Exuma Land and Sea Park

The Exuma Land and Sea park is a national park of unspoiled beauty. They do not allow any fishing, harvesting of conch, lobster, or shells.

You have to pay each $20 each night to drop anchor. There are drop boxes like the one on the right side of the sign plus a ranger drives around in a boat each morning to collect the money. We were there for about a week, and got to have some internet withdrawals— there are no phone towers and therefore no internet access, texting, or phone calls while in the park.

The shelling is amazing, it isn’t unusual to see huge conch shells. Yes we returned these– no harvesting from the park.

The first night we spent at Hawksbill Cay. It was a rocky rolly anchorage due to the current coming up from the southern tip of the island so we moved the next day to a different anchorage and it was much better. It was a beautiful uninhabited island. We kayaked to shore and explored the beach.

The kids decided to go exploring just the two of them. Kim and I hung out on the beach and they took what looked like a path to the middle of the island. They took Skipper, but the ground is rocky and full of coral so they had to carry him. They planned on just looking at a pond they could see in the distance. But they ended up in muck and then detouring south. Only one of them had shoes, so they each put on one shoe. They had no water, no means of communication, Aislin had a hat, but Ben didn’t. They arrived to the boat a 1-2 (could have been 1 felt like 2 to them and me) hours later sunburned, thirsty and with cut up feet, but triumphant! They had made their way south to water and then traced the western edge of the island until they found our boat. And in the process learned the value of a VHF radio, sunscreen, water bottles, and shoes.

We left Hawksbill and went to Warderick Wells Cay where they have mooring balls and the ranger station.

There are coral heads all around this anchorage. It is normal to see rays, hawksbill sea turtles and nurse sharks right off our boat. Ben loves to use the underwater camera when we snorkel so we more pictures of fish and coral than I can upload on this page. Between his underwater camera and his drone we are able to get some great shots.