Harbour Island, Bahamas

Harbour Island – Bahamas

Rated as one of the “Best Bahamas Beaches” by the likes of Fodors, Frommers and The Travel Channel, Harbour Island Bahamas is famous for its three and a half miles of hard packed picture perfect pink sand beaches. Warm clear ocean waters provide excellent diving, fishing and boating while outlying reefs provide safe swimming and snorkeling. The people are friendly and the island is easy to navigate. Golf cart rentals, the transportation of choice, makes touring the island both fun and relaxing.

If you are looking for some of the best restaurants the Bahamas has to offer, Harbour Island is the place to be. Choices are plentiful and menus range from fine cuisine at The Rock House and The Garden Terrace at Pink Sands to delicious local fare at Ma Ruby’s. Most offer a casual Bahamian atmosphere and unforgettable views of the island and its tropical surroundings. Bring a big appetite with you!

Basic to luxurious accommodations vary from fine resorts and hotels to charming vacation home rentals, houses, villas and cottages. Many of these are located directly on Harbour Island’s beach offering breathtaking views of the ocean while others are located in and around Dunmore Town on the tranquil side of the ocean or in the interior of the island. No matter where you stay, you are always minutes from the beach.

The weather on Harbor Island is exceptional. Average high temperatures are in the mid 70s and 80s and lows are in the mid 60s and 70s. Monthly rainfall in prime season is less than 4″. Ocean breezes keep you comfortable both day and night.

Tour our unique travel guide of photos and interactive map of Harbour Island and discover for yourself! “Briland”, as it’s known by the locals, offers an attractive combination of amenities not found anywhere else in the Bahamas. A splendorous place where one can wake up in the morning with nothing to do and only be half done by the end of the day.

Known as “Briland” by its inhabitants, Harbour Island is approximately 3.5 miles long by 1.5 miles wide. Once the capital of the Bahamas and the second largest city to Nassau in the 1900s, the current population is estimated between 1500 to 2000. The island is located approximately 200 miles from Miami, 60 miles from Nassau and 2 miles East of Eleuthera.

Dunmore Town, named after Lord Dunmore, Governor 1786-1797, is the main and only town on Harbour Island and one of the oldest settlements in the Bahamas. A small quaint village featuring New England architecture, Dunmore was known for its ship building and sugar refinement in the late 1800s. Making rum making was particularly popular during Prohibition. One of the many historical features of the island include the “Hill Steps” which were cut from stone by the inhabitants. Another is a cave overlooking the bay called “Titus Hole” which was purported to serve as a jail.

Harbour Island is most renowned for its pale pink sand beaches some 3 plus miles long and 50 to 100 feet wide – considered one of the very best beaches in the Bahamas. The sand is a composition of bits of coral, broken shells, minute rocks and calcium carbonate from tiny marine invertebrates. The pink color comes from tiny microscopic shelled animals known as Foraminifera. This animal has a bright pink or red shell full of holes through which it extends a footing, called “pseudopodia” which it uses to attach itself and feed. These animals live on the underside of the reefs, on the sea floors, beneath rocks and in caves. They are washed up on shore as a result of waves or fish who knock them loose as they feed on them. Foraminifera are among the most abundant single cell organisms in the ocean and play a significant role in the environment. Snorkeling and swimming are made safe and easy by outlying reefs. These reefs provide large areas of relatively calm and shallow waters.

Harbour Island features one of the top dive sites in the world known as “Current Cut Dive.” Called a “fast drift dive”, Current Cut is a fast current that moves between the rock walls between Eleuthera and Current Island. A scuba diver can drift along the 2/3 mile distance in about 10 minutes.

Other amenities of Harbour Island include fine cuisine to family style restaurants, deep sea fishing, surf fishing, horseback riding on the beach, day trips to Eleuthera and Spanish Wells, and shopping for souvenirs from the sidewalk vendors in Dunmore Town. There’s something for everyone on Harbour Island.