The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Pigs and putts in paradise on a dream trip to the Bahamas
Hurricane Dorian caused devastation when it swept through the Bahamas. But it’s business as usual in Great Exuma, discovers David Young
I entryt’s a question sure to interrupt any daydream: “What should you do if chased by a swimming pig?”
I’m enjoying a lavish breakfast in the Bahamian haven of Great Exuma, ruminating about swing flaws and missed putts, when my wife comes across a guidebook she feels merits my attention. Kerri’s query conjures a somewhat alarming prospect.
I’m in the Bahamas ostensibly to brush up on a flagging golf game at Sandals Emerald Bay resort; not flee the trotters of an enraged waterborne hog.
Thankfully, it transpires the worldrenowned swimming pigs who’ve made an uninhabited Bahamian island their home are not aggressive pursuers; they’re just not very good at stopping.
As they’ve only been at it for 15 years (swimming, that is), I suppose evolution hasn’t yet equipped them with physiology suited to the amphibious life they’ve unexpectedly embraced.
There are several local legends as to how a small group of pigs ended up on Big Major Cay, one of around 360 islands that make up the idyllic Exumas region.
Some say they were left by sailors who intended to return to cook them but never did; others claim they were washed ashore from a shipwreck.
As the tour boat approaches “Pig Island”, our guide MJ insists it was the work of a local farmer, who thought its water hole and vegetation made it the perfect place to plump up his livestock.
The engine noise rouses the resident 20 pigs and piglets from their sunbathe. Snorting loudly, they trot down to shore and start paddling out toward us.
“The pigs were smart,” MJ adds. “They learned to swim and saved themselves. No one’s going to eat those pigs now.”
And he’s right. The swimming pigs have become a sensation, drawing thousands of visitors keen to tick off the surprise “bucket list” experience.
“We call him Kung Fu Panda,” MJ shouts, a bucket of vegetables under his arm as he wades between the inquisitive stingrays gliding around our feet. He’s pointing at a hefty black-and-white chap who’s chugging at pace in my direction. “Watch out – he’s a kicker!” Luckily, I avoid a kick as Kung Fu Panda instead halts his momentum by clumsily bumping his snout into my stomach. A couple of carrots and an obligatory selfie later and he’s off again, paddling unsteadily towards his next food-bearing human buffer stop.
Swimming with the pigs is the highlight of a packed afternoon trip around the Exumas with Island Routes tours – a rollick that also includes reef snorkelling, peeking at the island homes of the rich and famous, and a stop at a beach populated by hundreds of endangered Bahamian rock iguanas.
It comes midway through our week
on Great Exuma. Our home is a fabulous beach-side house at Sandals’ acclaimed all-inclusive resort, which sits like a jewel on the mile-long unspoiled sand that wraps around Emerald Bay.
Our plan, swimming with pigs aside, revolves around golf and relaxation.
Not that Rich Gibson goes in for much relaxation on the range. The veteran golf pro at Sandals’ championship Greg Norman-designed course, delights in keeping his students on their toes.
“Imagine you’re swinging at the girl who stole your lunch money at school,” he jokes, urging Kerri to hit harder.
My wife’s a complete novice and I’m seriously out of practice. Gibby, as he’s known to the sun-seeking golfers who come back to play this spectacular ocean-front course year after year, tailors our block of lessons accordingly.
“Why are you lying to me?” he demands with faux outrage, as Kerri pings a drive 150 yards down the middle. “A beginner? You’re no beginner?”
His disarming manner makes learning fun. “I guess this is the best job in the world,” he concedes, and watching the boats bob in the azure sea around the rocky outcrop that cradles the 13th green, I find it hard to argue.
But not everything in Great Exuma’s recent past has been plain sailing.
Rich rolls his eyes as I ask about an infamous episode that made headlines around the world – the Fyre Festival.
The disastrous music party is now a byword for how not to stage an event.
Announced in a blaze of publicity and promoted by an array of supermodels and influencers, fans who shelled out thousands on the promise of the world’s best acts, luxury villa accommodation and gourmet dining arrived in April 2017 to discover a scattering of damp tents, prepacked sandwiches and a mass pullout of the billed stars.
Jeremy Mutton, the English-born general manager of Sandals Emerald Bay, is relieved he trusted his gut and refused to participate in the event. But he believes the festival’s notoriety may ultimately benefit the Exumas.
“It has shown a whole new generation of people just how beautiful this place is,” he explains as we chat at the hotel.
Great Exuma is stunning, but its character is arguably as compelling – doors lie unlocked, there are no fast food outlets and just one main road.
“I describe it as an innocence,” says Jeremy. “Back home, we lost that years ago. I hope it’s never lost here.”
With around a dozen restaurants, six bars, a huge zero-entry pool, tennis courts, a luxuriant spa and wellequipped gym, and even the services of a team of attentive butlers if desired, you can easily find reason never to step foot outside Sandals’ real estate.
But Sunday served up a persuasive exception, when a short boat trip took us to nearby Stocking Island and the charming Chat ‘n’ Chill, a rustic and lively beach restaurant famed for its Bahamian roast and conch salad.
Our time at Sandals comes weeks before Christmas – a day when the resort hosts around 70 orphans, flown to the island by Bahamas Air pilots who volunteer their time to give some of the country’s most needy children an unforgettable experience. That we spot several guests helping to wrap presents speaks to a sense of community the hotel aims to unobtrusively foster.
Like the resort’s weekly guest trips to read to local schoolchildren, it’s an initiative of the Sandals Foundation – which only months earlier was involved in the emergency response to one of the Bahamas’ worst natural disasters.
Hurricane Dorian devastated several islands in September, including Abaco and Grand Bahama. Though it was the strongest tropical cyclone to ever hit the Bahamas, most of its 700 islands escaped unscathed. The destruction was confined to the northern tip of a country that spans 500 miles of ocean.
While rebuilding is now the priority in the areas pummelled by Dorian, for the rest of this tourism-reliant nation, there is an understandable desire to get the message out that paradise still awaits.
And await it does – nowhere more so than in the Exumas.
Just watch out for kicking pigs...