Page 164 - The British Big Four

ndros Island has four airports with paved runways: San Andros Sound at Great Abaco Island, is a highlight for scuba divers. Andros
A Airport at Nicholls Town, Andros Town International Airport
located at Fresh Creek, the Clarence A. Bain Airport at Mangrove
Cay and Congo Town Airport in South Andros. Andros Town Inter-
national is an international port of entry for private pilots. The is-
land is served by multiple daily flights from Nassau by BahamasAir,
Western Air, and LeAir. The flight to any of the four airports is 15–25 fishing in the Bahamas to boot. For divers, Andros offers plenty of
minutes. Daily scheduled flights to Nassau from London, Paris, New
York City, Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Houston, Dallas, Jackson-
ville, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, Orlando and other ma-
jor cities provide easy connection from Andros to the rest of the
world. Regularly scheduled charters provide direct service to An-
dros Town from Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, mostly offered
by Gulfstream International Airlines. Continental Connection offers
seasonal scheduled flights from Fort Lauderdale, operated by Gulf-
stream for Continental under contract.
A ndros -- Marine life abounds in the barrier reef off the coast
of Andros, which is one of the world’s largest and a famous
destination for divers. The reef plunges 1,800m (5,906 ft.) to a nar-
row drop-off known as the Tongue of the Ocean. You can also ex-
plore mysterious blue holes, formed when subterranean caves filled
with seawater, causing their ceilings to collapse and expose clear,
deep pools. Pelican Cays Land and Sea Park (Abacos) -- Known for its
undersea caves, seemingly endless coral reefs, and abundant plant
and marine life, this national park, 13km (8 miles) north of Cherokee
is the largest of the islands of the Bahamas, in size if not popula-
tion. It is 104 miles long by 40 miles wide--2,300 square miles--and
features lots of fresh water, beaches, mangrove trees and vast pine
forests. You’d think that would have been a magical combination
for development, but the island remains rather sleepy even today.
Of course, that’s the great appeal of the island for many visitors.
Andros remains a quiet getaway, and offers some of the best bone
thrills including spectacular walls on the Tongue of the Ocean and
pulse-pounding shark dives.
T he barrier reef and the Tongue of the Ocean, together with
mangrove swamps, rocky tidal pools and estuaries, provide
breeding and growing habitats for a wide variety of young marine
life. Andros has a variety of close-to-shore and on-shore ecosystems
that may be unique on Earth: tidal inland and ocean blue holes,
shallow sand and mud flats, tidal estuaries, mangrove swamps, the
pelagic eco-zone of the 6000-foot drop-off only a mile from shore,
the world’s third-largest barrier reef, and huge freshwater aquifers.
The marine biosphere is fed by both the teeming life of the man-
grove marshes and estuaries on the mainland, and the upwelling of
cool water from the Tongue of the Ocean, resulting in an unparal-
leled variety of sea life.