Swimming Pigs from Nassau: Rose Island, the Exumas, or the Express Trip

Search for swimming pigs in Nassau and you will find 43 tours from €58.60. They are not variations of the same day out. They are three quite different trips, they differ in price by a factor of thirteen, and the titles do very little to tell them apart.

Here is what actually separates them.

The short version

Twenty-five minutes out of Nassau there are pigs on Rose Island, on Athol Island and on Pearl Island. These are resident herds, kept at private beach clubs. Half a day, roughly €59 to €125.

An hour out by powerboat are the northern Exuma cays. Full day, around €260 to €430, and the pigs there also live on an operator’s private island.

Pig Beach itself — Big Major Cay, the uninhabited cay whose pigs made the whole thing famous — is 89 miles (143 km) from Nassau. Reaching it and coming back in a day costs €429 and up. A €750 fly-in day is sold as well, but its listing promises only “the famed Exuma pigs” — it does not name Big Major Cay.

All three put you in clear water next to a pig. Only the third one is the place in the photographs.

Why the names don’t help

“Pig Beach” has become a label rather than an address.

The operator of the three-hour express trip (€69.36, 4.1 stars from 246 reviews) writes in its own description: “Cruise out of Nassau and in just 25 minutes you’ll arrive at Pig Beach on Athol Island.” That is honest and specific — it names the island. It is also not Big Major Cay.

A well-reviewed catamaran day lists among its inclusions a “Visit to the swimming pigs (Pearl, Rose, or Athol Islands)”. The operator is not being evasive; it genuinely depends on the day, the swell and which beach club has space. But it means the island in your photographs is decided after you have paid.

And the operators of the near-Nassau trips consistently say our pigs: “meet our friendly pigs”, “these gentle, well-cared-for pigs”, “our resident swimming pigs”. That phrasing is the clearest signal available. A herd someone owns and feeds on a schedule is a different proposition from a herd that has lived feral on an uninhabited cay for decades.

Neither is a scam. But if you have travelled a long way specifically for the animals in the viral photographs, the distinction is the whole point.

What the pig encounter costs on top

This is the part that catches people out, and it catches them out at the dock.

On several near-Nassau trips the pigs are an optional extra rather than part of the fare:

• One popular full-day catamaran lists a “Pig Interaction ($30 USD pp)” covering feeding the pigs, swimming with them, holding piglets and photographs. The word “Pig Beach” is in the tour title.
• A €51.80 Rose Island beach day lists “Swimming pigs encounter (Available at Additional Cost)”, alongside lunch and drinks, also at additional cost.

On the booking page, the “included” list and the “not included” list sit directly under one another in the same typeface, with the same bullets. Read which side an item is on before you assume. If a line has a dollar figure attached to it, it is an extra.

The Rose Island water taxi (€58.60, 4.5 stars from 644 reviews) is the cheapest way onto a pig beach from downtown: a 30-minute ferry each way from Señor Frog’s on Woodes Rogers Walk, then three hours on the island. Check its fee list carefully — an island landing fee appears in the small print of several of these trips.

The eight-hour Exuma runs

Two things are sold as “Exuma” from Nassau, and again the difference is real.

Powerboat Adventures’ day trip (€259.87, 4.7 stars from 164 reviews) is eight hours, check-in 8:45am, back in Nassau at 4:30pm. Its own inclusions describe “one hour high-performance speedboat ride to Northern Exumas” and a “visit to Powerboat Adventure’s private island (Ship Channel Cay)”, where you meet “our resident swimming pigs”, iguanas and stingrays, and watch a shark feed. It is a genuine Exuma day and a very well-rated one. It is not Pig Beach.

Born Free’s island-hopping day (€429.30, 4.8 stars from 48 reviews) is the one that publishes a stop-by-stop itinerary, and it names Pig Beach and Big Major Cay. Add up the boat legs in that itinerary — one hour out, then 45, 10, 10, 35, 25 and 70 minutes — and you get close to four hours underway across an eight-hour day. Time listed at Pig Beach: 40 minutes.

That is not a criticism of the trip. It is the arithmetic of 89 miles each way, and it is the single most useful number for deciding whether the real thing is worth it to you. Forty minutes with the original pigs, five island stops, landing fees and lunch included — or three hours on a Rose Island beach for a sixth of the money.

Practical things that decide it for you

If you are off a cruise ship, check the restrictions before anything else. Powerboat Adventures lists “cruise ship guests” under not suitable for on its eight-hour trip — the timings simply do not fit an all-aboard. The near-Nassau operators go the other way and build around it: one Rose Island trip offers 16 pickup points including Nassau Cruise Port, with a 30-minute crossing out and 40 minutes back.

If you have small children, the age limits vary and they are not published in the tour titles. The express trip lists children under 5 as not suitable; the catamaran does the same; the Exuma powerboat sets its line at under 2. One Rose Island beach resort goes the other way and states that children under 3 are free. Check the specific listing — there is no island-wide rule, and the age limit is the one thing worth reading twice before you pay.

If the weather is uncertain, the near-Nassau trips are the safer booking. They run in sheltered water inside the Rose Island chain; the Exuma runs cross open water at speed and are the first to be rescheduled. Most listings offer a free reschedule or full refund for weather cancellations.

How to behave around the animals

They are pigs, not props. They are large, they are quick, and people do get bitten — usually by holding food a moment too long.

For Big Major Cay, the Bahamian tourism board’s own page on the pigs 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”. The same page describes a nursery built for the piglets and separate pens for animals needing treatment, with a veterinarian coming from Nassau. Feeding them crisps, beer or anything from the boat’s bar is not a joke — it is how the animals get sick.

The near-Nassau herds have handlers who will tell you their own rules. Follow those instead of improvising, and keep hold of children.

So which one

If the pigs are a nice hour in a day that is really about turquoise water, take the short trip. You will spend €59 to €125, be back by lunchtime, and the photograph will be indistinguishable.

If you came to the Bahamas for the pigs specifically and want the cay that started it, book the full Exuma day with Big Major Cay named in the itinerary, accept that you will spend half of it on a boat, and go in settled weather.

What doesn’t work is booking on the title alone. Open the itinerary, find the name of the island, and check whether the encounter is in the price.

If you would rather build the pigs into a longer day on the water, there are 56 island tours from €51.80, 41 boat trips from €58.60 and 25 beach club days from €51.80 — most of the good ones combine two or three of these anyway.