The Bahamas’ secret garden
Andros is the largest, least explored — and most diverse — island in the country’s archipelago
The ankle-twisting trail to the magnificent Rainbow Blue Hole zigzagged around limestone outcrops and past wild orchids, wild coffee plants and sea grape, mahogany and brasiletto trees. Little did we know we were stumbling through nature’s medicine cabinet.
Every few paces along the route on Andros Island promised a cure for what ails you. Golden creeper for a sore throat. Crab bush for stomach distress. When boiled, the shaggy red bark of the gumbo limbo tree yields a healing topical ointment.
It was the morning of the first day of my three-day mission in early September to visit four national parks on Andros, thought to be the largest and least explored inhabited island of the Bahamas archipelago.
Over the course of my whirlwind stay I would snorkel on the world’s third-longest fringing coral reef, tour what may be the only national park dedicated to a crab, get caught in a sea turtle traffic jam on Andros’ vast but rarely visited west side, and leap into the watery home of the mythical Lusca, the half-shark, half-squid said to inhabit the island’s blue holes.
After our medicinal hike, we emerged from the brush. Before us lay a perfectly round lake about the width of a football field. The surface mirrored the brilliant blue sky.
Blue holes are giant sinkholes created when carbonic acid in rainwater eats through porous limestone to expose a subsurface cave. Rain further erodes any irregular features on the edge of the collapsed roof, creating the characteristic round shoreline. More than 350 blue holes exist on Andros, the largest known concentration in the world.
Lightly touristed Andros Island is 167 kilometres long and 64 km at its widest. It lies 248 km southeast of Miami and less than 65 km southwest of Nassau. Only 8,000 people live on the island, mostly in tiny settlements scattered along the east coast. Virtually the entire low-lying western half is uninhabited.
One afternoon I boarded a pontoon dive boat for the Andros Barrier Reef National Park.
I snorkelled a dozen feet over clouds of tiny electric-hued fish that swirled around giant coral heads that erupted from the rubble bottom. A small grouper eyed me warily from beneath a tangle of elkhorn coral. A few yards away, a long-nosed trumpetfish stood on its tail over a patch of bone-white sand.
About 3,000 crabs are estimated to live in every acre of the Crab Replenishment National Park on Andros. I saw exactly none on a two-hour tour through the park with Peter Douglas, head of the Andros Conservancy and Trust.
They were moulting, buried in the mud on the side of the Queen’s Highway. In May and June, the land crabs are on the move. The creatures, with bodies larger than a fist and formidable claws, abandon their mud burrows and rocky crevices at night to travel to the ocean to spawn.
Douglas told the story of the parks, which opened in 2002 after years of frustrating government delays. Local residents helped set park rules and decided what areas to preserve. Blue Holes Park was created to protect the freshwater supply. West Side National Park preserves conch, crayfish, turtle, fish and bird breeding grounds. The marine parks protect the reef. The Crab Replenishment Reserve ensures a supply of crabs for future generations. Nearly two-thirds of Andros lies within park boundaries. My journey to West Side National Park took me on the North Bight channel. The shallow bight, more than a mile wide in places, runs east to west and cuts Andros in half.
Our first stop was to Broad Shad Cay to search for the endangered Andros rock iguana. This lizard can grow to be one metre long and lives only on the west side of Andros.
Fewer than 5,000 now live in the wild, but Broad Shad Cay was crawling with them. The fine white sand was streaked with straight furrows plowed by the lizard’s long tails.
We passed low-lying cays, mangrove estuaries, sand flats, turtle grass beds and shallow channels that snake into the interior.
More than two hours from the dock we emerged out of the North Bight and ran to the mouth of Big Loggerhead Creek. Suddenly, turtles were everywhere. In Florida and most parts of the Bahamas, sea turtle sightings are occasional occurrences. Here they’re routine.
West Side National Park had one more wonder to share. Halfway home, a dark, curved fin emerged in front of the skiff. Then a second.
The dolphin family kept its distance at first. Then a calf broke formation to pass a few feet off our bow. It tilted broadside to look up at me. I thought we made eye contact.