Day Trips from Nassau

The Exumas' headline act: you skim across glass-clear water, tie up at Big Major Cay, and thirty porkers paddle straight for your lens. After the photo frenzy you duck into Thunderball Grotto where yellowtails wheel through sunbeams, then lunch on grilled lobster at the yacht-club dock while nurse sharks glide beneath the planks.

Barely 30 minutes east of Nassau yet the sand is free of footprints. You drop anchor on a waist-deep bar the shade of Blue Curacao, wade to a fringing reef where green turtles graze on turtle grass, then barbecue freshly cracked conch on the beach while the guide strums a rake-and-scrape riff.

A former dolphin-research outpost turned mellow beach retreat. After a 25-minute glide past colonial cannon forts you step onto powder sand littered with coconut husks and spend the day kayaking stingray-thick mangroves, dozing in palm-shade hammocks, and sipping sky-juice (coconut water + gin) straight from the shell.

A 15-minute flight dumps you on the planet's third-largest barrier reef. You pole through red-mangrove creeks scented with crushed lime leaves, plunge into inland blue holes the color of sapphire gin, then lunch on crack conch beside a driftwood shack where the radio spits out rake-and-scrape hits.

You rumble across the Tongue on the morning mail boat, then golf-cart along lanes edged with white picket and pastel clapboard. The beach blushes rose under bare soles, and you snorkel coral gardens so shallow you hear parrotfish crunching coral. Lunch is a lobster quesadilla at Sip Sip chased by a lemongrass daiquiri.

A pocket-size private cay 30 minutes from Prince George Dock. You scale a 38-foot 1940s lighthouse for 360-degree views of candy-striped cargo ships, then wade into a hidden lagoon where starfish carpet the sand like orange confetti. Hickory smoke and lime-pepper snapper sizzle drift from the beach barbecue.

A full-day powerboat dash that threads 365 cays. You comb iguana-packed Allan Cay, snorkel a sunken drug plane draped in purple sea fans, and picnic on a sand spit so narrow you see turquoise on both flanks. When the captain cuts the engine the drone dies to pure silence, just your heartbeat and the hiss of sand collapsing underfoot.

Barely 20 minutes west of downtown Nassau yet you'll paddle through mangrove tunnels echoing with egret clacks, then snorkel over 18th-century plantation stones now plated in fire coral. From the cliff top you catch both the Caribbean's deep indigo and the Tongue's lighter aquamarine in one sweep, an Instagram shot no filter can fake.