Lucayan National Park

When visiting the Bahamas, take some time to visit Lucayan National Park and its gorgeous Gold Rock Beach on Grand Bahama Island.

Lucayan National Park is about 25 miles east of Freeport. It’s about 40 acres in size and is filled with soft-sand beaches, pine forests, mangroves, ferns, and dozens of species of rare flowers, including orchids.

The park, established by the Bahamian government in 1982, also offers visitors one of the world’s largest systems of underwater caves, at least two of which are easily accessible because they’re now exposed where a portion of ground fell in. Pools within these two caves are accessed by spiral wooden steps. The pools actually are topped by six feet of freshwater with the heavier saltwater below the fresh.

Please note that there’s a $5 per-person fee to visit the park (children under 12 are free).

The park is home to one of the loveliest and most secluded of beaches on Grand Bahama Island, Gold Rock Beach.

Best accessed at low tide, the beach is accessible from within the park. Because it’s best to visit it at low-tide, expect to spend about four hours at the most at the beach. Still, it’s well worth a visit.

If you love to snorkel, you’ll want to swim out from the beach to the nearby Gold Rock Reef (be warned, it’s long and can be very tiring).

You’ll also want to be sure to bring your own food, towels and any other equipment as the beach is quite primitive (as for bathroom facilities, the only thing available is a compost toilet at the entrance to the beach’s parking area).

Explore the beach and you could see sand dollars, some starfish, sea biscuits, and stingrays (be sure to practice the “shuffle walk” if you go in the ocean so that you’ll be less likely to step on the stingray’s tail). Check out the Freeport tours to see which is the best way to explore the Lucayan National Park.