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Grand ... Grander ... Grandest Bahama

Author: M.Timothy O'Keefe
From birth, Grand Bahama has been different: different by nature, different by design. The most northerly of the major Bahama islands, it's also the closest to Florida, 50-odd miles/80 kilometers from Palm Beach. It has abundant fresh water, excellent natural harbors, pine forests and rampant wildlife. All of this should have made Grand Bahama the hub of the whole archipelago.

It hasn't.

The cycles of boom and bust on Grand Bahama go all the way back to the 18th century, so there's plenty of justification if one chooses to reserve judgment on the island's future fortunes. Before my recent visit, I shared some of those doubts. But after seeing the new resort developments - and, just as important, the attitude of the people - Grand Bahama is clearly about to go boom again.

For me, Grand Bahama was special because it was the first Caribbean island I ever visited. More than 30 years ago I saw my first shark underwater here, drank my first Zombie, and for the first time, fell asleep under wind-rustled palms. I even considered building a house in one of the planned subdivisions that never materialized.

Three decades later, my favorite parcel of land is still available, undeveloped, like all the other plots along a dusty road that ultimately led - and still leads - nowhere. The Atlantik Hotel is gone, blasted into rubble a year ago. The old Jack Tar Village, which drew hundreds of thousands of vistas to West End, fell to the bulldozers. For me, seeing Grand Bahama go downhill was like watching an old friend hit the skids.

But now there are some interesting opportunities for travelers, opportunities worth a second look. Two new major resorts will open by year's end, and the island appears poised to recapture the limelight it once enjoyed. This time around, the boom looks to be on more solid footing, exploiting Grand Bahama's proximity to Florida and its single greatest asset: nature.

The lull in expansion was a blessing for the environment. The pause allowed time for the government to preserve the most important of Grand Bahama's ecosystems.

Uncrowded beaches, bicycle touring, kayaking, bird-watching and snorkeling around deserted cays - all those diversions - can now be combined with luxury rooms in the kind of new, upscale resorts that are attracting visitors throughout the Caribbean.

It's The Real Thing

Despite its made-for-the-mass-market quality, it's Grand Bahama's natural attractions that have kept drawing me back over the years. The accidents of geography and its proximity to North America make it a naturalist's haven.

For me, ground zero has always been Gold Rock Beach. I was anxious to see how it has fared amid the recent construction boom.

In a word, splendidly, because aside from some real improvements, the boom has left the beach untouched. As picture-postcard-perfect as it appears in Grand Bahama's tourist brochures, at low tide there are hundreds of yards of washboard-rippled sand flats. Black-ribbon shadows snaked across the vast expanse, once so treacherous for early explorers, and now a playground for the world-weary. Searching up and down the beach, I found few people, probably because of the distance, 25 miles/40 kilometers from Freeport.

Gold Rock is the crown jewel of Lucayan National Park, one of the few large terrestrial parks in the Bahamas. Of course, large is a relative term here: In a country of vest-pocket islands and pint-size cays, a 40-acre/16-hectare park is immense. On a practical level, the park encompasses examples of most of the island's ecosystems within a very manageable land area.

The park is notable for its stands of Caribbean pine, a peculiar species that grows on four islands in the Bahamas but nowhere else on earth. Used for shipbuilding, it was the foundation of the island's early fortunes.

Walking through the woods, you're likely to encounter numerous species of birds, some of them completely unfamiliar to continental bird-watchers. There are 28 bird species in the Bahamas that don't appear in North America or Europe; 18 of them live on Grand Bahama. In September and October, fall migrants stop over on their way south, and sightings of rare birds like Kirtland's warbler and the eastern phoebe have been reported.

What makes this profusion of foliage and feathers possible is actually underground: fresh water. Inside the park is Ben's Cave, part of Lucayan Caverns, one of the most extensive underwater cave systems that has yet been mapped. In the 1960s and '70s, divers explored Ben's Cave, mapping it foot by foot through 6 miles/10 kilometers of passages.

For those with less curiosity and a lower tolerance for risk, Burial Mound Cave nearby can be toured via dry walkway. The early recognition of the importance of these caves saved them from the senseless vandalism that has occurred elsewhere; stalactites and stalagmites appear as they have for eons, without graffiti.

Where the Fillymingos Roam

Peterson Cay was on my list of old haunts to visit, too. It's the only uninhabited cay on the leeward side of the island, so on most days it's deserted and calm enough for a relaxing snorkel. The only way to reach the cay, a little over a mile offshore, is by boat, and there are tour operators running trips every day.

Though it lacks the shady trees and picnic tables of Gold Rock, there's something elemental about Peterson Cay that seems to excite visitors. The small, windswept scrap of land bakes in the summer sun, with a wide, white-sand beach at its northern edge that begs to be napped on. Just around the western side, the shallows are home to schools of baby tropical fish that play hide-and-seek with snorkelers in the nooks and crannies of a shallow reef.

Much closer to Freeport, the Rand Nature Center serves up even more fare for nature lovers. At 100 acres/40 hectares, it's even larger than the national park, with a half-mile of marked trail and a coterie of trained guides on hand to help you.

As the first visitor of the day, I found the resident flamingos out of the water, strolling the path ahead. Seeing me, the skittish birds stampeded into their pond, staying in the shade well away from the observation platform. They didn't seem to mind when I approached and sat on the shady bank next to them.

Flamingos are one of the Bahamas' great success stories. The national bird, they were once dangerously close to extinction. A special park in the southern island of Great Inagua brought them back, however, and today the population is well over 60,000.

As the flamingos - or "fillymingos" as Bahamians call them - dragged their heads through the water, feeding just a few feet from me, I watched a great blue heron stalk the opposite side of the pond. For all the traffic on the nearby road, this was a remarkably peaceful place.

While I was the only visitor at the Rand Center, at the Garden of the Groves I became part of a large tour bus group. It was the first crowd of people I'd encountered outside of the resort areas, and after being so secluded at Rand and Lucayan National Park, even this small crowd felt, well, crowded. Yet this man-made park should have been even more packed. One of the region's premier botanical gardens, the Garden of the Groves contains more than 10,000 varieties of flowers, shrubs and trees from around the world.

Considering my reaction to this little group of fellow travelers, I obviously wasn't ready to re-immerse myself in the vagaries of the resort scene, so I drove back to the solitude of Gold Rock Beach. Twenty minutes later I was wading the shallow bank, sharing it only with seagulls.

Thankfully, the island's developments are highly concentrated, leaving those of us who don't need to spend all day in a Tiki bar plenty of wide-open spaces to rattle around in. That's the one feature of Grand Bahama that has always been grand, and one the developers can never improve on.

Posted online 08/01/99.

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