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.

History

Lucayans lived here before the Spanish, who carried the last of them off to Hispaniola early in the 16th century, and the island stayed empty until 1812, when people began to come from the Turks and Caicos Islands. The Brazilian historian Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen suggested in 1864 that Mayaguana was Guanahani, Columbus' first landfall, an idea with little support since; HMS Driver, the first steamship to sail round the world, was wrecked here on 3 August 1861, and during Project Mercury and Apollo the United States ran a missile tracking station on what is now Mayaguana Airport (Wikipedia, Mayaguana).

What you'll find

• 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.

Before you go

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.

Key facts