Pig Beach vs Rose Island
The famous Pig Beach is 89 miles from Nassau. Rose Island is twenty minutes. Here is how the two swimming-pig colonies differ in price, time, animals and photographs.
Search for a Nassau pig tour and you will be offered two things under one name. Some tours run 89 miles southeast to Big Major Cay in the Exumas, which is Pig Beach — the uninhabited island the photographs come from. Others cross twenty to forty minutes of harbour to Rose Island, Pearl Island or Athol Island, where Nassau’s own swimming pigs live.
Both are real, both will give you the picture, and the price gap is roughly five to one. Almost nothing in the listing titles tells you which you are buying, because “Pig Beach” is used as a generic on both.
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The short version
| Big Major Cay (Pig Beach) | Rose / Pearl / Athol | |
|---|---|---|
| Distance from Nassau | About 89 miles | 20–40 minutes by boat |
| Crossing time | Close to 2 hours each way | 15–30 minutes |
| Trip length | Full day, about 9am–4:30pm | 2½ to 5½ hours |
| Price | $378 – $515 | $67 – $220 |
| Time with the pigs | About 40 minutes | 1 to 3 hours |
| The animals | Free-roaming on an uninhabited cay | Hand-raised and managed |
| Cruise passengers | Two of four operators refuse them | Built for them |
| Tours on this site | 3 | About 30 |
Why Big Major Cay is the famous one
Big Major Cay is uninhabited. The pigs are not native to it, and nobody can say with certainty how they arrived: the competing accounts are that sailors left them there intending to come back and cook them, that they swam ashore from a wreck, or that they were put there deliberately to give the Exumas an attraction. The colony was estimated at fifty to sixty animals as of 2019.
What makes it photograph the way it does is the water. The pigs swim out from an empty beach into shallows that shade from white sand to turquoise, with nothing built in the frame. That is the shot, and it is why the island ended up on television and in an enormous number of feeds.
It is also genuinely far. Every operator running there follows much the same route, because the distance forces it: about an hour to Allen’s Cay for the rock iguanas, on through the cays to Compass Cay for the nurse sharks, then Big Major Cay, a sandbar, and lunch. Born Free’s published itinerary allocates forty minutes at Pig Beach against roughly four hours of boat time.
That ratio surprises people who have paid $489, and it is the most useful thing to know before booking. You are buying a day in the Exumas. The pigs are the headline stop, not the day.
What Nassau’s own pigs actually are
The colonies on Rose, Pearl and Athol islands are a different proposition, and the honest framing is that they are managed. The Rose Island pigs are raised from piglets by the operation on the island rather than left to roam a wild cay, and there is no officially documented origin story for them the way there is folklore around Big Major Cay.
In practice that makes them easier to meet. Hand-raised pigs that see visitors daily are calmer, more reliably on the beach when a boat arrives, and less inclined to treat a group as competition for food. On the Exuma cay the pigs are wild animals whose interest in you is entirely about what you are holding.
The water is the same water. Rose Island’s shallows photograph as well as the Exumas’, and unless you put a caption on it nobody looking at your picture will know which island it was taken on.
The money, honestly
The cheapest way to meet swimming pigs from Nassau is the Rose Island water taxi at $67, which is a ferry across, three hours on the island and a ferry back. The cheapest way to reach Big Major Cay is Exuma Escapes at $378.
For the $311 difference you get the specific beach, the iguanas at Allen’s Cay, the nurse sharks at Compass Cay, a plane wreck and lunch ashore — a full day in one of the more beautiful stretches of water in the Caribbean. What you give up is the rest of your day and, oddly, most of your time with the pigs.
There is also a middle case that catches people out. Powerboat Adventures sells an Exuma day trip at $329, cheaper than any Big Major Cay tour, with more reviews than all three of them combined. It goes to Ship Channel Cay at the northern end of the Exumas, which is the operator’s own private island, and its listing calls the pigs there resident. So it is an Exuma day. It is not Pig Beach.
Which one should you book?
Book the Exumas if the specific beach is the point, you are on a land-based stay with a whole day free, and a two-hour crossing each way sounds like scenery rather than transit. Start with our Exuma page.
Book Nassau’s own pigs if you are here for a few days and want one morning of it, you are arriving by cruise ship, you are travelling with children who will not enjoy four hours on a boat, or you would rather spend $67 than $378 for a photograph that looks identical.
If you are on a cruise the decision is largely made for you. Two of the four Exuma operators refuse cruise-ship passengers outright, and the two that accept them are still selling you an eight-hour day against an all-aboard time. Which tours take cruise guests.
Whichever way you go, check whether the pig interaction is included before you compare two prices — it frequently is not — and see our tour-by-tour picks for the shortlist.
Meet the Pigs on Your Own Terms
Thirty-four bookable pig tours from Nassau, from a $67 water taxi to a full day in the Exumas. Every one on this site cancels free up to 24 hours ahead.
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