The Exumas, Bahamas: Swimming Pigs, Thunderball Grotto & the Caribbean's Clearest Water

The Exumas are where the Bahamas runs clearest. The archipelago is a chain of 365 cays, one for each day of the year, the Bahamians like to say, stretching southeast from Nassau for more than a hundred miles, a string of low sandy islands set in water so transparent it reads as pale green over the shallows and royal blue over the drop-offs. Great Exuma and Little Exuma are the inhabited anchors at the south end; the Exuma Cays, mostly empty, are the prize in between. The Bahamas is an independent nation and a Commonwealth realm, and the Exumas are the quietest and most photogenic corner of it.

The Swimming Pigs

The most famous residents of the Exumas don't have a passport. On Big Major Cay, an uninhabited speck near Staniel Cay, a herd of feral pigs has lived for decades, and they have made the island into a pilgrimage. The pigs swim out to approaching boats, how they got there is a matter of competing legends none of them quite confirmed, and the photograph of a pink pig in turquoise water has become one of the defining images of the modern Caribbean. The official tourism authority manages the story and the guidance: look, feed only what's appropriate, and don't touch.

Thunderball Grotto

A short swim from the pigs, near Staniel Cay, is Thunderball Grotto, a hollow rock island with an underwater entrance that opens into a cathedral of light, the interior lit by shafts through the ceiling and alive with tropical fish. It earned its name from the James Bond film Thunderball, shot here in 1965, and it returned to screens in Never Say Never Again (1983). Snorkeling the grotto at slack tide, when the current is still, is one of the great underwater experiences of the Bahamas. The surrounding Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park, established in 1958, was the first land-and-sea protected area of its kind in the world and remains a no-take marine reserve across 176 square miles.

Getting There

Fly into Exuma International Airport (GGT) on Great Exuma, with direct flights from Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Atlanta, and Nassau on American, Bahamasair, and JetBlue. The cays are explored by charter boat from Georgetown or Staniel Cay.

Reference Links:

- The Bahamas (official tourism): bahamas.com

- The Exumas (official): bahamas.com/islands/the-exumas

- Swimming Pigs (official): bahamas.com/experiences/official-home-swimming-pigs

- Exuma (Wikipedia): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exuma