Seaplane from Miami to Staniel Cay

This is what most parties come for. The pigs live on Big Major Cay, which is uninhabited and has no strip of its own, so there is no version of the day where you land next to them. You land at Staniel Cay and a boat covers the rest in a few minutes. They are not a folk legend either. The accepted account is that locals brought them over from Staniel Cay in the early 1990s, when the cay was still a farming community and the smell was a complaint rather than an attraction. That is the whole reason they are where they are. Say at the enquiry stage that the day is about the pigs. It moves nothing about the flight and everything about the morning, because the boat is booked to meet the aircraft rather than found once you are standing on the dock. A beach picnic on one of the sandbars afterwards is the usual second half.

The grotto is a limestone cave in the water off Staniel Cay, open to the sky through holes in its roof and it is the reason a good part of the world knows the name of this cay at all. The Bond film crew shot Thunderball here in 1964 and the Staniel Cay Yacht Club put them up while they did it. You swim in. That is the part worth knowing before the date is fixed, because the entrance works at slack water rather than whenever the boat arrives and the current through it decides the hour. It is the one item on a Staniel Cay day that the sea schedules rather than you. Everyone who can snorkel can do it, so it pairs with the pigs in a single run out from the dock. Add water toys if the afternoon is meant to stay on the water.

Compass Cay lies about eight miles north of Staniel Cay, roughly midway up the Exuma chain and the nurse sharks at its marina dock are the second best known encounter in these islands after the pigs. Eight miles is the number that matters. It turns a stop into a half day, so a party that wants the sharks as well as the grotto is planning the boat around them rather than adding them on. Nurse sharks are harmless to swimmers and the water at the dock is shallow, so children end up in it more often than anyone expects. It is also the point at which a single boat day starts to run long. If the sharks are the reason for the trip, say so and the return leg is planned against the tide and the light rather than against a wish.

The yacht club opened in 1956 and it is the reason this cay became a place people go rather than a place people pass. It runs 14 seaside bungalows and a marina of 18 slips, with a clubhouse and bar that has been the island's front room for close to seventy years. The village around it is small enough to cross on foot and most people rent a golf cart anyway. There is no cash machine on the cay. US dollars are taken everywhere and cards work at the yacht club with a processing fee on top, so the practical answer is to arrive with cash for the day. For a party arriving by air this is the case for finishing on the water rather than at the strip: the marina is where the boats are and the strip is at the other end. A dock pickup puts the two together. A boat lying off gets the aircraft alongside instead, on a yacht transfer.

A nearby uninhabited cay holds a protected colony of Bahamian rock iguanas, which come down to the beach as boats arrive. It is a short run south from Staniel Cay and it is the quiet third item on most boat days out here. The cay is protected, so this is a look rather than a handling encounter and the pale cliffs behind the beach are the reason it photographs the way it does. Parties with children usually rate it above the sharks. It sits in the opposite direction from Compass Cay, which is the practical point: north and south are two different boat days out of the same dock rather than one long one. Which one your hours ashore allow is worth settling before the date is fixed.

There is a small aircraft lying in clear shallow water not far from the Staniel Cay airstrip. It went down during the drug running years of the 1970s and it has been sitting on white sand in a few feet of water ever since. It is a five minute stop rather than an outing and it is the one that surprises people, because the water is clear enough that the wreck reads from the surface without a mask. On a day already built around the grotto it costs nothing to include.

Pipe Creek is the run of shallow water and small cays north of Staniel Cay and its sandbars are the reason the Exumas look the way they do from the air. At low water the sand comes up out of the shallows and you can stand a long way from anything. Low water is what decides the hour, not the one you would prefer. It moves through the month, so a day built around the sandbars is planned against the tide rather than against a clock. That is the same constraint the grotto has and the two do not always fall on the same afternoon. It is also the part of the day a float aircraft handles better than a boat does. A beach picnic out here is set down where the sand is rather than driven to it, which is what amphibious access is for.

A private seaplane charter Miami to Staniel Cay also works as the middle of a longer day rather than the whole of it. The cay sits halfway down the chain, so the aircraft carries on north to Nassau, Harbour Island and Bimini, or south to George Town and Great Exuma. That is what turns one cay into island hopping or a wider Bahamas day. Overnight changes the baggage rather than the route and the bungalows at the yacht club are the reason a good number of these flights turn into two days. If a yacht is meeting you, the aircraft can set the party down alongside instead of at the marina. That is a yacht transfer and on this cay it is the common case rather than the exotic one. The full island guide sits on the Staniel Cay destination page and the rest of the chain is on the Exuma destination page.