Leisure Island

The calming colour of the water around Great Exuma and the other 700-plus islands in the Bahamas has a ripple effect on the mood on land.

After running the boat through a maze of sandy cays and mangrove channels, my fishing guide, Stevie Ferguson, pulls back on the throttle. We coast to a stop on the edge of a wide, deserted tidal flat – a pane of clear, knee-deep water stretching to the horizon and its distant grandiose clouds. The silence is so dramatic, I feel obliged to whisper. I get out my fly rod, taking care not to clunk the side of the boat. “Beautiful spot,” I tell Stevie. “Oh yeah, man,” he murmurs. “Nice spot.”

Six foot plus and built like a wrestler, Stevie climbs up on the elevated platform at the rear of the skiff, where he takes a minute to spray and polish his sunglasses. One of the hardest things about hunting bonefish is seeing them, and even a good guide can easily put in an hour of hard work before catching sight of some. The people on Great Exuma say no one can spot fish like Stevie; born on the island, he has been guiding since he was 12 years old. He slips on his sunglasses – “You ready, boss?” – leans against his pole and pushes us forward into the realm of our prey. After 20 minutes of silent prowling, Stevie breathes the magic words: “Bonefish, 12 o’clock.”

This is the moment of truth. I begin false casting, trying to get the fly as close to the fish as possible without spooking it. Bonefishing is a tension-filled sport, but I realize it’s just a game – an edgy way of experiencing this extraordinary natural world. Fishermen visit islands as a sort of spiritual homework, and though I’d always heard that Great Exuma was a special place, I’d never been in a hurry to get here. There are so many places to fish in the Bahamas, and I’ve spent a good decade getting to know Eleuthera, Andros, Bimini, the Abacos and the other main islands. But with Exuma still on my list, I decided it was time to take the plunge. As Stevie told me when we were gearing up this morning, “That’s smart, man. You saved the best for last.”

Being shallow isn’t always a negative attribute, especially when it brings some of the best bonefishing in the world.

Somehow I manage a half-decent cast. The fish grabs the fly and takes off at such an absurd speed that the line throws a rooster tail of spray. After 10 minutes of careening back and forth across the tidal flat, the quarry finally comes into sight. My first thought, as always, is, All that fuss from this little guy? Bonefish, smallish and humble with sad-sack eyes, a recessive chin and clownish nose, are too precious to eat, so I remove the fly, take a photo and watch it dart away.

At noon, Stevie anchors the boat in a ridiculously gorgeous lagoon. We sit on the gunwale, our legs in the water, and tuck into ham sandwiches and Kalik beer. While we’re eating, two sharks cruise around the boat, hoping for handouts. They’re not large enough to worry about, and when they come too close, we just kick them away.

Left: Snap up fresh snapper at a roadside (read: oceanside) restaurant, and wash it down with a cold Kalik. Right: Snorkelling is as good a way as any to make new friends.

Stevie wants to know about the other places where I’ve fished. I confess that although I love fishing, I’ve come to Great Exuma because I’ve heard it’s one of the prettiest islands in all of the Caribbean. “I’ll tell you a little tale about Exuma,” Stevie says. “They say God created the world in six days. On the seventh day, He rested. But on the eighth day, He was looking at his work when He thought, You know what? It still needs a little something. It needs one final touch. And that’s when he created Exuma.”

Local fishermen’s lore has it that astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, marvelled at “the turquoise waters and tiny islands strung out like pearls” in the ocean southeast of Florida, and that Mission Control told him he was looking down on the Bahamas. The archipelago consists of some 700 islands and thousands of square kilometres of tidal flats where the sunlight bounces off suspended coral powder to produce an electric-blue radiance that can’t be found on any colour chart. Most of the national territory is just barely out of the water or just barely under it. All that shallow water is nice to look at, but it presented a navigational nightmare for early explorers. In fact, the Spanish dubbed the region baja mar (shallow seas), and many centuries worth of wrecked ships litter the sea bottom.

Great Exuma is actually the biggest of a 190-kilometre-long chain of islands and cays referred to as the Exumas. Once you leave the “capital,” George Town (pop. 1,000), you pretty much have the Queen’s Highway to yourself, which is good since it takes me a while to get accustomed to driving on the left side of the road. Several islanders have told me that there’s no end to the snorkelling reefs and beaches, which sprinkle the shore along the highway and are accessible via unmarked side roads. In fact, there are so many that the local custom is if someone is using the beach, find another one.

Left: When in the Bahamas, do as the Bahamians do: Settle for nothing less than a deserted beach. Right: Look out for traffic on the Queen’s Highway.

Testing this theory, I spend the morning exploring half a dozen beaches and coves. A sort of adolescent petulance takes charge of my search, and I decide that I’m not just looking for a nice beach; I’m looking for the Ultimate Beach. The trouble is, every place I find is perfect and bereft of human life. Not even a footprint. Well, to be honest, at Tropic of Cancer Beach (which is transected by the latitude marking the beginnings of the Tropics), my binoculars pick out a couple strolling hand in hand over a kilometre away. Damn, is there no privacy on this island? By noon, the sun is high overhead and as hot as a heat gun, and it seems appropriate to interrupt my research with lunch. Every 15 minutes or so, the Queen’s Highway passes through a little hamlet or settlement, and in one of them I stop at Santanna’s Grill Pit, a brightly painted open-air restaurant, next to the ocean.

Pulling up a stool, I nod to the dozen-odd patrons who are gathered in the shade under the roof overhang. In a Canadian city, we would all be diligently reading our newspapers and ignoring each other. But this is the Bahamas, where social interaction is an odd mix of scrupulous British politeness and disorienting familiarity. The typical salutation goes something like, “You all right?” which always makes me wonder if I’ve committed a faux pas or if my shirt is on inside out. Everyone wants to know how you are doing. When I first came to the Bahamas, I assumed this cheerful politesse was courtesy of the tourist dollar, but an elderly lady scolded me for suggesting such a thing. “That’s how we raise our children,” she said. “It’s simple good manners.” So when a weather-beaten Bahamian fisherman a few stools away gives me a steady look and says, “You all right?” I know he’s not implying that I have ketchup on my pants.

He’s working away at his lunch, a grilled rockfish tucked under a steaming blanket of rice and vegetables. I ask him if it’s good. “Yes, sir,” he says and nods gravely. Denise Rolle Styles, the proprietor, bustles past me with a platter of hot fish and cold beer. “Oh yeah, darling, it’s good. All my fish is nice and fresh, swimming in the ocean just a few hours ago. I’ve got a special arrangement with that gentleman there. I sleep with him,” she says, nodding to the fisherman. “He’s my husband.”

While waiting for my order, I glance at an elderly couple sitting a few stools in the other direction. I hit them with the standard opener: “You all right?” “Couldn’t be better,” says the man, who is dressed in tennis shorts and running shoes and looks about 90 years old. His wife puffs on a little cigar and watches her husband wolfing down his meal. Perhaps misunderstanding my question, she explains, “John has teeth; he just can’t find them.”

Who said pigs are dirty? These friendly ferals love the water just like any beach bum

John tells me that they travelled all over the Caribbean, and Great Exuma is the best island they ever saw. “It has the nicest people and the prettiest water,” he says. “So we moved here and have lived here for 40 years.” I tell him I’m looking for the Ultimate Beach, and he smiles, as if he’s pondered that question himself. “I’ve never seen one I didn’t like.” And when I ask him if he has a favourite, he unfolds a napkin, scrawls a little pirate map on it and hands it to me with a wink. “Don’t tell anybody.”

An hour later, I’m bouncing down a dirt road into a shady grove of Bahamian pines. There, laid out in movie-set perfection, is a secluded bay with a deserted white beach and a wide cove of transparent water. At the head of the cove are shadows in the water – coral formations, ideal for snorkelling. Donning mask and snorkel, I wade into the warm water and swim out. Puttering along on the surface, I get that odd sensation of inhabiting two worlds at once, a land-dwelling creature gazing down onto a mystic aquatic world below. Multicoloured fish weave and turn through the branches of coral, and I let my body drift back and forth above the reef with the slow-motion balletic pulse of the water. There is utter silence except for my breathing through the snorkel tube. And for a moment, I feel like I belong here.

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