Tahiti Beach

Tahiti Beach is one of the Bahamas' most beloved and impossible-to-forget beaches — a graceful sandbar that curves out from the southern tip of Elbow Cay into the brilliant turquoise expanse of Abaco Sound. Accessible only by boat, it has the feel of a private paradise: sugar-white sand, water so shallow and clear that the rippled bottom is visible everywhere, and a horizon of deep blue stretching to the outer Bahamas cays.

Elbow Cay itself is famous for the candy-striped Hope Town Lighthouse — one of the Caribbean's last manually operated lighthouses — and the village's neatly painted Loyalist cottages. Tahiti Beach is the reward at the far end of the cay, reached by dinghy or rental boat from Hope Town. The calm Abaco Sound conditions make it ideal for young children; the water is knee-deep for 50 metres from shore and provides a perfect natural paddling pool for non-swimmers.

A remarkable aspect of Tahiti Beach is the wild pigs that occasionally swim over from neighbouring cays for food offered by visiting boaters. Finding a pig wading in the turquoise shallows has become something of an Abaco tradition. The beach disappears at high tide, so time your visit for the low-tide window of around three hours either side of low tide.