Exuma in a Day from Nassau: Is the Powerboat Trip Worth It?

The Exumas are the postcard: a long chain of cays running southeast from Nassau through water that genuinely is the colour it looks. The problem is the distance. Pig Beach at Big Major Cay is 89 miles (143 km) from Nassau, and there is no bridge and no ferry you would want to take there and back in a day.

So what gets sold as an “Exuma day trip” from Nassau is a compromise, and there are three quite different versions of it. The prices run from €259.87 to €750, and the cheapest is not a lesser version of the dearest — it goes somewhere else.

Version one: the northern Exumas, about €260

Powerboat Adventures’ day trip (€259.87, 4.7 stars from 164 reviews) is eight hours: check-in 8:45am, departure at nine, back in Nassau at 4:30pm.

Its own inclusions are precise about where it goes: “one hour high-performance speedboat ride to Northern Exumas” and a “visit to Powerboat Adventures’ private island (Ship Channel Cay)”. There you meet “our resident swimming pigs”, feed iguanas and stingrays, and watch a shark feed. Lunch is a buffet, the bar is open and unlimited, there are bathrooms on the boat and on the island, and the crew run a conch salad demonstration.

It is one of the best-rated full days in Nassau, and it sells itself as “the original Exuma day trip” — the listing claims 30+ years, the operator’s own website over twenty. It is a real Exuma day — Ship Channel Cay is genuinely in the Exuma chain. What it is not is Pig Beach.

Two restrictions to read before booking: the operator lists cruise ship guests under not suitable for, along with children under 2, pregnant women, and people with back or heart problems. An eight-hour day that returns at half past four does not fit an all-aboard time, and they would rather say so than strand you.

Version two: the full run to Big Major Cay, €430 and up

Born Free’s island-hopping day (€429.30, 4.8 stars from 48 reviews) publishes a stop-by-stop itinerary with minutes, and it is worth reading even if you book something else — it shows what a day at this distance can physically contain.

Laid out in order: one hour by speedboat, 25 minutes with the iguanas, 45 minutes running, 35 minutes with the sharks, ten minutes running, 40 minutes at Pig Beach, ten minutes running, an hour for lunch at a restaurant, 35 minutes running, half an hour snorkelling a sunken plane wreck, 25 minutes running, half an hour swimming off a beach or sandbar, and 70 minutes home.

Add the boat legs: four hours and a quarter underway, in an eight-hour day. The time in the water and on land comes to three hours forty.

That is not a flaw in the tour. It is what 89 miles each way costs, and the operator is being straight with you by printing it. But it is the number that should decide your booking. Forty minutes with the famous pigs, five island stops, landing fees, buffet lunch and snorkel gear included — against three unhurried hours on a Rose Island beach for a sixth of the price.

The listing also notes that the “order of itinerary is subject to change and is left to the discretion of the Captain”. Wind decides which cays are workable on the day.

A second operator runs the same route — Allen’s Cay for the iguanas, Compass Cay for the nurse sharks, then Pig Beach at Big Major Cay (€452.13) — with a hot lunch at a local restaurant and time on a sandbar afterwards, tide permitting. It is a newer listing with very few reviews so far, so book it on the itinerary rather than on the rating. Bring passport or ID and a credit card; both are on its list of things to carry.

Version three: fly, €750

There is a fly-in premium beach day (€750, 4.7 stars from 138 reviews) that swaps four hours of boat for a short flight, then does the pigs, a snorkel, the sharks and a sandbar.

Whether that is extravagant or sensible depends on how you value the day. Three times the money removes the single worst part of the boat version, which is the last leg home.

The part nobody warns you about: the run back

Everything about these days is built around getting out there. The return is the bit people remember.

You will be tired, salted, sunburnt if you were careless, and the wind usually freshens through the afternoon. A 70-minute leg at speed into a building chop at four in the afternoon is a different experience from the same leg outbound at nine in the morning.

Practical consequences:

• Sit amidships on the way back, not at the bow.
• The open-bar days are longer than they look. Eight hours of sun, salt and free rum is a combination that finishes people off before the boat docks. Drink water.
• If anyone in the party gets seasick, this is the trip that will find out. Talk to a pharmacist before you travel; don’t improvise on the dock. What helps without anything else: the morning slot, a seat low and central, and eyes on the horizon.
• Take the weather seriously. These crossings are open water. Operators generally offer a reschedule or a full refund if they cancel, but a marginal day that runs is worse than a cancelled one. If your trip is on your last day in Nassau, you have no room to reschedule.

About the animals

The iguanas at Allen’s Cay are native Bahamian rock iguanas, and the crews feed them from sticks at arm’s length for a reason — a hand that smells of grapes looks exactly like a grape.

The nurse sharks at Compass Cay are used to people and the crews handle them daily. They are not aggressive animals. They are also large animals with teeth that will use them if grabbed, stood on or cornered, so do what the crew says and keep children within reach.

For the pigs, the Bahamian tourism board’s own page on Big Major Cay is specific: a trough has been installed as the designated feeding place, so the animals do not swallow sand and saltwater with their food, and only “fruits, vegetables, bread, and pig feed that can be purchased locally”. Anything from the boat’s bar is not a treat, it is a veterinary problem.

So: worth it?

Yes, if the Exuma cays themselves are the reason you came to the Bahamas, you have a settled-weather day to spare, and you understand you are buying a boat ride with stops rather than a day at a destination.

No, if what you actually want is to meet a pig in clear water. That is available 25 minutes from Nassau for a fraction of the price, and the photographs are indistinguishable — the comparison is set out in which swimming pig trip is which.

Also no if you are on a cruise call. The timings do not work, and at least one operator says so outright on its booking page.

For a shorter day on the water there are 56 island tours from €51.80 and 41 boat trips from €58.60; the four-hour compromise most people end up taking is the three-island day.