Flying low in an island-hopper Cessna, we can see clear, turquoise water and snowy-white beaches sparkling under the warm Caribbean sun. The sea, in ever changing hues of blue-green, reveals a long coral reef below. This is to be our fifth visit in several years to the remote Abaco Islands -- the northernmost of The Bahamas, each trip an unforgettable experience.

Many visitors to The Bahamas travel by cruise ship, hitting busy ports like Nassau and Freeport, or staying in bustling, self-contained resorts. But there’s another Bahamas that lies beyond the glitz and crowds, filled with quaint villages steeped in history and tradition, New England style architecture, quiet coves, shimmering white sand beaches, and uninhabited islands. Such is the Abacos, a boomerang-shaped mini-archipelago 130 miles long, consisting of Great Abaco and Little Abaco as well as a sprinkling of cays (pronounced keys). Traditionally the domain of yachtsmen, fishermen, divers and private plane owners, the Abacos are a well kept secret located 200 miles east of Miami, and 75 miles north of Nassau. Like Hank and I, the traveler who discovers these islands cherishes them and returns year after year to find the same faces as before.

Most visitors come for the sun, sand, and spectacular aquamarine water, but for those who wish to dig deeper, the Abacos offer a rich and colorful history. The Lucayan Indians, who settled these islands some 500 years before Columbus, were wiped out by the original European explorers. For the next 200 years the waters around the Abacos swarmed with pirates. It is estimated that 500 to 600 Spanish galleons -- many treasure laden -- went to their watery graves in and around the Abaco reefs.

In the 1780’s, thousands of Loyalist settlers sailed into the sun-dappled waters of the Abaco chain. Mostly English, Irish and Scots, they were Tories --men, women, children, and a handful of slaves who had remained true to the British Crown during the American Revolution. Many were shipbuilders, and to this day Abaconians still claim theirs are the finest of island boats. Other settlers were farmers who, when they found the soil wasn’t fertile enough to sustain their crops, turned to wrecking (the business of salvaging ships that were wrecked on the reefs). Since there wasn’t a lighthouse in the Abacos until 1836, many vessels floundered on the shoals and rocks. However, this enterprise became so profitable that some unscrupulous wreckers deliberately misled ships to their doom and became rich from the spoils. Others managed by collecting sponges, growing pineapple, whaling, and harvesting trees. It is the quaint, old-fashioned ways of the Loyalists --their architecture, customs and attitudes, that make the Abacos so charming. Most Loyalist descendants live on Elbow Cay, Green Turtle Cay, and Man-O-War Cay.

Like many visitors to the Abacos, our first stop is Marsh Harbour on Great Abaco, the commercial center of the Abacos. Planning to use the Abaco Beach Resort and Boat Harbour as a jumping off point for exploring Elbow, Guana and Man-O-War Cays, we soon find that it would be easy to never leave the comfort of the resort’s luxurious grounds and laid-back atmosphere. Our spacious room has a private patio overlooking the pool, beach, and Sea of Abaco. After a day spent strolling the marina docks admiring the beautiful yachts, sleeping on the beach beneath a thatch-roofed "palapa", and filling our bellies with conch and rum drinks, we decide to venture out.

In a rented Albury Brothers boat we head to the famed boat building capital of The Bahamas, the very place our boat was built, Man-O-War Cay. We soon learn that Albury is the predominate surname on the wee 2 1/2 mile long islet. Almost half the 300 island residents are Alburys.

A Loyalist village, the pastel clapboard houses, built by ships’ carpenters and trimmed in gingerbread, are set off by freshly painted white picket fences intertwined with bougainvillea. Visiting here is like going back in time to a pleasant way of life that has disappeared from much of the world. Except for a few golf carts and trucks, the island is free of vehicles.

Just a short boat ride from Man-O War is Great Guana Cay, the longest of the Abaco cays -- 7 miles from tip to tip. Extending the entire length of the cay is a beach which many consider unsurpassed in the Bahamas. We’ve come for lunch at Nippers, a colorful outdoor restaurant overlooking the beach, famous for its pig roast every Sunday, delicious conch platters and rum drinks.

Our final destination, before returning to Marsh Harbour, is Hope Town, on Elbow Cay. This pretty seaside town with its peppermint-striped 120-foot tall lighthouse, colorful clapboard saltbox cottages, and charming narrow streets is one of the most visited Loyalists towns, evoking memories of old Cape Cod. Like most of the cays, the island is virtually free of vehicular traffic. Locals and visitors alike travel the town’s two roads, "Up Along" or "Down Along", the latter running along the water, by bicycle.

Hope Town’s lighthouse construction in 1838 was delayed for several years by acts of vandalism because residents were afraid it would put an end to the island’s most popular pursuit, salvaging wrecks. Today, still utilizing the original brass mechanism and oil lamps, it is one of the last manned lighthouses in the world. We’re told that you can climb to the top for a sweeping view of the surrounding land and water, but haven’t time to do so and still return to Marsh Harbour before nightfall. No problem. Yet another excuse to return.

While there is plenty more to see and do topside in the Abacos, we’re anxious to experience the incredible sights found below the water. At the resort’s dive shop we sign up for a half-day snorkel trip. It’s said that Abaco offers some of the best diving/snorkeling experiences in the world. The world’s third largest barrier reef, more than 125 miles of continuous reef, is just a short boat ride away. Dive master, Karen Wilde, a Canadian expatriate, chats and jokes with the five other divers and Hank and I all the way out to the reef. You can tell where the reef lies from miles away --it’s where the open ocean breaks over into surf in the middle of nowhere.

Just off Scotland Cay, Karen’s chosen dive site for the day, the reef appears as a long jumbled hill of hard and soft corals. It drops to a sandy plain between 20 and 45 feet deep. Hank and I, as snorkelers, watch the divers descend to the reef’s bottom. Soon they are out of sight and we are snorkeling along the reef, under the watchful eye of the boat’s captain, Bahamian Ricardo Davis. While stopping to adjust our masks we hear Ricardo’s voice carry across the water..."dolphins," he says. Just out from us we see the dorsal fins, three of them. Being skeptical, we yell to Ricardo..."you’re sure they’re not sharks?" We’ve always fancied the idea of swimming with dolphins, but not sharks. The beautiful creatures swim within a few feet of us then disappear in a flash. We continue on admiring the colorful display beneath us.

Although we could easily have spent our entire visit at the resort, we have planned to spend the remainder of our trip at our old favorite, the historic New Plymouth Inn on Green Turtle Cay. Our first trip to the Abacos was spent here and somehow this place has become a cherished tradition.

Green Turtle Cay is a wee islet of about eight square miles with a population of perhaps, 500. It’s a clean, fresh-looking, friendly place, with flower-lined narrow streets, old clapboard houses with bright colored trim, three tiny inns, no stoplights, and no airport. It might be easiest to describe Green Turtle by noting what it is not and does not have. There is no newspaper and no crime, unless you import it yourself. There are no discos, no high-rise resorts, and no pushy street vendors. The mail boat comes once a week; the single bank opens for three hours two days a week. Everything closes on Sundays, and holidays, and whenever people feel like it, which is fairly often. Parliament Street, on which the inn is located, is the village’s main street. It might be stretching it a bit to call it a street. Two golf carts, the island’s transportation of choice, can barely squeeze by one another.

We come to Green Turtle to see Wally Davies, owner of the New Plymouth Inn. We come to see the "family" of other guests who also return year after year; to eat chef Vernel Cooper’s delicious meals. We come to drink Goombay Smashes, a delicious rum concoction, and to snorkel with, Brendal Stevens, a boisterous, soot-black Bahamian who has been leading dive trips off the island for nearly two decades. But best of all we do what we want, when we want, enjoying a sort of idyllic island existence.

Each morning, we zombie walk to the kitchen for coffee drinking cup after cup while sitting alone on the wide, comfortable verandah looking out to a brilliant sapphire blue sea. After breakfast we wander down to the shallow, calm waters of Gilliam Bay or a little further on to the Atlantic Ocean to swim, read or sleep beneath a feathery casuarina tree. In the afternoons we explore the island, snorkel or pack a picnic and rent a boat to explore nearby uninhabited cays. In the evenings, we linger over dinner on the screened-in porch bathed in the smell of night blooming jasmine, laughing and passing the time with other guests and locals.

Not everyone comes to Green Turtle for quiet, lazy island living. Some folks come for the more active endeavors of sailing, fishing, and diving. Much of the fishing is outside the big, healthy reef, in the open ocean where the groupers and game fish prowl. Inside, the shallow lagoons, are bonefishing flats, scale fish, and a lot of conch.

It’s our last night and we decide to walk to Gilliam Bay to star gaze and say our good-byes to the sea. Above our heads Orion’s belt is as bright as Venus, the Milky Way twinkles like a million tiny diamonds and the sea gently laps against the soft sand, bathing our bare feet in warm water. We stand there, quietly gazing out to sea, each consumed with our own thoughts. The details of the island are forever imprinted in my mind, every smell, sound, and sight. Eventually, wander down the sandy path, lined with mahoe and sea grape, towards town and the inn. In the distance we hear fragments of music coming from the local club, the Rooster’s Rest. We continue on to the inn, where we collapse into the hammock. Tomorrow will come soon enough, and we’ll say our good-byes to Wally, Vernel and the others. But for now we indulge in a few more stolen moments of island life.