If modern-day Vacation Paradise has a flaw, it is that it is all too predictable: perfect weather, perfect accommodations, perfect company, perfect martinis. The engineered experience of moving through the day becomes a treadmill of superlatives, each highlight crowding out the last until — like a coddled-but-bored Eve — we run searching for a forbidden snack.
Harbour Island, however — that roseate sliver of sand in the Out Islands of the Bahamas — approaches its perfection differently. It is a happy accident (a literal shipwreck, so the story goes), an alchemical reaction that brought sand, sea, history, and exclusivity together in just the right amounts.
It is the natural habitat of anyone who relishes the anonymity of blending into the small island population, and of those who appreciate proximity to Miami and the rest of the mainland. And it’s the natural home of any beach lover seeking the ideal of the genre — organic, unfussy, and absolutely gorgeous.
Here’s why we think it’s just perfect.
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Find your place at Harbour Island
BY DAVID GIBSON
Harbour Island
The Particular Perfection of
Belying the size of its reputation, Harbour Island is tiny — a mere 3.5 by 1.5 miles. The constraints of size have distilled this place to a Caribbean essence, free from mass development, day trip crowds, and strip mall homogeny. With no place to land a plane, the nearest airport (also tiny) is a water taxi ride away, and its harbors are too small for cruise ships or superyachts. Even the name — abbreviated into the 1.5-syllable “Briland” by the locals — is miniaturized.
It's small.
Harbour Island’s talcum-light sand is famously pink, though don't expect anything Day-Glo. Think instead of the demure blush of mild social embarrassment — one that gets a bit more fiery around sunset, particularly when paired with a barely pink Goombay Smash. The pink sand beach runs the length of the island on the eastern Atlantic side and is colored not by broken coral but by the exoskeletons of single-celled organisms that live among the reefs — keeping the beaches not just pink but powdery.
It's sandy.
With every point on the island a moderate leg-stretch from every other, traffic on the island is mostly limited to golf carts and bicycles. Chickens, unquestioning, cross the road with fearless regularity, and architects have come to treasure a place where vast estate homes can be built without eight-car garages. Society, too, operates a bit more slowly, but “island time” seems less like an excuse than a way of being to which all (save, perhaps, the airlines) have agreed.
It's slow.
This is no comment on the intellectual capacity of the residents. We mean simply that the water is shallow enough that, from the sky, Harbour Island and its surrounds sparkle the pale blue of a perfect diamond. That also means the waves are gentle and warm, the bonefishing is world-class, and that a local guide with a small boat can take you to hidden harbors and vast temporary sandbars. Those shallows and the reefs that surround them also means shipwrecks for picturesque snorkeling and scuba adventures. History’s nautical nightmare is your divetime dream.
It's shallow.
It's chic.
This is not a land of beach lean-tos. Rather than roofs, the palm fronds here are woven into coveted (and often monogrammed) handbags and totes. Fashionable shops are dotted throughout Dunmore Town (the only town on the island), where the architecture is more Nantucket than Nassau and Caribbean colors are mostly relegated to pineapple-pierced shutters on Colonial clapboard. The local food scene reflects a balance of vernacular cuisine and options catering the palates of those who have vacationed here for generations — think masterfully simple preparations of the local bounty, with an emphasis on conch, lobster, and fish. That’s true in the lunch shacks as well as the dining rooms of the jewel-like small resorts.
The gates of this paradise are open and welcoming. Despite a petite footprint, incredible properties on the island appear on the market with some regularity. There are even a few lots still secreted away, ready for the ambitious visionary to claim their place in the pink sand.
There's still room.
A bright welcome sign, a popular photo spot, greets travelers at the Government Boat Dock in Dunmore Town. Image: Leonard Zhukovsky/Shutterstock
Nobody knows how long the Lone Tree has stood upright in the sand, though many speculate it arrived as a consequence of Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
Local flavor awaits in Dunmore Town — the island's only "town." Image: Leonard Zhukovsky/Shutterstock
A quintessentially Harbour Island home, pairing Colonial traditionalism with splashy Caribbean color. Joseph Sowder/Shutterstock.
Golf carts are a popular mode of personal transit on the island, with an estimated 800 available just for rent. Leonard Zhukovsky/Shutterstock.
Valentines Resort has the island’s largest yacht harbor, accommodating vessels up to 250 feet. Leonard Zhukovsky/Shutterstock.