Andros and
the Exumas
T E X T AND PHOTOS BY BERK L E Y WH I T E
ANDROS
It seems impossible that the largest island of an
archipelago could be the best-kept secret. Andros Island
is only 200 miles from Florida and is lined by one of
the largest barrier reefs in the world, but it’s an island
that time passed by. Big jets pass overhead, and cruise
ships skirt its shores, delivering honeymooners and
highrollers to the large hotels, mega-yachts and casinos
of Nassau. My 15-minute flight from Nassau was a time
machine to another world. As I crawled out of the tiny
plane, the large smiles and firm handshakes confirmed
this was my kind of place.
Andros is home to one of the oldest dive facilities in
the world, which served as a base for Jacques Cousteau
and was also where pioneering underwater photographer
David Doubilet cut his teeth as a divemaster, guiding
tourists 175 feet deep week after week.
In my short three-day visit I got only a small taste
of the 2,300-square-mile island that is sliced and diced
by waterways and pocked with hundreds of blue holes.
The most accessible blue hole is a giant one near
Small Hope Bay
. Here your dive begins in a narrow
slot canyon on top of the reef, drifts deeper and finally
emerges into an otherworldly crater the size of a small
stadium. The dramatic lighting and size make you feel
like a true cave explorer, but the magic is you get that
rush without ever going deeper than 100 feet.
As further variation on the blue hole we drove into
the bush to make a brief dive into historic
Cousteau’s
Blue Hole
. We hit this iconic inner-island hole on
a green water cycle but were treated to fragile algae
formations that seemed to ooze from the walls while we
were suspended over an endless black hole to the center
of the earth.
This feeling of being a cave adventurer can easily
be continued on most of the outer-reef dives, where
endless cuts and caverns in the shallow reef dump you
into the rich blue of the outer wall face. The shallow
reef begins in as little as 10 feet of water, and with more
than 60 dive sites available from Small Hope Bay, I left
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Deep in the center of Andros Island, Cousteau’s Blue
Hole is an otherworldly freshwater adventure.
Small Hope Bay on Andros Island
is home to beautiful cracks and
caverns begging to be explored.
