Seaplane from Miami to Great Guana Cay

The cay is a narrow strip with the sheltered Sea of Abaco on one side and open Atlantic beach on the other and almost everything sits between the two. The settlement dates to the early 1800s, when Loyalists leaving the American colonies were dispersed across these cays and brought boat building and fishing with them.

Distances are short enough that bicycles and golf carts are the normal way to cover them and the settlement carries what a stay actually needs: restaurants, a grocery, a bank, a clinic. The beach bar at the northern end of the settlement is the single best known address on the cay and its Sunday pig roast is the one day of the week the island fills up.

Say what the day is about when you send the date. A beach afternoon and a boat afternoon start at different docks and a beach picnic is arranged with the flight rather than after it.

Snorkelling is the single most written-about thing in this whole corner of the Bahamas and the reason is the geography rather than any one site: the cays sit along a barrier reef with sheltered water behind them and the drop off in front.

Fowl Cays National Park was created to protect exactly that reef and it is the one most parties are taken to. Further south the Pelican Cays park protects a second stretch of it along with the islands and the cave systems underneath. Both are boat trips from the anchorage rather than swims from the beach.

Shallow enough that a party with children in it is looking at the same reef as the divers, which is the practical difference between this cay and a day built around a dive boat. Add water toys if the afternoon stays on the water.

Baker's Bay sits about four and a half miles up the cay from the settlement. It is a private residential community and members club with a golf course laid along the ocean, its own marina and a stretch of beach and it is the reason a good share of the air traffic to this cay exists at all.

It is also the clearest case on the whole route for finishing away from a terminal. The published ferry crossing to it runs around 45 minutes on the water alone, before the taxi at the Marsh Harbour end and before anything is waited for. That is what a resort transfer by seaplane replaces.

Access is a matter for the club rather than for us, so say at the enquiry stage whether you are a member, a guest of one or staying elsewhere on the cay. It changes the set-down point rather than the itinerary and it is easier to settle before the date is fixed than after.

Abaco is limestone, so the water people come for is as much under the islands as around them. Inland on the Abaco mainland the blue holes open into charted cave systems: Sawmill Sink is 55 feet across and 110 feet deep and has produced fossils old enough to close it to the public while archaeologists work.

Out on the reef the diving is the other kind, walls, wrecks and coral heads and the operators run from the marinas on the cays and at Marsh Harbour. Both are booked ahead rather than walked into.

Say whether anyone in the party is diving rather than snorkelling when you send the date. Cave access runs on permits and operator schedules and dive gear comes out of the same payload the passengers do, so it is declared at the enquiry rather than weighed at the dock.

Elbow Cay lies south east across the sound and it carries the most photographed object in the Abacos: the candy-striped Hope Town lighthouse, 120 feet of it, climbable, with the whole cay laid out from the top. The village below it has no cars.

Tahiti Beach at the southwest end is the shallow one where boats pull up onto the sandbar and the local museum tells the Loyalist story that runs through every settlement out here. Between Elbow Cay and us lies Man-O-War Cay, where boats are still built by hand by the same family that has run the ferries for generations.

It is a short hop by air and a scheduled ferry ride by water. Parties often treat the two cays as one trip, which is worth saying before the date is fixed. The full guide is on the Elbow Cay destination page.

Treasure Cay is on the Abaco mainland north west of Marsh Harbour and its beach has been voted the best in the Caribbean more than once. It is the postcard: a long shallow curve of white sand with almost nothing built on it. The marina there runs 164 deep water slips and takes most sizes of boat, there is championship golf behind it and the fishing charters leave from the same docks.

By road it is about half an hour from Marsh Harbour, which is the drive a runway arrival inherits. For a party splitting a trip between the beach and the cays, this is usually the second stop rather than the first. The guide sits on the Treasure Cay destination page.

Green Turtle Cay is the historic one, a colonial village at New Plymouth with museums, shops and a harbour, reached from Treasure Cay by ferry and from the water directly. The wildlife around it is what fills the day.

Green turtles feed at Coco Bay and will come to the boat, the pigs everybody has seen photographs of swim at No Name Cay a short ride away and off Manjack Cay to the north the water holds stingrays, nurse sharks and lemon sharks in clear shallow water. Golf carts are the way around the cay itself.

That is a half day rather than an hour, so it sets the return leg rather than fitting around it. The guide sits on the Green Turtle Cay destination page.

A private seaplane charter Miami to Great Guana Cay also works as the first leg rather than the whole day. The Abacos sit at the northern end of the archipelago and the same aircraft carries on south and east to Grand Bahama, Nassau, Harbour Island, Eleuthera or Staniel Cay and the Exumas.

That is what turns one cay 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 in an anchorage like this one it is the reason a good number of these flights happen at all.

The rest of the chain is on the Bahamas destinations page and the mainland end of the Abacos on the Marsh Harbour destination page.