pale turquoise to deep blue within short distances. Astronaut Scott Kelly described the Exumas as the most beautiful place visible from space. That claim is his, not a verified measurement, but the water is real.
