Helicopter from Miami to Pig Island

The pigs are the reason anybody comes and they are not shy about it. When a boat comes into the bay they walk off the sand and swim out to meet it, which is the picture that made the cay famous and the behaviour that gave it the name everyone now uses.

There are around twenty adults and piglets besides. They are wild rather than farmed, nobody owns them and nobody rounds them up for visitors, so the meeting happens on their terms in shin deep water at the top of the beach. They are large animals and strong swimmers, which surprises people the first time one comes alongside.

Say how many are getting in the water when you send the date, and say whether children are among them. It changes how the boat work around the arrival is arranged, not whether it happens.

Pig Island is a nickname. The chart, the pilots and the customs paperwork all say Big Major Cay. Pig Beach is the beach on that cay rather than a separate address, so if you have been reading about one and planning the other, they are the same anchorage.

It matters for one practical reason: a flight plan and a clearance are filed against the name on the chart, not against the nickname.

Everything else on this page uses the name you came looking for, because that is what the island is called on the water. The full island guide sits on the Pig Island destination page and the packaged version is the Pig Island getaway day trip.

The pigs are there every day of the year. The crowd is not, and that is the part a charter actually changes. The day boats out of Nassau run about three hours each way and the ones out of Great Exuma about two, so the anchorage fills from the middle of the morning and thins out again through the afternoon.

An aircraft held for your party alone is not tied to anybody else's departure time, which is why the hour is worth naming when you send the date rather than after it.

The pigs themselves take shade in the scrub through the hottest part of the day and come back down to the water when something arrives, so early and late both work better than the middle.

Staniel Cay is the settled island beside Pig Island, about ten minutes away by boat. It is where everything the cay does not have lives: the marina, the yacht club, the shops, the fuel and the only runway in this part of the chain.

That runway is the reason most people reach Pig Island the long way. A runway aircraft lands there and the last stretch is done by boat. It is also the address most parties use when the day is longer than a day, because the rooms and the restaurants are here rather than on the cay.

A party staying ashore rather than flying home the same evening can have the aircraft sent back for them on a Miami to Staniel Cay flight, and a table rather than a boat is a fly and dine day.

The pigs take an hour. The rest of the afternoon is usually spent on the cays within twenty minutes of the same water, and most parties do two or three of them rather than one. Compass Cay is the one with the nurse sharks in the shallows at the marina dock, about twenty minutes north by boat.

Thunderball Grotto is a snorkelling cave beside Staniel Cay that a Bond film was shot in, and it is entered at low water rather than whenever you arrive. Bitter Guana Cay carries a colony of Bahamian rock iguanas, a protected species fed by nobody and photographed by everybody.

None of these are flown to. They are boat work from the same arrival, which is why the hours on the water matter more here than the hours in the air, and why an afternoon runs as one loop rather than three separate errands.

Ask for water toys if the party wants the afternoon in the water, or a dock pickup if a boat is meeting you.

Pig Island is the original. It is not the only one. No Name Cay in the Abacos has its own colony that swims out the same way, Rose Island keeps one within a short boat ride of Nassau, and there are smaller groups on Ship Channel Cay and on Eleuthera.

They are genuinely different islands in different parts of the country rather than one attraction with several entrances. Which one you fly to changes the crossing, the clearance and the length of the day, so it is worth being specific in the enquiry. The Abaco cays sit off Harbour Island and the northern chain and Rose Island is minutes from Nassau.

The sandbars are the other half of an Exuma afternoon. At low water the bank dries into open sand in the middle of the sea, with nothing on it and nothing around it, and Pipe Creek north of the anchorage is where most of them are.

That is where a beach picnic goes and where the rays come in shin deep. If the day is about fish instead, the flats behind the cays hold bonefish and parties book flats access or a full fishing day.

Low water decides the hour here, not the one you would prefer. It is the single part of a day in the Exumas that is set by the sea rather than by the aircraft, and it is worth saying at the enquiry so the rest of the afternoon is built around it.

Helicopter rides Miami Pig Island also work as the first leg rather than the whole day. The same aircraft carries on to Great Exuma and the rest of the chain, Nassau, Harbour Island, Andros or Grand Bahama. That is what turns one cay into island hopping or a wider Bahamas day.

A weekend changes the baggage rather than the route, and a date that has to look like something is where the catering on board and the rest of the extras come in. What goes in the back is weighed with the party rather than counted against a rule, and the baggage guidance sets out how that works.

If a yacht is meeting you, that is a yacht transfer and it is arranged with the flight rather than found on the day. Anything larger than luggage is a different service altogether, and that is island logistics. Anything outside the usual list goes to custom requests, and the rest of the chain is on the Bahamas destinations page.