Great Exuma Island has an international airport (George Town, GGT) with flights from several major cities including Miami, Ft Lauderdale, Atlanta and Toronto, but you can catch more flights on smaller airlines from all around the Bahamas islands, or fly to Nassau first, which has more connections to the US. It's probably best to plan ahead when booking your trip to the Bahamas, as there are limited flights and once they are booked up, you will be out of choices or need to charter a smaller plane.

There are plenty of people who also choose to boat around these islands, arriving from all over the globe. For a more secluded vacation, there are a few smaller airstrips on cays to the north of the main island, bringing you closer to some of the famous sandbars and the swimming pigs.

English is the main language of the Bahamas, making the Bahamas easy to navigate and do business in, with some people also speaking an English based Creole dialect. About 70% of the Bahamaian economy relies on tourism, with another portion of the economy coming from offshore banking. When visiting the Bahamas, you'll probably consider the prices to be fairly high, as tourists visit here from all over the world. Restaurant prices and grocery stores tend to be expensive, but once you think about how far the food has to travel to get here, it makes sense. There is not a lot of local farming on the islands.

The currency used is the Bahamian Dollar, which is pegged 1:1 to the US Dollar and has been since 1966! You can use either currency freely or use both in one transaction, and you'll often be given change in the Bahamian dollar. You'll sometimes be charged a credit card fee for larger transactions (such as our boat trip), so planning ahead and bringing cash is a good idea. VAT is also 10%, so these charges do add up!

We recommend renting a car to get around any of the Bahamas Islands! We rented our car from Thompson's Car Rental, located right next to the airport, but you can find several other small car rental agencies nearby. The best way to check them out is to read reviews on Google maps and then make sure to contact a few over email or phone to get quotes before deciding. You won't find the big rental agencies here on Exuma, so don't be afraid to go local. Driving is on the left side of the road but most of the rental cars seem to keep the steering wheel on the left, which makes driving feel relatively normal. The roads are straightforward with just one main road for most of the island (The Queen's Highway) and very little traffic to contend with. The biggest worry becomes a decent amount of pot holes or the edges of the pavement being worn away, making the roads narrow at times. Off the main road, you'll encounter packed dirt and rocks with some roads being a litle tricky but still all drivable in our Kia Sorento rental.

Great Exuma is 37 miles long and you can take a small bridge that connects it to Little Exuma in the South for another 10 miles or so. Driving from one end to the other will take you about an hour, or a little more, depending on how comfortable you are with dodging the pavement issues. In our week on Exuma, we covered the island, from top to bottom.

We recommend staying around the North side George Town area if renting a place on Exuma island, or the beach we visited on our last day Flamingo Beach. When traveling with more than 2 people, renting a nice house on the beach becomes more relaxing than staying at a resort. We rented a house on a long stretch of powdery white sand beach to the north of George Town. I'm not sure the name of the beach but you can look for Schneider Herbert Reef on Google maps and there are many houses for rent along that beach. We had 2-3 grocery stores within a 5-10 minute drive, which wasn't a big deal compared to being on the other ends of the island where you may have a couple local convenience stores only. We had originally looked into staying on the popular Tropic of Cancer beach, but after visiting there on a day trip, realized it would have been much less convenient to obtain food and groceries there.

Another place worth considering but more difficut to stay would be a resort or rental on Stocking Island, across the bay from our island but popular for several beaches, restaurant bars, snorkeling, and also known to have some hiking on the island. We wanted to visit Stocking Island by boat, but the high winds on our last several days kept us from doing so.

Full Day Boat Trip to the Exuma Cays

A full day boat trip is definitely one of our "must do" activities while visiting Exuma. There are a handful of boat companies, but upon comparison, they are all pretty similar and all have amazing reviews online. Be prepared to spend quite a bit on this, as prices are all around $300pp. If you have a large party, you may be able to go for slightly less than that by paying for the entire boat. Our boat tour had 17 people plus crew, and it seemed like a lot but ended up being fine. Most boats also include drinks (water, sodas, beer and Bahamian goombay smash rum drink) and conch salad. We went out with Coastline Adventures, and were very happy with the experience.

With a triple motor speed boat, we traversed 120 miles round trip through the Exuma cays which extend off the main island and stretch north. Along the way, we stopped a bunch of times. We visited a beach with native Bahamas iguanas, very eager for us to arrive and feed them some plain crackers. We stopped for conch diving, where a couple of our crew, plus Bryan and Cody, jumped in the water to search for fresh conch, coming up with quite a few that would later be made into our fresh conch salad. After passing by Tim McGraw and Faith Hill's expansive vacation home on another cay, we briefly snorkeled around a plane wreck near Staniel Cay, where a drug runner plane crashed in the 1970's.

After that, we snorkeled into the Thunderball Grotto, an underwater cave system on a very small cay where you pass through a small opening at sea and it opens up into a large cavern with sea below and sky above. A scene from the 1963 James Bond film Thunderball was filmed here. Being inside the cave was not scary and other than seeing the fish underwater, you could even do this without a snorkel. From there, we visited the nurse sharks, where you can pay an extra $15pp cash for the chance to hold and walk around the water with SO MANY nurse sharks, big and small. We enjoyed taking our pictures with them one at a time and it was definitely a once in a lifetime experience to hold a fairly large shark with your two hands. We stopped at a sandbar where you could walk out for a long time on the sand with the blue water all around you, where we ate our fresh conch salad prepared by our crew, and more goombay smash.

Finally, the swimming pigs, at our furthest point north! The pigs are adapted to living on the sandy beach and eager for visiting boats to arrive. You can feed or pet them in the water, walk on the beach with them, or admire the baby pigs sleeping under the covered roof. After that, it was back to Great Guana Cay where we stopped for a late 3pm lunch at Deshamon's Restaurant for an all you can eat buffet. The food was excellent, with chicken, rice, mac and cheese, watermelon, fried fish, ribs, etc for $30pp plus drinks. If you're looking to save $, you could also bring a picnic lunch and eat outside instead, but we weren't that prepared! A long boat ride back and we returned to the dock around 5pm, a very full day!

Tropic of Cancer Beach and Little Exuma

We had heard that Tropic of Cancer Beach was the best beach on the island, so we had to check it out. It was a very windy day, and so we only had some of our party who wanted to make the drive to another beach where it would probably be just as windy! The drive takes you to the southern part of Great Exuma, where the road gets narrow and there are more potholes to contend with. You will cross a small one way bridge over to Little Exuma Island, where there are several beaches on the left side that we didn't have time to check out before getting to Tropic of Cancer beach. You turn down a more rugged dirt road for the last 1/4 mile and arrive at the beach. It was pretty much just as windy there, but you could see how on a calm day, this bay would be spectacular with turquoise blue water and two closer islands to snorkel or paddle board to. The waves were quite rough for us but we still spent time enjoying the beach and Bryan snorkeled out to the islands. There is a small beach bar on site and several restaurants on Little Exuma within a 5 minute drive to visit for lunch. Overall. it was worth a visit, but perhaps avoid a windy day, unless it's your only choice, like us. And yes, in case you were wondering... the actual Tropic of Cancer line does cross the beach!

Exuma Point Beach and Sandbar

Our other "must do" on the island, the Exuma Point Beach, we enjoyed our final day after the wind finally quit. Our flight wasn't until 5:30pm and we had to be out of our rental house by 10am, so we headed North to the tip of the island where there is a large sandbar beach. You should try to arrive a few hours before the low tide, so you can see the dramatic difference. When we first got there, you could still walk out super far without getting any depper than your waist, and we were very impressed. But by the time we left there around 2pm, the sand had increased dramatically! Make sure to check out the tide chart in advance if you want to experience this change, but otherwise, there is probably not a bad time to go there. Supposedly, you can find sand dollars, although we did not. During the lower tide, we saw a lot of conchs, both living or not, and a few starfish, both living, that we took pictures of. Make sure to enjoy this unique place on Exuma, as finding sandbars like this around the world is a special treat! We had brought our own drinks and leftover snacks from the house, but there was a very friendly local man selling drinks out of his car.

Boating to Stocking Island (weather permitting)

One of the popular things to do on Exuma is to visit Stocking Island, situated just across the bay from George Town. You can get there several ways, either by water taxi service (we heard the charge is around $15pp), or you can rent a boat for the day and explore the island on your own. We were receommended Minns Water Sports, where you can rent a boat for less than $300 per day. We had hoped to be able to do this on one of our final days, but the constant wind and extremely rough water conditions kept us away. On the island, there is supposedly very good snorkeling and beaches (honestly beaches are great everywhere in the Bahamas!), some hiking trails, and the famous Chat N Chill beach bar, the Coconut Club, and several resorts. You can also pay to take a half or full day boat tour around the island, but it will probably cost you almost as much as the Exuma cays tours.

Scuba Diving (plan ahead!)

We usually don't find that we need to plan ahead and schedule specific dive days, when traveling around most of the world. However, there is only one dive shop on the island of Exuma, so it's better to plan ahead in this case and hope for good weather. We contacted the dive shop Dive Exuma, located in George Town, after arriving on the island, and unfortunately, they were booked up for the entire week! We asked to be put on a list in case of cancellations, but never heard from them, even despite the extra windy weather we experienced. Supposedly, there are a few shallow wreck dives, as well as a few blue hole dives, and seeing sharks is always a possibility in the Bahamas!

Overall, the food in the Bahamas Islands is similar to other Caribbean cuisine. You will find a lot of chicken wings, conch fritters, conch salad, other fish such as grouper, with rice, fries or mac and cheese for sides. During our stay on Exuma, we arrived on a Sunday, which was the worst day for both grocery stores and restaurants being open. We ate out our first night after being turned away at our first choice, but for the majority of the rest of the nights, we ended up shopping at the local grocery stores and cooking at the house for most meals. Below, find a review of the restaurants we visited, along with reviews of the local grocery stores!

Here are a few of the places we dined at / shopped at over our week stay:

Shirley's Seafood Restaurant - Dinner - Our first dinner on the island, Shirley's is situated in the "Fish Fry" area, a cluster of small to medium sized restaurants and food stands on the beach just north of George Town. We tried a sampling of a few entrees including hot wings, seafood mac and cheese and chicken parm with fries, and were pleased with the selection.

Tropic Breeze - Little Exuma - Lunch - Ignoring the horribly slow service, and the swarms of flies that honed in on the food the second it came out (probably not their fault), the food deserves some credit. Made by a proud chef who truly cares and will show it by greeting and conversing with his customers. We had the lobster bites, parmesean fries and jerk chicken wings, all of them extremely tasty! This is one of the restaurants very close to the Tropic of Cancer beach if you make it down to this part of Little Exuma. It's right on the beach and you can enjoy the waves crashing as you eat.

Smitty's Grocery - Shopping - One of the larger groceries, we went here first. After the initial price shock, think $9-10 for the smallest box of cereal or $9 juice, etc, we were able to shop for dinner and breakfast staples here. There is a small produce section and we chose to buy our meats elsewhere but this store has a good variety of dry goods and freezer items including ice cream. There is a liquor store next door, where the prices will also shock you ($50 case of beer), but one of the larger options on the island.

Prime Island Meats, Deli and Grocery - Shopping - Our favorite store on the island, we visited almost every day! It was also the closest to our house, so we really lucked out. You can tell that this deli / grocery sources quality items that will appeal to visitors and locals alike. It was almost always filled with customers. They have a large selection of fresh meat and seafood, and also deli meats and cheeses. There was also a decent offering of produce, dairy and dry goods. We found lobster tails here for $12-15 each, which we combined with steak for dinner twice during our week stay.

Exuma Markets - Shopping - By far the largest grocery store that we visited, it's located right in the center of George Town. We stopped here to pick up some mahi mahi filets for dinner one night as well as a few other items on our way back from Little Exuma.

Blu on the Water - Dinner - Situated a bit of a drive South of George Town, we visited this restaurant for Jaimie's birthday dinner. It was definitely more of an upscale place compared to many of the other restaurants. It was quite popular with tourists, and they have both indoor and outdoor seating. There was a steel drum performer to entertain while we ate. We enjoyed the lobster tails, seafood risotto, fresh fish and salad along with wine selection.

CocoPlum Bistro - Lunch - Perhaps the best food came on our last day just before heading to the airport. Located on the beach, CocoPlum Bistro is surrounded by small single room cottages. We ate indoors with the cool A/C after our hours on the beach at Exuma Point. We enjoyed our fish tacos, ahi tuna bowl, fish and chips, and burger with fries with drinks. Afterward, we walked out on Flamingo Beach, a popular place with many houses (perhaps for rent?) along the shoreline.