Mayaguana

Mayaguana is the most easterly island in the Bahamas, about two hundred and eighty square kilometres with fewer than three hundred people living in three settlements, and it is the least visited of all the inhabited islands. It kept an airstrip built as a missile tracking station in the 1950s, which is why it has flights at all. The reef along the south side is large, healthy and essentially unstudied by divers; the flats are unfished; and the beaches on the north coast run for kilometres with nobody on them. The Bahamian rock iguana survives on offshore cays here. A long-planned resort development has never materialised.

What you actually see

• Abraham's Bay - the main settlement and its protected harbour.
• The south-side reef - large and barely dived.
• The empty north beaches - kilometres of sand with nobody on them.
• Rock iguanas - surviving on the offshore cays.

When to go

December to May is the dry season. Flights run a few days a week from Nassau and are subject to change. Everything on the island depends on the mail boat schedule, so stock levels vary through the week.

Honest expectations

There is almost nothing here: a couple of guesthouses, one or two places to eat if they are open, and a shop whose stock depends on the boat. There is no dive operator, no car hire in the usual sense, and limited fuel. Medical facilities are minimal. This is for people who specifically want to be somewhere with nothing, not for anyone expecting a holiday.

Nearby

Inagua is southwest; Crooked Island and Acklins are northwest.