Private Jet from Miami to Governor's Harbour

Most parties come for the beach first. French Leave Beach runs more than a mile down the Atlantic side of the settlement, pale pink sand with nothing built on it. It carried the name long before the resort did. It is the ocean coast, so there is surf on it in a way the harbour side never has. Because the jet lands above the town rather than at one end of the island, that sand is a short drive from the ramp rather than an hour of it. Say how many are swimming when you send the date. A beach picnic is set up on the sand and water toys come out of the same hold the bags do. A party that lands in the morning is on the sand inside the hour, which is the whole argument for a field in the middle of the island rather than at one end of it.

The settlement is built across the island rather than along one shore. Eleuthera is barely more than a mile wide here and in places a good deal less, so the sunrise is on one coast and the sunset on the other, both within a walk of the same front door. The bight side is where the harbour is and where the boats lie. It is flat water almost every day of the year, which is why the town grew there rather than facing the ocean, and why a yacht can be waiting when you land. On land it is a cart rather than a car. Ground transport is arranged with the flight, because a vehicle on an out island is booked ahead or not at all. The field sits about eight miles up the coast, so the drive in is short, and it is the only driving most parties do here.

Cupid's Cay is the small island in the harbour, joined to the rest of the settlement by a causeway. In 1648 a party of English settlers from Bermuda, the Eleutheran Adventurers under William Sayle, put ashore here and founded what became the first permanent settlement in the Bahamas. That is not a plaque on a wall. The cay carried the first seat of government the islands had and later the first United States consulate in the country. The lanes on it still run where they ran then. It takes twenty minutes to walk and it is the reason the town is called what it is. It is also why the harbour is where it is. The cay shelters the water behind it, which is where the boats lie, and an evening that starts on the causeway is a short walk from anywhere your party is staying in the settlement.

The pink two storey building above the harbour is the Haynes Library. It was dedicated on 11 November 1897 by Governor Haynes Smith, who walked up from Cupid's Cay to open the doors. It is the oldest government building in the district. It still works as a library and as the place the settlement uses for its own business, with more than eleven thousand volumes on the shelves. Most visitors photograph the veranda and walk on. It is worth going in. It stands a few minutes above the causeway, so it sits on the same short walk as the cay and the harbour. Nothing about it needs booking. It is here because a day in this settlement is walked rather than driven, and that is what landing in the middle of the island buys you.

The preserve sits on the edge of the settlement and covers thirty acres of wetland, coppice and boardwalk. It is the first national park on Eleuthera and the only botanical park of its kind in the Bahamas, run as a working collection of native plants rather than an ornamental garden. An hour there is the usual visit and it is the one thing on this list that reads better in the morning, before the heat. It is close enough to the field that a party landing early can walk it before the beach. It is also the answer to a rainy hour, which on this crossing is worth having: the boardwalk carries on when the sand does not. Say at the enquiry whether anyone in the party wants it and the car is held for the morning rather than the afternoon.

Friday is the fixed point in this settlement. From six the town puts on a fish fry at Anchor Bay, and it is the local evening rather than a show put on for visitors. It matters for the shape of the booking more than for the food. A Friday evening here means an overnight rather than a day out, because it starts after the hour most parties would be flying home. Say so when you send the dates and the return is set for the Saturday instead. If the day is a celebration, a table is held before you leave Florida rather than asked for on arrival, and catering on the flight home is ordered at the same time. Anchor Bay is inside the settlement, so nobody drives afterwards.

The settlement is the middle of a hundred and ten miles of island, and that is the practical argument for landing here. North Eleuthera is roughly thirty four miles up the coast and Rock Sound a similar run the other way, so both ends are a drive rather than a day. One road runs the whole length of it. From here the Glass Window Bridge, Gregory Town and the south end are all reachable and back inside the same day, which is not true of a party that lands at either end. The Glass Window Bridge, where the dark Atlantic and the pale bank sit either side of a strip of rock, is the usual reason to drive north, and Gregory Town and its surf are on the same road. Tell us what you want to see when you send the dates and the car is sized for it. The wider island has its own page: Eleuthera by private jet.

Governor's Harbour is a port of entry, so a party that clears here is cleared for the country. What comes after is an internal hop rather than another border. The pink sand at Harbour Island sits off the north end, Spanish Wells and Royal Island are the same kind of hop, and Nassau is twenty minutes of air away. Parties that want more than one island in a week keep the aircraft and fly the legs, because the cleared party is the same party and the paperwork is done. Island hopping is the shape that takes. The same settlement is also flown by seaplane, by small plane and by helicopter. Which islands take a jet directly is set out across the Bahamas jet routes.