Bahamas

Antoine's view

A paradise for shallow-draught sailboats, that can venture in the bays and straits that are inaccessible to deep-keeled boats, the Bahamian archipelago provides an unlimited number of anchorages to sailors who leave the Caribbean and sail towards North America. Of course, I prefer the smaller islands in the south, Cat Island, Long Island, to those, overdeveloped, like Nassau, where, along the beaches of Paradise Island, are lined ostentatious luxury hotels.

I have spent weeks and months on the small islands in the Abacos and the Exumas, and I would right now love to go back there and drop my anchor in the narrow passage that separates the two islands of Double-Breasted Key, or to stretch on the pink sands of Harbour Island, at the northern end of Eleuthera.

The Bahamas have been populated in a large part by -loyalists-, british subjects who refused to join the American Independence, and who preferred exile on these bleak lands, which no one at the time would ever have imagined that theu would become a synonym of Garden of Eden, a place of refuge for millionaires.

Don't look for spectacular scenery in the Bahams ... except underwater or on the lagoons... surface : no mountains, no tropical forests, but a gentle way of life, a beautiful harmony, with shads of blue that you will find nowhere else.