Small Plane from Miami to Exuma

The strip runs 12/30 across the low ground at Moss Town, 7,051 feet of asphalt with the bank on one side and scrub on the other. It is built for airline equipment, so from the seat of a small small plane it is an ordinary landing with a great deal of runway left over. The terminal is one building. Customs and immigration are inside it, which is the fact that shapes this whole route: Exuma International is an Airport of Entry, so you clear where you land rather than somewhere along the way. Expect the formalities to take minutes rather than an hour. The crew has filed everything before departure and the desk keeps its own hours, which is the one reason an early slot beats a late one. Say at the enquiry if anyone travels on a passport other than a United States one.

George Town is the working town of the southern chain and it is a short drive from the apron. A few hundred people, a harbour that fills with cruising boats in the spring and one road that does most of the work. Elizabeth Harbour runs along the front of it, with Stocking Island lying across the entrance as a natural breakwater. The ferry over takes minutes and the beaches on the ocean side of that island are the reason most people make the trip. A cart or a car can be waiting when you land through ground transport.

Stocking Island has no runway, no road and no bridge. A small plane lands at Exuma International, a car takes you to the Government Dock in George Town, and the boat crosses about a mile of sheltered water. The island stands between the town and Exuma Sound, so the harbour stays flat when the open sea is not. The side facing the town is pale sand and shallow water with boats at anchor. In the middle of the island a deep inlet shelters boats in heavy weather, with a blue hole inside it, and the ocean side has surf and a long run of sand that most days has nobody on it. That coast also carries stromatolites, mounds built by microbes and described as the oldest known macro-fossils on the planet, plus coral gardens and undersea caves close enough in to snorkel. Jacques Cousteau once traced one of those caves with red dye that surfaced two miles offshore. A concrete beacon on the highest hill, lit once to guide cargo ships in for salt, is a short walk up with a view over the whole harbour. With the aircraft held for you there is no return time to work backwards from, so you cross when you are ready and come back when you are finished. The car and the boat are booked through ground transport with the flight. A seaplane instead sets down on the harbour itself and skips the boat.

Staniel Cay sits in the middle of the chain, roughly fifty miles north of George Town, and it has its own asphalt runway of 3,031 feet. That is short by airport standards and comfortable for this aircraft, which is the whole argument for the type on this route. It has no customs desk. That is not a problem once you have cleared at George Town, because every leg after the first one is domestic, so the hop up the chain is fifteen minutes on the same airframe rather than a second international arrival. Almost everything the middle Exumas are known for is a short boat run from that strip. The Staniel Cay page covers the island itself.

The pigs live on Big Major Cay, an uninhabited island a few minutes by boat from Staniel Cay, and they swim out to meet boats in the shallows. It is the single most photographed thing in the Bahamas and it is genuinely as odd in person as it looks. It is a boat stop rather than a flight stop: there is no strip on Big Major, so the day is a landing at Staniel Cay and a short run across. Bring something to drink for yourself rather than food for them, because they are fed and overfeeding is the problem the island has.

The grotto is a hollow limestone cay off Staniel with light coming through holes in the roof and fish in numbers you do not see outside an aquarium. It is swum at slack water, which is a tide question rather than a weather one, so the time of day matters more here than anywhere else on the trip. Compass Cay, a little further north, is where the nurse sharks come in around the dock. They are harmless and habituated and standing in knee-deep water among them is the other picture everybody comes back with. Both are boat stops from Staniel Cay rather than places an aircraft goes. A day that wants both plus the pigs is a full one, so say so at the enquiry.

Beyond Staniel Cay the chain carries several more airstrips, none of them long and two of them with a customs desk: Norman's Cay at the northern end, Black Point on Great Guana Cay, and Farmer's Cay in the middle without one. They matter because they change what a day can look like. A party staying on a house or a boat somewhere in the middle of the chain does not have to land at George Town and drive or sail for two hours. You clear at the airport of entry, then fly the last few minutes to the strip nearest the bed. Which of them the aircraft can use on your date is a crew answer rather than a menu, and it comes back with the quote. Norman's Cay also has the wrecked aircraft in the shallows, visible from the air and a snorkel stop once you are down.

This is the part of the day a runway changes most. Load on a small aircraft is a weight question rather than a bag count and a wheeled airframe has more of it to give than floats do. Golf clubs, dive tanks, rods, a cooler for the boat, a case of something for the house: all of it travels, within the payload for the aircraft on the day. On a crossing of this length fuel takes a larger share than it does on a short hop, so say what is coming at the enquiry rather than at the ramp and see the baggage guidance for how the trade between passengers and weight actually works. Anything larger than luggage is a different service on the same runway and that is island logistics rather than a charter with extra bags. Provisioning a house or a boat this far down the chain is why people fly a small plane rather than a jet.

A cay of Norman's size has no business owning 4,700 feet of asphalt. The reason it does is that between 1978 and the early eighties Carlos Lehder ran the island as a staging post for the Medellin cartel and lengthened the strip to roughly a thousand metres to take heavier aircraft. That period ended a long time ago, and what survived it is a runway far better than the cay would otherwise have. MacDuff's sits on the island as restaurant, cottages and marina, and guests who want a table held before they land add a fly and dine day. Shroud Cay is not one island. It is a ring of small cays and islets held together by mangrove creeks, and the creeks are the reason anybody comes. The northern creek cuts right through from the bank side to the ocean side and is a strict idle speed and no wake zone under the park rules, and motorised boats are not allowed into any of the other creeks at all. At the eastern end the ground rises to Camp Driftwood, the remains of a lookout built in the 1960s, with the creek system behind you and the ocean in front. Nobody lives on Pipe Cay, and that is most of the appeal. It is a thin cay of scrub and rock, sheltered along its western side and open to the Atlantic on the other, with a track across from one coast to the other where the conch shells come ashore. It lies south of the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park, whose boundary runs from Wax Cay Cut down to Conch Cut, so it is outside the no-take zone.

Exuma works as one stop on a longer movement rather than only as a destination, and clearing in at George Town is what makes that easy: once you are through the desk, every leg after it is domestic. The same airframe carries on north and west to Nassau, Andros, Harbour Island or Grand Bahama. That is what turns one island into island hopping or a wider Bahamas day. Where the next cay has no strip of its own, that leg switches aircraft rather than cancelling the plan. The packaged version of a single day is the Exuma getaway day trip and the rest of the chain is on the Bahamas destinations page.