Helicopter from Miami to Hope Town

The village is built around a small harbour and the candy striped tower stands on the far side of it. It went up in 1863, carries a hundred and twenty feet of masonry and throws its light about seventeen miles out over the Sea of Abaco. It is one of the last lighthouses anywhere still lit by a kerosene burner and wound by hand, which is why it is the picture most people have seen of this island group before they know its name. Elbow Reef gave it its name, and the settlement of the day argued against building it at all: wrecking ships on that reef was the trade the village lived on. From the air the tower is how you know you have arrived, minutes before anybody has landed. It is worth saying at the enquiry stage if the photograph matters, because the approach is a routing question and not something to raise on the day.

Hope Town has no through road worth the name. The lanes are narrow, the cottages are painted, there are no cars, and almost everything in the settlement is a few minutes from the harbour front. That is what makes a short day here worth flying for. Hours ashore are hours in the village rather than hours spent reaching it. Add a golf cart if anyone in the party would rather not walk the length of the cay, or a dock pickup if a boat is meeting you.

Halfway down Elbow Cay the land pinches around a second piece of sheltered water. White Sound is a mid cay harbour with the resorts and the deeper slips around it, cut and developed in the 1960s, later than the village, and it is where most of the boats of any size lie. On a cay where the slips are split between two harbours it is worth saying which one a boat is in when you send the date. If a yacht is meeting your party, that is a yacht transfer, and a dock pickup covers the same thing from the shore side.

Tahiti Beach sits at the southern tip of Elbow Cay, four miles or so down from the village. At low water the sand runs out flat and shallow for a long way and the bars stand clear of the surface. The tide decides the hour here, not the one you would prefer. It is the single part of a day on this cay that is set by the sea rather than by the aircraft, so a beach picnic down here is planned against the tide table before the date is fixed. It is also the far end of the cay from the harbour. Say at the enquiry stage if the day is really about the sandbars rather than the village, because the two ends of a six mile island are not the same afternoon.

The reef that gave the lighthouse its job runs more than a hundred and thirty miles down the outside of these cays. It is the third longest barrier reef in the world and it lies close in, which is the part that matters on a short day. Close in means a party with children in it is looking at the same water as the divers rather than at a boat ride away from it. It is also the last thing you cross on the way in, so most people have already seen it from above before they swim on it. Add water toys if the afternoon stays out there, or a dock pickup if the boat comes to you.

Behind the cays the water turns shallow and quiet. The flats of the Sea of Abaco hold bonefish and they suit a shorter day than the deep water outside does. Parties book bonefishing and flats access for exactly that reason. Say how many are fishing when you send the date, because guides and skiffs are counted per head rather than per party. Tides move the useful hours through the month the same way they move the sandbars, so the return leg is planned against them rather than against a clock. A fishing day by air is built backwards from the water and not from a departure board.

The cays either side of Elbow are a few minutes of water apart. Man-O-War has the boatbuilding history and a harbour to match it, Great Guana has the long Atlantic beach with Baker's Bay at its northern end, and Tilloo is the quiet one. None of them has a runway either, so all of them are the same problem with the same answer. A party that wants two of them in a day is asking for a short hop rather than a second crossing, which is what turns one cay into island hopping. Say which of them are on the list when you send the date. The routing comes back with the boarding time instead of being worked out on the morning.

Green Turtle Cay sits well north of Elbow, past Marsh Harbour and Treasure Cay, and it is a separate island rather than a neighbour: there is no road to it from anywhere. That makes it the clearest case in the whole group for arriving by air, and it is why parties who know the Abacos ask for it by name. On a single day it is a choice against Hope Town rather than an addition to it. Over two days it is a Bahamas day that happens to have two harbours in it.

Helicopter rides Miami Hope Town also work as the first leg rather than the whole day. The Abacos are the northern end of the archipelago, and the same aircraft carries on south and east to Grand Bahama, Nassau, Harbour Island, Andros or Staniel Cay and the Exumas. Overnight changes the baggage rather than the route. If a yacht is meeting you, that is a yacht transfer and it is worth naming early, because a deck is a permissions question for the operator rather than a routing one. The full island guide sits on the Elbow Cay destination page, the village itself on the Hope Town page and the rest of the chain on the Bahamas destinations page.