Helicopter from Miami to Flamingo Cay

The cave is the thing people come back talking about. It is cut into the south end of the cay at the waterline, the mouth takes a tender in at low water, and the floor inside is carpeted in conch shells that nobody put there.

Holes in the roof drop daylight onto the water, so the inside is lit rather than dark and the colour shifts with the hour. It is the one thing here that has to be timed: at high water the mouth closes up, which is worth knowing before the flight is booked rather than after.

Nothing about it is organised. No guide, no ticket, no jetty. A party that wants to see it needs a tender of its own in the water or a boat already meeting it, so say so when you send the date and it is arranged with the flight.

The beach on the north west side runs out of sight in powdery white sand, and on most days there is nobody standing on it. Crews who have sailed the whole chain call it one of the prettiest in the Bahamas, and the reason it stays that way is that almost nothing gets here.

The water in front of it holds five to fifteen feet over sand, which is shallow enough to read from the air on the way in. The line of rocks along the west side is given a wide berth by anything arriving on the water, and from a helicopter it is simply part of the view.

It is an open roadstead rather than a harbour, so it rolls when there is any north in the swell. That is the single thing that moves a day here, and it is checked against your date rather than assumed.

The water around the cay runs five to fifteen feet over sand and hard coral, with gorgonians standing out of it and a thick meadow of turtle grass in between. Two large rocks off the beach mark the best of it. Visibility here is not a good day, it is the ordinary one.

There is no river, no town and no traffic anywhere near this cay to put anything into the water, and that is most of the argument for coming three hundred miles rather than stopping at the first island with a hotel on it.

There is no dive operation and no boat to hire, so gear travels with the party. Masks, fins and tanks all come out of the same payload the passengers do, which is why they are declared when you book rather than discovered on the day.

One path crosses the cay from the beach to the ponds on the far side, marked by flip-flops wedged into the rock by whoever walked it last. It is a walk of minutes rather than an expedition, and it is the only path on the island.

The ponds at the end of it hold small bright red shrimp, a cave-pool species that lives in exactly this kind of tidal hole and is uncommon enough to be worth the walk on its own. They are also why the cay carries the name it does: shrimp like these are what turn a flamingo pink in the first place.

There is no shade, no fresh water and nothing to buy at either end of the path, so a day here is provisioned before it leaves Florida. Catering on board and a beach picnic are both arranged with the flight rather than found here.

The Jumentos are fished by people who have already fished everywhere easier. Bonefish work the sand on the lee side of the chain, and the flats around this cay see a fraction of the traffic the Exumas do because nothing commercial runs down here.

From the air the flats are a map rather than a guess: a helicopter crosses low enough that the pale ground, the dark grass and the edge where the bottom drops away are all visible on the way in. Parties who fish tend to look on the way over and decide on the ground.

There is no lodge, no guide waiting and nothing to rent. Rods, leaders and a cooler travel with the party, and a longer run at the flats is planned with the flight rather than squeezed into what is left of the afternoon.

The name promises a bird that almost nobody sees here. Cruisers who have anchored off this cay for years report the ponds full of shrimp and empty of flamingos, and the honest answer is that the name comes from the food rather than from a colony standing in it.

The birds themselves are a different flight. Great Inagua, at the far southern end of the Bahamas, holds the population that people travel to see, and it is its own day out of Miami rather than a detour from here.

What this cay does have is the quiet that brings anything wading in at all: no dogs, no traffic, no lights after dark. Ask early if the birds are the point of the trip and the day gets planned around the right island.

Flamingo Cay sits near the middle of a chain of cays and rocks that runs about a hundred and ten miles. Nothing in it is developed, and Ragged Island at the southern end is the only inhabited one, with around fifty people on it. That is a long way by boat and minutes by air, which is the part that changes what a day can hold.

A morning on one beach and an afternoon further down the chain is a decision rather than a two day passage, and it is made when the flight is planned. Two of those neighbours are already pages of ours: Duncan Town on Ragged Island fifty miles south, and Long Island fifty three miles east across the sound.

Because the aircraft is held for your party and nothing else, the cay does not have to be the whole day. It is often the middle of one. North of here the Exumas start, and Great Exuma is forty six miles up the bank with the nearest active port of entry on it.

Parties who want lunch somewhere with a kitchen tend to put that at one end of the day and the empty beach at the other. South is the quieter direction and the shorter list: the chain thins out, the anchorages get further apart and Duncan Town is the last place with anybody in it.

Whatever the shape, it is set before you leave Florida. Ask what a day down the chain can hold and it comes back as hours and stops rather than a maybe, priced with the aircraft.