Cosmopolitan Harbour Island provides luxury with down-home charm
Harbour Island, like a bag of Misty Mints, oozes with old-fashioned charm, rich flavor, and lots of creamy pastel colors. Here, miles of pink sand beach never get crowded, golf carts outnumber cars as the vehicle of choice, and candy-colored cottages spill down to a jewel-toned ocean. Once home to English Puritans and American Loyalists, today this chic hideaway lures movie stars, rock stars, models, and jet setters. Charming, yet cosmopolitan, Briland – as the locals call it – offers a heavenly retreat from the sensory overload of everyday reality.
This tiny Caribbean delight – only three miles long and a half mile wide – nestles in a natural harbor off the northern tip of the Bahamian island Eleuthera. Home to the country’s capital in the 1700s, today Harbour Island maintains a small town charm with its pastel-hued clapboard houses, white picket fences overflowing with bougainvillea, narrow streets shaded by century-old trees, and ever-friendly local residents.
More than two centuries after being established, the island’s only village, Dunmore Town, still retains the New England architecture of its early settlers, including wraparound porches and balconies, quaint picket fences, pretty lattice work, and garrets. Stroll through its peaceful streets and you’ll pass historic homes with names like King’s Treat, The Doll House, and Heart’s Ease, as well as Little Boarding House, the island’s first hotel, Dunmore Cottage, the summer home of Lord Dunmore who originally laid out the town in 1791, and The Loyalist Cottage, whose framework dates back to 1790.
As one of the oldest settlements in The Bahamas, you’ll also find a number of historical churches here, including the 165-year-old Wesleyan Methodist Church washed in a cheery pastel yellow, and the Blessed Sacrament Church, which dates to the early 1920s. Pre-dating Dunmore Town itself, pastel-pink St. John Anglican Church still welcomes churchgoers after 250 years.
A NATURAL PLAYGROUND
By far the most striking feature of Harbour Island is spectacular Pink Sand Beach, considered by many among the top beaches in the world. Stretching three uncluttered, seemingly unending miles into the Atlantic horizon, blue and green jewel-toned waters lap its powder-soft pink sand forming the backdrop for numerous photo shoots. Buffered by a reef, the beach’s calm, warm waters beckon to you for a swim or a tranquil paddle. Best of all, the lack of high-rise mega resorts and their throngs of crowds makes way for secluded sunbathing and oodles of space for riding a horse bareback along its shoreline.
Under water a fantasy world akin to Poseidon’s garden awaits. For some of the best scuba diving in The Bahamas descend upon The Plateau – one of the country’s most impressive reefs. Here you can glide amongst 55-foot coral fingers in The Canyons, explore the interconnecting ledges and tunnels of The Maze, and marvel at the hordes of tropical fish in the Fish Bowl.
For an adrenalin rush, shoot the Current Cut as you ride millions of gallons of water. Probably the most famous dive in the area, this drift dive whisks experienced divers at seven to nine knots through the narrow channel between the islands of Current and Eleuthera whenever the tide changes.
Treacherous Devil’s Backbone, the 13-mile barrier reef just north of the nearby island of Spanish Wells, has caused numerous shipwrecks over the last two centuries, creating more interesting dive sites. The most remarkable wreck is not a ship at all but a train – purportedly a Union train that had been captured by the Confederates and sold to Cuba – which was being delivered when the ship it was on ran aground in 1865. Other wrecks include the 300-foot steel passenger steamer, Cienfuegos, which sank in 1895, the steel freighters Carnarvon and Angletere, which went down in 1916 and 1930 respectively, and the 86-foot coastal freighter Vanaheim and a 76-foot shrimp boat, which both sank in 1969.
Snorkellers don’t fret. Many of the area’s fabulous dive sites are shallow enough for snorkelling, including the Sea Gardens with their perfect elkhorn corals, colourful fish, and graceful stingrays, and the Pink House Reef with its abundance of cup corals, anemones, brittle stars, and tropical fish. You can even check out some of the wrecks, including parts of the Cienfuegos and the Vanaheim.
For a real challenge try bonefishing, for which The Bahamas is a premier destination. In the shallow tidal flats between Eleuthera and Harbour Island these elusive “grey ghosts” will test your wits as they dart through the water at speeds up to 25 mph. Hook one, and it could be the experience of a lifetime.
For action on a larger scale, take to the open seas. Experience the thrill of battling a monster-sized blue marlin, the “brute” of the billfish, or the sudden strike of a tuna that sends everyone in the boat scrambling. Novices and kids may prefer reeling in a colourful mahi mahi (dolphin fish), but take your pictures quickly as their dazzling colors fade quickly after they are caught.
MORE THAN ONE ISLAND TO EXPLORE
Back on land check out the sights of Eleuthera and Spanish Wells in addition to those on Harbour Island.
A 15-minute ride by water taxi takes you to Eleuthera where you can check out the stalagmites and stalactites of the Hatchet Bay caves and visit Preacher’s Cave, where the first settlers took refuge. Head to the Glass Window Bridge, the narrowest part of the island, for a view of the dark-blue waters of the Atlantic butting up against the turquoise waters of the Caribbean. Once a narrow strip of limestone that joined the two parts of the island, water bore a hole through the rock creating a natural arch or bridge. Mariners on the turbulent Atlantic side would peer through the arch, as if looking through a glass window, and marvel at the tranquil, beautiful waters of the Caribbean. Although Hurricane Betsy washed the arch away in 1965, it has since been replaced with a series of manmade bridges and mariners can continue to look through the “glass window.”
From north Eleuthera a 10-minute water-taxi ride takes you to St. George’s Cay and the prosperous fishing community of Spanish Wells, named for the Spanish galleons that once stopped here to restock their freshwater stores. Local residents, renown throughout The Bahamas for their crawfishing skills, are thought to be direct descendents of the first English settlers, known as the Eleutheran Adventurers, and the Loyalists that followed.
Back on Harbour Island hop into a golf cart for a leisurely tour of Dunmore Town and the surrounding areas. Explore the quaint shops and roadside stalls for local arts and crafts, preserves, and fresh fruit, browse the selection of duty-free luxury goods, enjoy a lunch of mouth-watering native cuisine, savour ice-cold drinks at one of the many oceanside venues, and check out the historic sites, including 17th century batteries and canons, the Hill Steps, cut out of solid rock by convicts of in the 17th century, and a sugar mill from the 1800s. A tour of the island would not be complete without a stop by “Uncle Ralph’s Aura Corner.” This curious collection of sayings hand-painted onto signs has grown over the years as tourists add their own to the originals created by islander “Uncle Ralph” Sawyer.
For a world-class vacation that oozes down-home charm, set your sights on Harbour Island. Named the 2005 World’s Best Caribbean Island by Travel + Leisure magazine, this little gem is about to get big. Don’t forget to pack the Misty Mints.
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