Sneak Peek: Here's an excerpt from an upcoming feature in our November issue!... I've come to see it firsthand: Eleuthera's latest boom. The island has been ordained the next "it" destination via breathless reports in travel mags and even the New York Times. I came expecting - dreading - bulldozers ripping across ironshore, and flocks of construction cranes. Midway through my trip, though, I'm finding an island whose future is momentarily adrift between the glitz of its glittering moon, Harbour Island, and its abundant Out Island charm. 
Not that "it" didn't have some serious momentum going, here on the Bahamas' beachiest island, before the U.S. housing and credit debacle caused night-sweating investors to reconsider the benefits of holding T-bills instead of Bahamian beachfront. Rumors bearing the names of top hotel chains still hit Eleuthera with the regularity of waves pounding Surfer's Beach, and a half dozen or so major projects are poised in various stages of reality. But it looks like fate (and macroeconomics) will set a slower-than-expected pace for growth. That's a good thing, considering recent development missteps in the Out Islands and Eleuthera's own history of boom and bust.
Eleuthera is a lengthy island shaped like a spindly "drinking bird" toy, bobbing westward to dip its beak in the vivid blue water of the Bahamas Bank, with tony Har-bour Island and the white-Bahamian enclave Spanish Wells at its feathered head. To the south - 74 miles as the real bird flies or 110 miles by rental car - Lighthouse Point stands at the tip of its tail. By road, it's half again as long as the Bahamas' Long Island. This calls for seeing the island in three steps - north, middle and south - which allows quality time with some of the world's most eccentric machines: Eleutheran rental cars. Nowadays you can find a few late-model vehicles that operate close to manufacturers' specs, but there's little adventure in that. The car I picked up was a Pontiac Mongrel or something - all identifying emblems and markings had shaken or melted off years ago, along with some lug nuts, the air-conditioning, the radio and anything even close to a new-car smell. But the windows rolled down, so off I went, the king of the road, swaying on Jell-O-soft shocks around the big turns of the Queen's Highway.At the island's northern end, I started my visit at The Cove, a serene assemblage of 26 chalk-white bungalows and suites along a scalloped section of leeward coast. Like most guests there, I soon got to know Wallace Sands, bartending legend...Online Editor's Note: To continue reading, check out the November 2008 issue available on newsstands October 7th. Click Here to Check Out Another Sneak Peek from the November Issue
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