Andros Overview
Andros is the largest island in the Bahamas, a sprawling, mostly undeveloped landmass that sits west of Nassau across the Tongue of the Ocean. Where most Bahamian islands are compact and tourist-polished, Andros sprawls across about 2,300 square miles of pine forests, mangrove creeks, and tidal flats. Most of it has no roads.
The island draws divers, bonefishing guides, and people who genuinely want to be left alone by the resort economy. If you're coming for beach chairs and swim-up bars, go to Nassau or Paradise Island. Andros rewards a different kind of traveler.
Blue Holes
Andros has more blue holes than anywhere else in the Bahamas, with over 180 recorded across the island. These are vertical underwater caves, some ocean-connected and tidally active, others landlocked in the interior pine barrens. The ocean blue holes pulse with the tides in ways that can make them dangerous to inexperienced swimmers, pulling inward on the flood and pushing out on the ebb.
Blue Holes National Park on Andros provides access to blue hole swimming in a managed setting. For more on what to do around the blue holes and elsewhere on the island, see Andros Experiences.
Getting Oriented
Andros is not one island in practice. It's divided into North Andros, Central Andros, and South Andros by a series of wide tidal channels called "bights" that cut the land into separate pieces. Each section has its own ferry connections to Nassau and its own small settlements. Fresh Creek and Nicholls Town are the main communities on North Andros. South Andros is the quietest of the three.
The Tongue of the Ocean, which runs between Andros and New Providence, drops to over 6,000 feet almost immediately off the eastern coast, making this one of the most dramatic wall-diving locations in the Atlantic. That wall is one of the main reasons serious divers make the trip.