2017 Update

There’s always something to do in Freeport with shopping, beaches, excellent hotels, diving, parasailing, watersports, or just goofing off!

Pelican Bay is one of the nicer, yet smaller hotels which just happens to be next door to UNEXSO for the convenience of divers. They have recently finished a renovation and expansion which we will be off to see in July.

In the early sixties the Grand Bahama Developement Company had an idea that Americans would get all excited about owning land on an island, so they began to develop the area around Freeport, Grand Bahama. As with many developement companies, after the golf courses and country clubs were all built - not to mention a casino and International Bazaar - the land was oversold and roads and such were never finished so after an initial boom, the developement slowed down. Very little growth occurred for awhile but the resorts were full and busi

Finally Lucaya began to catch on and the old abandoned Lucayan Beach Hotel and Casino was demolished and the antiquated Holiday Inn was torn down. All was built new with the Westin / Our Lucaya Group and a copy of the International Bazaar was built next to UNEXSO along with several more hotels. This turned out to be fortunate for the island as in the fall of 2003 a hurricane more or less wiped out downtown Freeport and Lucaya escaped reasonably unscathed. Even the casino in downtown has not been built and the shops remain empty.But Lucaya is business as usual and doing a great job of it. There are some of the finest beaches in the Bahamas in Lucaya and open to all. Lucaya and UNEXSO are closer to the dive area than Freeport itself so boat time is minimal. There are all kinds of water sports available on the beach as well for your down time or just for the non divers you might accidentally travel with. There are also many very good restaurants available - all this in easy walking distance.