Seaplane from Miami to Andros Island

This is what Andros is known for and it is no contest. The island is called the bonefish capital in the corridor's own language, and the reason is the water behind it: shallow flats running for miles, cut by channels and bights. That geography is why the arrival point matters more than the flight. Guides work out of small boats through cuts with no road beside them, so a party landing at the wrong end spends the morning travelling. Parties book bonefishing and flats access for that reason: it starts where the water is, not the runway. Say how many are fishing when you send the date, because guides and skiffs are counted per head. Tides decide the useful hours and move through the month, so the return leg is planned against them. A whole fishing day by seaplane is planned from the set-down point back.

Andros is limestone the whole way down, riddled with underwater caves and blue holes and it carries the highest concentration of them anywhere. More than fifty are counted across the island, inland in the pine forest as well as offshore in the sea. Not all of them ask for a tank. Many are shallow enough to snorkel or simply look into from the surface, which is the practical difference between this and a day built around a dive boat: a party with children in it is looking at the same water as the divers. Say whether anyone is diving rather than snorkelling when you send the date. Access runs on guides and local operators rather than on opening hours, so it is worth naming before the day is fixed rather than after. Add water toys if the afternoon is meant to stay on the water.

A barrier reef runs 124 miles down the eastern side of the island, which is the second thing Andros is known for and the reason divers came here before anyone else did. It sits close enough to shore that the reef and the flats are the same morning rather than two trips and from the air it is the whole picture: pale flats, blue channels, the reef line and then the drop. That view is the argument for arriving low and slow rather than at a terminal and it is why a scenic flight over this coast is sometimes the whole booking. Boats and guides run from the settlements along the east coast, so the set-down point and the dive plan are decided together. A dock pickup covers the case where a boat is meeting you instead.

Straight off that reef the sea floor falls away into water deep enough that Andros is named for it in the corridor's dive writing. The Crater off the coast is the site people mean when they say the wall here is a different order of thing from a reef dive. The same edge is why the deep water fishing runs from this island as well as the flats. That is a full day on a boat rather than an afternoon, so it sets the return leg rather than fitting around it. The flats and the deep water are opposite kinds of day, so a party that wants both is really asking for two rather than one long one. It is easier to say which at the enquiry stage than to move it afterwards: it changes the set-down point, not just the itinerary.

Mangrove wetlands cover huge stretches of the island, cut through by mazes of channels that open onto the flats and onto hidden beaches. Inland it is pine forest, with marked trails through the national park land in the north and centre of the island. This is the part that earns Andros its name as the ecotourism island of the Bahamas: the Andros iguana lives here and so do well over 120 species of bird. It is walked, paddled or run by small boat rather than driven. From the air the mangrove maze is the thing people photograph, so it tends to set the approach rather than the afternoon. A beach picnic on one of the beaches those channels open onto is nothing at all from the water and a long way from any airfield.

South of the bights the island empties out further still. Mangrove Cay and South Andros are separate arrival areas with their own water and the southern flats are the ones anglers name first. South Andros in the south sits about 198 statute miles from Miami against 143 for the north of the island, so this is where the 55 mile spread stops being a number on a page. For a party staying down here it is the clearest case for finishing away from an airfield, which is what a resort transfer by seaplane is for. Parties meeting a boat go straight alongside on a yacht transfer rather than driving to it, which on this part of the island can otherwise mean a road, a ferry and the rest of the morning.

The west side faces away from everything. It is quiet flats, open water and remote coastal scenery, the part of Andros that anglers name when they want a day with nobody else on the water. There is no road network worth the name out here, so the arrival is the whole logistics problem and a float aircraft is the answer to it rather than a convenience. This is the clearest example on the island of why two parties both going to Andros can need entirely different plans.

The settlements sit strung along the east coast, small and far apart and the island's own event is the crab festival every June: music, dancing and the blue crabs Andros is known for across the Bahamas. It is the one week of the year when the quietest large island in the country is not quiet, which matters for a date rather than for an itinerary. The settled stretch of weather runs roughly December to April, so the festival and the best flying conditions are not the same season. Either way it is a day rather than an afternoon and it lands in the middle of the island, so it is worth naming when the date is chosen rather than after the arrival point is fixed.

A private seaplane charter Miami to Andros also works as the first leg rather than the whole day. Andros sits on the inside of the chain and the same aircraft carries on east and north to Nassau, Staniel Cay and the Exumas, Harbour Island or back across to Bimini. That is what turns one island into island hopping or a wider Bahamas day. Overnight changes the baggage rather than the route. If a yacht is meeting you, the aircraft can set the party down alongside instead of at a pier. That is a yacht transfer and it is the reason a good number of these flights happen at all. The full island guide sits on the Andros destination page and the rest of the chain is on the Bahamas destinations page.