Bahamas Family Travel Guide

The first two hundred yards are built for you and are not worth your time. The straw market, the duty free strip and the row of people offering braids and taxis. It is a funnel. Walk through it rather than stopping in it.

What is actually good in Nassau is close and cheap. The Queen’s Staircase, sixty five steps cut by hand out of limestone in the eighteenth century, and Fort Fincastle above it. Twenty minutes walk from the pier and almost empty while everybody else lines for a bus.

The Atlantis day pass is the standard move and it is expensive. Aquaventure runs well over two hundred dollars a head at the gate for a family, and on a six ship day the slides line badly. If your children want a water park day it delivers one. It is not a cheap afternoon and it is not the Bahamas.

The better cruise day is a boat. A half day out to Rose Island or Blue Lagoon puts you on water and sand rather than in a line, costs less than Atlantis for a family, and is the only version of a Nassau port day that has ever felt like the country to me.

Staying is a completely different trip. Cable Beach and Paradise Island have some of the best Bahamas family resorts, four or five nights, and you get evenings, sunrise, the town without the ships in it and time to take a boat somewhere. The cruise version is a sampler. It is a good sampler. Do not mistake it for the meal.

What it is good at. The beaches are raked and safe, the water is calm and clear, lunch is already paid for, the loungers are free, there are lifeguards, and you can walk off the ship and be swimming in eleven minutes. With three children that is not nothing. It is the easiest good day of any cruise.

What costs extra, which is most of it. The water park, the balloon, the overwater cabanas, the beach club, the private beds. A family of five can add several hundred dollars to a day that was supposed to be included. Decide before you board, not on the pier.

What is not there. Bahamians who are not working, prices in a shop, a road, a town, a church, a school run, anybody’s ordinary Tuesday. Nothing about the day tells your children a single true thing about the country they are technically standing in.

How I would use it. Book the cruise for the ship and the ease, take the private island day for what it is, and then put Nassau or a boat trip on the itinerary as the day where you actually go somewhere. One of each is a good week.

Yes, the swimming pigs are real and they live at Big Major Cay. It is a real thing rather than a staged one, they swim out to boats, and every operator in the chain runs a version of it. Go with a small boat rather than a big group and go early.

Tropic of Cancer Beach on Little Exuma is three miles of white sand with almost nobody on it. This is what people picture when they picture the Bahamas and it is nothing like a cruise pier.

Compass Cay nurse sharks and Thunderball Grotto. The grotto is the cave from the Bond film and you swim into it at low tide. These are the two excursions that consistently come back described as the best day of the trip.

Getting there is the barrier and it is the whole reason it stays good. Direct flights into George Town from Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Atlanta, Charlotte and Toronto, or a short hop from Nassau. It is not a day trip from a ship and it never will be.

It is not cheap. Small hotels and villas, limited inventory, everything shipped in. Budget more than you would for Nassau and considerably more than for the Dominican Republic. What you get for it is emptiness, which is the one thing the Caribbean has almost run out of.

Junkanoo is not a show, it is the culture. Boxing Day and New Year’s bring out costumes people spend all year building, cowbells, drums, and a parade with roots in enslaved Africans’ brief holiday time off. If your dates land on it, go.

This is 700 islands, not one country. Nassau, the cruise-heavy capital, is a small slice of it. The Family Islands, Exuma, Andros, Eleuthera, Harbour Island, are a different, slower Bahamas.

The swimming pigs are real, and so is the debate about them. Locals have mixed feelings about how the pigs are treated by tour operators. Book with an operator that limits crowding and does not feed them junk, it matters.

Conch is not just food, it is identity. You will see empty conch shells piled at fish shacks everywhere. Cracked conch, conch salad, conch fritters, it shows up in some form at almost every meal.

Taxi fares are fixed by zone and are not metered. Agree the fare before you get in and check if it is per person or per trip, because in Nassau it is often quoted per person. Two adults and three children can be five fares.

The jitneys are the real transport. Small private buses on numbered routes around New Providence, a couple of dollars, and they are how the island actually moves. Not for the airport run with luggage, excellent for Cable Beach to town.

Between islands it is a plane or a fast ferry. Bahamasair and a handful of small carriers, plus the ferry from Nassau to Harbour Island and Eleuthera. The mail boat still runs and is cheap, slow and not a plan with children.

They drive on the left in American cars. Left hand traffic with the steering wheel on the left as well, which is a odd combination at a junction. Round the outer islands a golf cart is the normal hire and it is the right call.

Almost everything is imported and taxed. There is very little agriculture. A sandwich and a drink runs American resort prices and then some. Twenty five dollars for lunch per person is normal rather than unlucky, and a family dinner out is expensive.

VAT is ten percent and it is on top. Add a resort levy and a service charge and the number on the menu can become about thirty percent more by the time it reaches the bill. Read the bottom of the bill before you tip on top of it.

Getting between islands is the hidden cost. Nassau to George Town or Harbour Island is a domestic flight, a ferry or a charter, and none of them are cheap. A two island trip costs a lot more than one island plus a day boat.

Where the value actually is. Grand Bahama is meaningfully cheaper than New Providence. All inclusive stock is thin here compared to the Dominican Republic, so if a fixed budget is the point, this is not the island group for it. If clear water is the point, it is the best in the region and worth paying for.

Decide between Nassau, Grand Bahama, and the Family Islands early. Nassau is the easy first trip and the cruise hub. The Family Islands, Exuma especially, are where the water gets otherworldly and the crowds thin out.

A cruise day in Nassau is not the same trip as staying there. If you have only ever seen the Bahamas from a cruise ship, know that it is a fair introduction but not the full picture. Come back and stay a while if it grabbed you.

Island hopping means small planes, budget for it. Getting from Nassau to Exuma or Eleuthera usually means a short domestic flight. Build that time and cost into the plan rather than assuming ferries cover everything.

A week is enough for one island group, not three. Pick Nassau and a Family Island, not Nassau and three Family Islands. The inter-island logistics eat more of your week than people expect.

Nassau and Paradise Island. One or two days. Atlantis if the children want the water park, the fish fry at Arawak Cay, and the beach. Enough for a first taste and the cruise stop.

The Exumas. The pigs at Big Major Cay, the sharks at Compass Cay, the sandbars at low tide. The day trip everyone books and the island week I would build instead.

Harbour Island. Pink sand, golf carts instead of cars, and a small village of pastel houses. The splurge stay for families who want quiet.

Eleuthera. Glass Window Bridge, the queen’s baths, empty beaches and a rental car. The island for families who like to explore on their own.

Andros or Bimini. The blue holes and the third largest barrier reef on earth off Andros, or a quick hop to Bimini for a fishing family. Either one for a second trip.

A private boat charter to the Exuma Cays. The swimming pigs, Thunderball Grotto, and a sandbar lunch, done on your own boat rather than a crowded group tour, is worth the extra cost if it fits the budget.

One or two nights in the Exumas or Eleuthera. You do not need a full week away from Nassau to see the difference, but even a couple of nights on a quieter island resets the whole trip.

A guided dive or blue hole trip on Andros. This is not something to figure out casually. A proper guide who knows the reef and the holes is worth paying for.

A half day bonefishing charter. The flats fishing here is world class. If anyone in your group fishes, this is the splurge they will talk about for years.

The Bahamas are not in the Caribbean Sea. They are in the Atlantic, north of it, on the same latitude as southern Florida. That is why the water color is different, why the winters are cooler, and why the sea can be rougher than people expect.

Pink sand is a real thing. Harbour Island’s beach gets its color from crushed red foraminifera shells mixed into white sand. It is subtle rather than neon and it is pink at the water line in the morning.

Andros has the largest concentration of blue holes on earth and the third largest barrier reef, and almost nobody goes. It is the biggest island in the country by land area and one of the least visited places in the western Atlantic.

You clear US customs before you leave. Nassau has US preclearance, so you land back in America as a domestic arrival. With tired children at the end of a trip this is a much bigger deal than it sounds.

Paradise Island. Five nights. Atlantis for the water slides and the aquarium, the beach, a day pass if you stay next door. The easiest big trip from Florida.

The Exumas. Four nights. Swimming pigs, nurse sharks at Compass Cay, water that does not look real. Fly to Georgetown or take a boat day from Nassau.

Eleuthera or Harbour Island. Three nights. Pink sand, golf carts, a rented house, nothing to do and that is the point.