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Three or four hundred years ago, the Bahamas was a terrifying place. Spanish explorers called it the "baja mars," the shallow seas, and with nothing to guide them but the comically inaccurate Ptolemy map, they lived in fear of tearing up their clumsy, round-bottomed ships on its thousands of uncharted reefs and bars.

Today, Nassau and Freeport have deep-water seaports, but the big-box cruise ships that have turned many Caribbean islands into drive-through tourist traps are still conspicuously absent throughout the Bahamas. What's bad for tourism is sometimes good for tourists. There are more than 700 islands in the Bahamas, and most are idyllic hideaways serviced by a backwoods air strip and a couple of banged-up taxis. On some islands, the white-sand beaches and vast blue-green tidal flats are so deserted that it's not unusual to get buzzed by a DEA helicopter while you're out exploring, the implication being, if you're not scouting for a drug cache, then what are you doing here?

Andros, at 200 kilometres from top to bottom, is the biggest island in the Bahamas, yet is one of the least developed. Owing to the rock fence surrounding it (the world's third-largest barrier reef), the population hasn't grown in three centuries. Overgrown with thickets of palmetto and thornbush, inhabited by feral hogs and huge iguanas, Andros is not exactly a tourist mecca. But at the north end of the island is one of the sweetest boutique resorts in the Caribbean.

Kamalame Cay was developed in 1995 by Brian and Jennifer Hew, native Jamaicans who discovered the site while on a fishing trip. Kamalame Cay is actually an island itself, a scythe of white sand and wind-gnarled pine separated from the mainland of Andros by a tidal channel so narrow you could drive a golf ball across it.

After considerable legwork and haggling, the Hews managed to purchase the little island, and set about raising the money to build an exclusive resort. "We like a place that's very peaceful and quiet," Brian says. "We want to give people the impression they're visiting friends on a private island and staying in their own guest cottage."

Out of mild habit, I follow developments in the Bahamian tourist industry as some people spend a few minutes a week tracking the rise and fall of penny mining stocks.

Kamalame Cay was launched in 1997, and I soon began noticing their display ads in classy American fly-fishing magazines like Gray's Sporting Journal. If you like fly fishing, as I do, you come to understand that swanky resorts and lousy fishing generally go together. Wilderness and civilization are antithetical. If you want to find serious fishing in the Bahamas, you're best travelling to some ragged out-island bonefish camp where the plumbing works for an hour a day and the chef's idea of a picnic lunch is four bologna sandwiches and a jar of Kool-Aid. Women, if I may generalize, don't usually gravitate to that sort of resort.

Kamalame Cay, however, seemed to be one of those rare Bahamian resorts that promises luxury accommodation surrounded by primeval bush country and unspoiled blue waters and tidal flats. Having stayed there with my girlfriend, Ann, for four days, I can now report that the resort itself is the ultimate romantic hideaway. But if a man brings a take-down fly rod, there's nothing to stop him from slipping off midway through the trip to catch a fish or two, if he enjoys that sort of thing.

Ann and I flew to Nassau by scheduled airline (Air Canada runs regular non-stop flights to the capital), then took a 15-minute flight over to Andros in a little twin-engine Aztec. The resort's driver met us at the airport and took us to Kamalame Cay, where a young Englishwoman named Margaret showed us around the resort.

The hub of Kamalame Cay is a Jamaican-style plantation house called the Greathouse, a breezy edifice with soaring ceilings and wide windows overlooking the sea. At night, it's the gathering place for drinks and meals. During the day, it's pleasantly deserted, occupied only by a few chefs working quietly in the kitchen and a curly-tailed gecko or two scampering across the sunlit veranda. Margaret explained that guests can swing past the Greathouse any time they feel thirsty and help themselves to cold drinks at the bar, just as they would if staying with friends.

Margaret issued us an electric golf cart -- the main form of transportation on the island -- and offered to show us around. Accelerating out of the palm-shaded driveway, we bounced down a sandy road lined by bougainvillea and lush palms.

We passed a succession of narrow driveways, each one leading to a private villa with its own stretch of beach. The villas are all slightly different. Some look like fanciful South Seas beach huts and some evoke the overgrown, grass-roofed rusticity of a cottage in the English countryside. The coral stone walls are clad with climbing blossoms, and the wide verandas face the deserted white beach.

At our villa, ("Mahogany"), we climbed the veranda steps, opened some big French doors and entered a large octagonal room with a ceiling that soared to an apex of interlaced timbers. In the centre of the room was a huge bed. We thanked Margaret, unpacked our bags, and jumped on the big bed, leaning back against the headboard, looking out through swaying sheer curtains at the rumpled sea.

During our four days on Kamalame Cay, we managed to sneak a look at each of the eight cottages. It was hard to choose the best one, because the Hews have given each its own personality. Using fanciful combinations of fine linen, stonework, airy colours and rough wooden timbers, they've created an effect that's a blend of their temperaments, delicate and masculine at the same time -- the sort of beach houses Robinson Crusoe might have designed if he was a florist.

For the first few days, we were pleased with our luck, thinking we'd snagged the nicest place at the resort. After scouting the other cottages, we kept changing our minds, troubled by villa envy, until we decided we wouldn't trade "our" cottage for anything on the island.

There's allegedly a small army of full-time staff working at Kamalame Cay -- gardeners, chambermaids, cooks, waitresses, fishing guides, water-taxi skippers and so on, but you never see much sign of them.

Rumour has it that the resort caters to an array of wealthy Europeans and Americans, but you don't see much sign of them either, and the staff members are sworn to secrecy.

One neighbour, a handsome silver-haired old gent with a fly fisherman's wind-burned face, admitted that his family had started a little company called Bethlehem Steel. Another neighbour, a beautiful Russian woman, spent her afternoons relaxing with a large novel and a small bikini. She had spent the past few years travelling the high-end resorts of the world with her little boy. She appeared to be one of those people with a Chekhovian tale to tell, but it seemed impolite to ask.

At night, we all gathered at the Greathouse, socializing over drinks before retiring to our own candle-lit tables for dinner.

On Day 3, to introduce an element of adventure to our bucolic routine, we went fishing, and caught some nice bonefish and a half-decent blacktip shark. Over drinks with our guide that night, Ann asked him if any big-name stars had been to the resort.

As befitting his station, our fishing guide was firm: "Sorry, I can't discuss that."

"Sure you can."

"Okay, Mick Jagger was here a couple of weeks ago."

"What's he like?"

"Took him fishing. That's all I can say."

She clinked his glass. "Oh come on."

"He's got the attention span of a nine-year-old," our guide admitted. "Being in a boat with him was living hell."

At the north end of the cay, the Hews are selling a series of ocean-front building lots. They're intent on maintaining the architectural style and reclusive quality of the island, so prospective buyers have to agree to certain terms.

We talked to Brian over dinner one night and he unrolled a map. Brian, who looks a bit like the character Phil Hartman portrayed in Unthawed Caveman Lawyer, has the rock-crushing hands of a man who has spent his life outdoors. He likes putting up buildings, and the ideal arrangement would be to have Jennifer design something and have Brian build it.

I asked Brian for a price. It wasn't cheap, but hell, it was less than buying an average house in Toronto. I studied the lots. "Do you take Visa?" I asked.

After dinner, Ann and I loaded up with brandies and bounced along the darkened trail in our golf cart. At the north end of the island, we parked on a sand dune and walked down to the water. There was a full moon, and silvery light poured onto the beach. How could an ocean be so calm?

We walked through the shallows, creating V-wakes of florescence. We imagined dumping everything, moving here. We imagined going over to Nassau in our Boston Whaler and shopping for groceries. It was fun to talk about it, even though the next day we had to go home.

Air Canada operates non-stop flights to Nassau, and Bahamasair (http://www.bahamasair.com) provides daily service to Andros. For more information on Kamalame Cay, call 242-368-6279 or visit http://www.kamalame.com. Accommodation ranges from about $515 to $1,669 a night.

Jake MacDonald's latest book is Houseboat Chronicles (McClelland & Stewart).