Andros

Andros is bigger than all the other Bahamian islands put together and holds fewer than eight thousand people, most of them along the eastern shore. It is really three islands separated by tidal creeks, with a vast interior of pine forest, mangrove and wetland that almost nobody enters. Along the eastern edge runs the Andros Barrier Reef, about 225 kilometres long and among the longest coral reefs in the world, with the Tongue of the Ocean dropping to more than a kilometre and a half just beyond it. The western side is flats: hundreds of square kilometres of shallow water that make Andros one of the world's premier bonefishing destinations.

History

The Lucayans, a branch of the Taíno, lived here, leaving remains in Morgan's Cave on North Andros and the Stargate Blue Hole on South Andros, and called the island Habacoa; the Spanish named it Espiritu Santo, Amerigo Vespucci mapped part of its east coast in 1499-1500, and from 1509 the Spanish carried Lucayans off as labour to Hispaniola. Pirates and buccaneers used the island in the late 1600s and 1700s, Morgan's Bluff and Morgan's Cave are named after Henry Morgan, and Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution settled here; the present name is believed to honour Sir Edmund Andros, governor of New York and New England (Wikipedia, Andros, The Bahamas).

Highlights

• The barrier reef - about 225 kilometres of reef running along the east coast.
• The Tongue of the Ocean - a drop to over 1,500 metres just offshore.
• Bonefishing flats - vast shallow water on the western side.
• Blue holes - hundreds of them; the inland freshwater holes in the pine forest are swimmable, the ocean holes are technical dives.

When to go

December to May is the dry season. Bonefishing is good year-round with the best conditions in spring and autumn. Diving on the reef and blue holes is best in the calm winter months. Mosquitoes and sandflies in the interior are severe from summer onward.

What to expect

Andros has almost no roads across it and travel between the three main sections often means flying or taking a boat; the airports are far apart and picking the wrong one adds hours. Accommodation is mostly fishing lodges at high prices. Sandflies and mosquitoes are genuinely bad. Blue hole diving is technical and several are for trained cave divers only.

Nearby

Nassau is a twenty-minute flight east; the Berry Islands are north.

Key facts