Helicopter from Miami to Andros

This is what Andros is known for and it is not a close contest. The island is called the bonefish capital in the corridor's own language, and the reason is the water behind it: shallow flats running for miles, cut by channels and bights that split the island into pieces. That geography is also why the arrival point matters more here than the flight does. Guides work out of small boats through cuts that have no road beside them, so a party that arrives at the wrong end spends the morning travelling rather than fishing. Parties ask for flats fishing for exactly that reason: it starts where the water is. Say how many are fishing when you send the date, because guides and skiffs are counted per head rather than per party. Tides decide the useful hours and move through the month, so the return leg is planned against them.

Andros is limestone the whole way down, riddled with flooded caves, and it carries the highest concentration of blue holes anywhere in the world. More than a hundred and eighty are counted across the island, inland in the pine forest as well as offshore in the sea. Not all of them ask for a tank. Many are shallow enough to snorkel or simply look into from the surface, which is the practical difference between this and a day built around a dive boat: a party with children in it is looking at the same water as the divers. From the air the inland ones are the thing people point at, dark circles dropped into flat green forest with no road going anywhere near them. Say whether anyone is diving rather than snorkelling when you send the date, and add water toys if the afternoon is meant to stay on the water.

A barrier reef runs the length of the eastern side of the island, one of the largest in the world, and it is the second thing Andros is known for. Divers came here before anyone else did. It sits close enough to shore that the reef and the flats are the same morning rather than two trips, and from the air it is the whole picture at once: pale flats, blue channels, the reef line and then the drop. That view is the argument for crossing low and slow, and it is why a scenic flight down this coast is sometimes the whole booking. Boats and guides run from the settlements along the east coast, so the arrival point and the dive plan are decided together. A dock pickup covers the case where a boat is meeting you instead.

Straight off that reef the sea floor falls away into the Tongue of the Ocean, more than six thousand feet of water alongside an island you can wade off. That edge is the site people mean when they say the wall here is a different order of thing from a reef dive. The same edge is why the deep water fishing runs from this island as well as the flats. That is a full day on a boat rather than an afternoon, so it sets the return leg rather than fitting around it. The flats and the deep water are opposite kinds of day, so a party that wants both is really asking for two rather than one long one. It is easier to say which at the enquiry stage than to move it afterwards: it changes the end of the island you arrive at, not just the itinerary.

Mangrove wetlands cover huge stretches of the island, cut through by mazes of channels that open onto the flats and onto hidden beaches. Inland it is pine forest, with marked trails through the national park land in the north and centre of the island. This is the part that earns Andros its name as the ecotourism island of the Bahamas. The Andros iguana lives here and so do well over a hundred species of bird, and all of it is walked, paddled or run by small boat rather than driven. From above, the mangrove maze is the thing people photograph, so on this aircraft it tends to set the approach rather than the afternoon. A beach picnic on one of the beaches those channels open onto is nothing at all from the water and a long way from any airfield.

South of the bights the island empties out further still. Mangrove Cay and South Andros are separate arrival areas with their own water, and the southern flats are the ones anglers name first. South Andros in the south sits about 198 statute miles from Miami against 143 for the north of the island, so this is where the fifty five mile spread stops being a number on a page. Between the two ends there is water and no road, which on the ground means a boat, a ferry and most of a morning. The west side faces away from everything: quiet flats, open water and remote coastal scenery, the part of Andros anglers name when they want a day with nobody else on the water. There is no road network out here, so the arrival is the whole logistics problem.

The settlements sit strung along the east coast, small and far apart, and the island's own event is the crab festival every June: music, dancing and the blue crabs Andros is known for across the Bahamas. It is the one week of the year when the quietest large island in the country is not quiet, which matters for a date rather than for an itinerary. The settled stretch of weather runs roughly December to April, so the festival and the best flying conditions are not the same season. Either way it is a day rather than an afternoon and it lands in the middle of the island, so it is worth naming when the date is chosen rather than after the arrival point is fixed. A car at the settlement or ground transport between two of them is booked with the flight.

Helicopter rides Miami Andros also work as the first leg rather than the whole day. Andros sits on the inside of the chain, and the same aircraft carries on east and north to Nassau, Staniel Cay and the Exumas, Harbour Island or on south to Exuma. That is what turns one island into island hopping or a wider Bahamas day. Overnight changes the baggage rather than the route, and freight moves on its own aircraft through island logistics. The full island guide sits on the Andros destination page, a single day out and back is the Andros getaway day trip, and the rest of the chain is on the Bahamas destinations page.