Helicopter from Miami to Exuma

This is what most parties book the day around, and it is worth saying plainly: the pigs are wild, they live on an uninhabited cay, and they swim out to meet a boat because people have been feeding them for decades. Big Major Cay is a few minutes by boat from Staniel Cay. That short run is the reason the middle of the chain is where a day here belongs. From the southern end it is an hour on the water before anything starts.

A hollow limestone cay with the roof open above it, so the light drops through in shafts and the fish hang in it. You swim in through a gap that is only comfortable when the current has stopped running. It sits just off Staniel Cay, in the same short stretch of water as the pigs and the sharks, so the three of them are one afternoon rather than three separate outings. The tide decides the hour, and a charter is the one kind of flight that can be pointed at it.

Nurse sharks gather at the marina dock at Compass Cay and people get into the water with them. They are the calm half of the Bahamian shark reputation and the version that works with children along. Compass Cay lies north of Staniel Cay, on the same line as the grotto and the pigs, so one boat runs the three of them as a loop. Say how many of your party are getting in when you send the date, and the boat is held with the flight.

Staniel Cay is the hub of the middle chain: a small settlement, a marina and a handful of golf carts. Nearly every itinerary in the Exumas begins or ends here, whatever brought the party in. For a helicopter party it is simply where the boats and the carts are. A golf cart on the dock and a boat for the afternoon are both arranged with the flight rather than found after you land, and a table ashore is a fly and dine day.

Bahamian rock iguanas live on a handful of cays and nowhere else on earth. The beach in the middle of the chain is the one most parties see, and Allen's Cay at the northern end of the chain is the other. Both are beaches you arrive at by water rather than places you book into. They fit a day that is already running the pigs and the grotto, which is the argument for treating the middle of the chain as one afternoon instead of a list of separate stops.

A twin engine wreck lies in shallow water off Norman's Cay, wings still on, close enough to the surface that snorkellers and divers are looking at the same thing from different depths. It is the most photographed wreck in the chain. Norman's Cay sits at the northern end, an hour by boat above Staniel Cay and well worth its own morning. A scenic run down the cays on the way in is the cheapest way to see the whole line of them at once.

Pipe Creek is the maze of small cays and channels between Staniel Cay and Compass Cay. At low water the bank around it dries into open sand in the middle of the sea, with nothing on it and nothing around it. That is where a beach picnic goes and where the rays come in shin deep. Add water toys for the afternoon or a dock pickup if a boat is meeting you. Low water sets the hour here, not the one you would prefer. North of it the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park runs for miles as a protected reserve, with Warderick Wells and Shroud Cay inside it and nothing to be taken from the water. It is quieter than the cays below because far fewer boats work it in a day.

George Town on Great Exuma is the other end of the chain and a different kind of day: a town, a harbour full of cruising boats, Stocking Island across the water and the resorts up the coast from it. It is roughly fifty nautical miles further from the city than the middle cays, which is a real difference on a day trip and none at all on a weekend. Helicopter rides Miami Exuma also run from Fort Lauderdale if that is the shorter drive for your party. Onward flying, overnight stays and the flats behind the island are all on the Exuma destination page, and a day on the bonefish flats is booked from here. For anything that has to travel with you, there is island logistics.

Stocking Island has no runway, no road and nothing to drive on, which is where a helicopter earns its place on this route. It does not need a strip. Where it sets down is agreed with the operator before the day, because the permissions depend on the date. The last of the crossing is the green inside Elizabeth Harbour, with the island lying across the front of it and the masts of the anchorage underneath. The stone beacon on the high ground in the middle of the island, put up as a navigation mark in the salt trading days, is the one landmark you pick out from the air before you arrive. From the top it looks down Exuma Sound on one side and over the anchorage on the other. On the harbour side the water is pale and shallow, and the one place with a name on that shore is a beach bar open since 1998, with a grill and a volleyball court in the sand. A blue hole opens in the shallows a couple of minutes by boat from the beach. Jacques Cousteau once traced it with red dye that surfaced two miles offshore, and while the cave is for trained divers only, its mouth is shallow enough to snorkel. The Atlantic side has surf and empty beaches, one of them named for the sand dollars washed up on it. If a boat is meeting your party at the anchorage, that is a yacht transfer, and catering can be brought out to a quieter stretch of sand for the afternoon.

Norman's Cay is known out of all proportion to its size, and the reason is four years at the end of the seventies. Carlos Lehder ran the cay as a transshipment base for the Medellin cartel from 1978 until about 1982 and lengthened the runway down the middle of the island for his own aircraft. Today MacDuff's is the one address ashore, a restaurant, a handful of cottages along a long stretch of sand and a small marina, so lunch is something to say in advance rather than assume. Parties who want a table build the day around a fly and dine. Shroud Cay is cut through by tidal creeks from the bank on the west side to the ocean on the east, under mangrove that closes over the water in places. The longest is Sanctuary Creek, shallow and clear over pale sand the whole way, which is why it reads as a green vein from the air. The park writes the rules here, not the boat operators: the north creek is a strict idle speed and no wake zone, and motorised boats are not allowed into any of the other creeks at all. On the high ground at the eastern end sits Camp Driftwood, a lookout built in the 1960s, a short scramble up to a point where the creeks lie behind you and Exuma Sound goes dark blue in front. Pipe Cay has one built thing: a US Navy Decca master station stood on the cay until it was abandoned in the 1960s, and the buildings still stand above a small cove on the west shore, with four tall pilings marking the channel in from deeper water. Nothing about it is managed or ticketed. There is no gate, no guide and no closing time, so how long you stay is your own decision.