Bahamas

📍 Exumas, near Staniel Cay

A blue-lit underwater cave with a domed opening you can swim through — the film set for a Bond underwater scene, thick with fish and shimmering shafts of light. A quintessential snorkel stop.

📍 Big Major Cay, Exumas

The famous beach-dwelling pigs draw the crowds, but the surrounding flat crystal shallows and cays offer genuinely superb easy snorkeling in absurdly clear water.

📍 Central Exumas

Small cays ringed by shallow reefs, grass flats and the occasional coral head — classic Bahamian flats snorkeling with stingrays, turtles and reef fish in water you can see to the bottom.

📍 Long Island / the Exumas marine reserve

Bahamian blue holes are dramatic abrupt sinkholes in the flats. The famous super-deep Dean's is a dive edge, but smaller blue holes are snorkeled from the shallows and are eerie, captivating sights.

Stay with guides around blue holes — conditions and outflow currents can be strong.

📍 Off Andros Island

The Bahamas' largest barrier reef line, with extensive shallow and fringing reef — a wilder, less-developed choice for serious reef time away from the tourist cays.

On the quieter Exuma cays, a family-run fish fry fires up a grill of grouper, conch and whole snapper at sunset, served with peas n' rice under the coconut palms. It's the islands' social ritual, done the way locals do it.

Tip: Order the cracked conch and wash it down with a Sky Juice — gin, coconut water and condensed milk.

Old family bakeries on Nassau's back streets turn out guava duff — a steamed rolled bread of guava and spices finished with warm rum-butter sauce — a traditional Bahamian dessert you rarely see on tourist menus.

Tip: Go mid-morning, when the duff comes out of the pot and the rum butter is still warm.

At village docks around the Exumas, a lone stand shucks conch to order and dices it fresh — conch salad with lime, tomato, onion and scorching Scotch bonnet — squeezed over ice in the midday sun. The freshest thing you'll eat all trip, made while you watch.

Tip: Say 'medium' on the pepper unless you want to earn the locals' respect immediately.