Helicopter from Miami to South Andros Bahamas

Fishing is the first reason parties come to South Andros and for most of them it is the only one. Andros is called the bonefish capital of the world and the southern flats are the part anglers name when they are asked where they would go back to. The water is shallow enough to wade a long way out and the creeks behind the flats hold fish through the tide, so a bad wind moves the day rather than ending it. Guides work out of the settlements between Deep Creek and Mars Bay, and most of them have fished the same water since they were children. Say how many are fishing and whether anyone is walking rather than poling when you send the date. Rods and reels travel within the payload for the aircraft on the day. The booked version is flats fishing or a full fishing day by air.

South Andros Airport is the working middle of South Andros and the point on this island where an arrival from abroad is cleared, which is what makes the south simpler to reach than most of the chain. Driggs Hill sits at the northern tip, at the mouth of the bight that separates this island from Mangrove Cay. Neither is a resort strip. Between them are a handful of small lodges, a few places to eat and people who know exactly where the fish were this week. Evenings here are early and quiet, and the loudest thing on the road after dark is usually somebody else's generator. Ground transport on a coast shaped like this one means a vehicle arranged in advance rather than one waiting at a rank. Catering or a private chef travels with the aircraft, which is worth knowing if your party is particular about dinner.

Kemps Bay is the largest of the southern settlements and it still has a yard where the fishing sloops of South Andros are built. The island has made its own boats for as long as it has fished, and the yard is a working one rather than a display. What is on the stocks depends on what somebody ordered, and the answer changes from month to month. The other thing people walk to see here is the conch shell house, put together out of the shells the settlement has eaten its way through over years of lunches. Neither has an entrance or an opening time. You ask somebody where it is and they point, and more often than not they walk you the last part of the way.

Mars Bay is the last settlement on Andros, at the end of a road that runs about forty miles from Driggs Hill. Below it the road ends and what continues is creek, mangrove and flat, all the way to the southern point of the island. There is no shortcut back: the one road is the way in and the way out. That is exactly why anglers go there. The water below Mars Bay is the least walked on the island and the flats keep going long after anything with wheels has stopped. From the cabin on the way in it is one pale sheet with darker channels drawn through it, and that is the part of this crossing people photograph. Parties who want a day down here plan it as the whole day rather than an afternoon.

Andros holds the largest collection of blue holes anywhere, more than a hundred and seventy of them on land and dozens more out in the sea. They are collapsed cave systems that fill with water, some a short walk from a settlement and some a boat ride offshore, and no two of them look alike from the surface. Plenty are shallow enough to swim or snorkel rather than dive, which is what makes them worth an afternoon when the tide is wrong for fishing. Ask before you go in: a few run deep and are for divers with the right training only. The inland ones are freshwater at the top and salt below, and the line between the two is visible on a still day.

East of South Andros the shelf ends. The reef runs the length of the eastern shore and just beyond it the sea floor falls away into the Tongue of the Ocean, past six thousand feet, the deep trench that separates Andros from Nassau. From the cabin it is a line you cannot miss, pale green to black in the width of a rotor disc. From a boat it is why the fishing on the outside is a different sport from the fishing on the flats, and it is one of the reasons the reef here is worth the ride out. The drop sits close enough to the shore that a morning on the reef and an afternoon on the flats are the same day rather than two.

About 3,700 people live in South Andros and almost all of them live on one coast, so the beaches between the settlements are usually empty. Nothing is fenced and nothing is booked, and on most afternoons the only footprints are the ones your party arrived with. A beach picnic on an empty shore is arranged with the flight, and a party that wants the afternoon on the water adds water toys. If a boat is meeting you, a dock pickup is arranged the same way. Anything outside the usual list goes to custom requests.

Helicopter rides Miami South Andros Bahamas also work as one leg rather than the whole trip. Mangrove Cay lies straight across the bight and the same aircraft carries on to Fresh Creek, to Kamalame Cay on the northern shore, or across the trench to Nassau and the Exumas. That is what turns one island into island hopping, and it is how a good number of parties use this route: the southern flats first, then somewhere with a table and a hotel. An overnight changes the baggage rather than the route, and the second leg is priced with the first rather than booked again. The full island guide sits on the South Andros destination page, the packaged version is the South Andros getaway and the rest of the chain is on the Bahamas destinations page.