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Which are the best Out/Family Islands to live on?

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OceanSunshine
  5/27/2022 12:45 EST

Greetings! I'm moving in the next two months. Still not sure which Island (i'm close to ruling out Grand Bahamas and New Providence). I'm really interested in thoughts about and experiences (pos/neg) of living on an Out Island/Family Island. I would especially like to know which of the Islands are easiest to reach from Florida. (I'll be traveling with two pets by charter flight.) Thanks very much! :-)

Bahamasbroker
  5/27/2022 14:08 EST

Hi. Grand Bahama is about 70 miles east of Florida and should be the quickest way into and out of the islands. Great infrastructure as has all the islands, just with less people as opposed to New Providence.

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MrsQ
  5/28/2022 12:53 EST

I'm an American who has lived in the Nassau, New Providence for the past four and a half years. I wouldn't be so quick to rule out New Providence if I were you. A lot of people have fantasies about moving here and living on one of the smaller family islands which are less commercialized than New Providence or Grand Bahama, but honestly they lack a lot of infrastructure. For example, they don't really have hospitals - just clinics. For any major medical situation, you would have to be airlifted to Nassau or Grand Bahama. Sometimes you might find there are only 1 or 2 types of a particular specialist in the country, and if that is the case, they are most certainly going to be located in Nassau. Nassau has two hospitals plus a good network of medical providers.

Also, living in the Bahamas can be challenging if you're accustomed to shopping at big box stores and making Target runs, etc. Nassau has more shopping in general with a basic mall, a Costco-like store called CostRight (there's one in Grand Bahama, too) and multiple grocery store chains. A lot of people from the family islands place major grocery orders with Nassau stores and have their items delivered on the "mail boat" which of course takes time to arrive. Don't count on being able to order stuff from Amazon either unless you are prepared to wait anywhere from 2 weeks to a month and to pay custom duties of anywhere from 20-50% of the item value plus freight charges and a VAT of 10%. At least in Nassau or on Grand Bahama, you have options to buy stuff on island.

I have visited Exuma and while it is lovely, there really wasn't much of anything to speak of besides the beach. I couldn't imagine living there. On the plus side, I hear crime is pretty much non-existent in the family islands and people can leave their doors unlocked. I live in a gated community called Sandyport in the Cable Beach area of Nassau. It has 24-hour security. While I have never felt unsafe in downtown Nassau, I practice a lot of common sense measures like wearing tons of jewelry and flashing wads of cash and not wandering around alone at night. However, these are things I wouldn't do anywhere in the world. Most of the crime here is drug or gang-related and is concentrated in the impoverished area known as "Over the Hill." The Bahamas is like two different worlds in this respect - one for the tourists, the ultra-rich and upper middle class and another for the majority of the Bahamian population who are struggling to eke out an existence.

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