Private Jet from Miami to Eleuthera

Most parties land here, and the reason is what sits just off the end of it. The northern field is a port of entry, so the border desk is on the ground the jet stops on, and from the dock a few minutes away the boats run across to the pink sand and to the fishing settlement on the next island over. That is also why the choice of field is the whole decision on this island rather than a detail. A party bound for the north end that lands in the south starts the holiday with a two hour drive up the Queen's Highway, and a party bound for the south that lands here does the same in reverse. Tell us which end you are staying on when you send the dates. The field is picked around that, the ground transport or the boat is booked to meet the aircraft, and the whole thing comes back priced together. The island guide is on the Eleuthera destination page, the north end has its own on North Eleuthera.

This is the place the island is known for. Eleuthera narrows to a strip of rock barely wide enough for the road, and the two sides of that rock do not look like the same sea: the deep Atlantic stands dark and moving on the east, the shallow bight lies pale and flat on the west, and the bridge crosses the gap between them. It sits in the upper half of the island, which puts it within easy reach of a morning that started at the northern field and a long way from one that started in the south. A car is waiting when the aircraft stops, so the stop is a detour on the way to where you are staying rather than an outing of its own. Say if you want to see it on the day you arrive. The swell on the Atlantic side runs up over the rock in winter and the road is closed when it does, so it is worth naming before the day is fixed rather than after.

Less than a mile south of the bridge, on the ocean side, the rock is hollowed into a run of pools that fill from the surf and sit warm above the cold water below them. There is no gate and no ticket. There is a path down over the rock and then the pools. Which is why the tide, not the clock, decides when this is worth doing, and why it belongs on a day you control. The aircraft is held for your party alone, so a later flight home is a message to us rather than a rebooking, and the pools can be walked at the hour they are actually calm. Bring shoes you do not mind soaking and say whether children are coming, because the rock is sharp and the last few feet want a hand. The same morning usually takes in the bridge, they are the same stretch of coast.

At the top of the island a cave in the limestone is where the first settlers came ashore in 1648 after their ship went onto the reef, and where they held services until they had built anything else. The roof is open at one end, the floor is sand, and the whole of it is a short drive from the northern field. It is the closest thing on Eleuthera to a half hour stop that needs no planning at all, which makes it the usual first stop of a day that lands in the north and has an afternoon to fill before a dinner booking. The beach on the other side of the road is empty most days and worth the walk. If the day is meant to end on the water instead, a beach picnic is arranged with the flight rather than found afterwards.

Halfway up the island a small settlement sits above a bay that takes the Atlantic swell, and the beach below it is the one surfers have come to since the sixties. This is pineapple country too: the fruit that made the island's name grew on these hills, and the town still keeps a festival for it. Boards are the reason this tab exists on a jet page. They travel in the back of the aircraft rather than being hired at the far end, which is the practical difference between a charter and a scheduled seat, and the baggage guidance sets out how that is weighed rather than counted. The swell is a winter thing, so say which month you are coming and what you want to do in it. A flat week here is a week for the bight side instead, and that is a different drive from the same field.

The capital sits in the middle of the island, on a harbour deep enough that it was the reason the town grew where it did. It carries the colonial buildings, the Friday night fish fry, the restaurants and the island's longest runway, and the native plant reserve on the ridge behind it is the best walk on Eleuthera. For a jet this is the most useful field of the three, because it is the field from which nothing on the island is more than an hour away. A party whose week is spread along the middle stretch lands here and never drives more than that in either direction. Tell us the restaurant if the evening is the point of the trip: a table and a car for the evening are arranged with the flight. The town has its own page on Governor's Harbour.

The southern field serves the quiet half. Rock Sound holds the Ocean Hole, a blue hole that sits inland in the middle of the settlement and drops further than anyone has comfortably measured, with fish in it that come in from the sea through the rock. Further south again the road runs out at a beach under a lighthouse, with nothing built on it at all. This is the end of the island where the field decides everything. From the north it is a two hour drive each way, which is most of a day trip; from the field here it is twenty minutes. Landing in the south is the difference between seeing the south and driving to it. The marina at the bottom of the island is where a boat would be waiting if one is: a yacht transfer is arranged with the flight. Anything larger than luggage is island logistics.

Three of the best known places on this route are not on Eleuthera at all, they are minutes of water off its northern tip, which is the other reason most days start at that end. Spanish Wells is the fishing settlement that supplies half the lobster in the country, Royal Island is the sheltered anchorage beside it, and Harbour Island carries the pink sand beach the corridor is best known for. All three are their own page and their own day, because they are their own places: Dunmore Town on Harbour Island is a town, not a stop. What they share is the arrival, which is the northern field and a boat that is booked to meet the aircraft rather than found at the dock. Further out it changes aircraft. The cays of the Exumas, Staniel Cay and the ones around it, are reached on a seaplane or a helicopter rather than on this one. Which islands take a jet directly is set out across the Bahamas jet routes. That is what turns one island into island hopping or a wider Bahamas day. A week changes the baggage, not the route. A date that has to look like something is where the catering on board and the extras come in. The packaged version of all of it is the Eleuthera day trip, and the wider list is on the Bahamas destinations page.