Bahamas

Located just a short distance off the Florida coast, the Bahamas are comprised of 700 islands, 2,400 coral cays over 100,000 square miles of ocean and the third largest barrier reef system in the world.

The Bahamas is particularly famous for shark diving with dozens of different species frequenting the waters including Bull, Caribbean Reef, Oceanic Whitetip, Lemon, Tiger and Great Hammerhead sharks.

Diving varies throughout the islands, Grand Bahama Island offers the opportunity to dive shallow reefs and wrecks and is famous for its shark and dolphin encounters, New Providence has historical wrecks, coral walls, blue holes, caves and thrilling shark dives with large numbers of Caribbean Reef sharks. Long Island has colourful reefs, drop-offs that begin at 40ft and drop to 6000ft, the world’s deepest blue hole and the wreck of a 94-meter British freighter. Abacus has pristine shallow reefs with swim-through tunnels and incredibly diverse fish life. Bimini has shallow reefs, deep walls, shipwrecks, dolphin dives and the waters are home to nurse, tiger, black-tip, Caribbean reef, bull, great hammerhead, blacknose and Atlantic sharks. Eleuthera and Harbour Island has adrenaline filled drift dives and more wrecks than any other area in the Bahamas. And finally, the Exumas has shallow reefs of undisturbed corals, vertical walls, underwater caves and tunnels, many wrecks and shark dives.

How to get there

The Bahamas has three international airports, the Freeport Grand Bahama International Airport, Lynden Pindling International Airport in Nassau and the George Town International Airport on Exuma.

American Airlines flies from London to Freeport via Fort Lauderdale or Miami daily and flights take approximately 12 hours.

British Airways flies from London to Nassau airport five times a week, on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and flights take approximately 9 hours.

Delta Airlines flies from London to Exuma with an overnight stop in Atlanta, the flight to Atlanta takes approximately 9 hours with the onward flight to George Town takes approximately 2 hours 15 minutes.

Travel between islands is easy with domestic flights, ferries or private transfers by speedboat.