The Abaco swimming pigs, the lesser known cousins of the Swimming Pigs of the Exumas. And these days a little less in the press due to the pig tragedy in the Exumas. More on that in a moment.
In the Abacos, you can feed, and swim (if you can get over the pig poo in the water), with the pigs of No Name Cay. This Cay is just south east of Green Turtle Cay. Tourists come from all over the Abacos to see them. It is touted as one of the top 10 things to do when you visit the Abacos. We agree, it should be on your list.
So how did the Pigs get there? Good question. As the story goes, there was a shipwreck and the pigs swam ashore. Really? We sort of find this hard to believe. We are kinda leaning toward someone putting them there on purpose for tourists. We don't know for sure, so we will go with the shipwreck story.
We are extreme animal lovers. So much so that we are primarily vegans (4 years running now). So a chance to go and feed some wild animals running free on a small tropical island is kinda up our ally, especially for Cyndi. The pigs are friendly enough, though they can nip you, as Cyndi found out. When we visited, there were piglets as well, that was icing on the cake.
We were torn through. We don't approve of using animals for our amusement, like in zoos or the circus, and this seemed like it was borderline. We wouldn't mind so much if we knew everyone would treat these pigs with respect, but we know that doesn't happen in the real world. This leads us to the Exuma pigs. During this time, there was a lot of coverage of the deaths of seven of the swimming pigs of the Exumas. It was later reported that the pigs died from possible alcohol poisoning due to people feeding them booze. If this is actually the case, its not funny at all, it is down right cruel. If you are that sort of person that would do that to an animal, then please cross visiting the pigs off of your Bahamas bucket list. Seriously, pigs are very intelligent, sentient animals, feeling pain not unlike we do. No doubt these pigs suffered before they died. All for a few laughs of a group of people having nothing better to do than to get some pigs drunk.
Anyway, back to some fun. If you are the type of animal loving person that has respect for these animals, can bring some decent food for them, and be gentle, please go and visit the Abaco Swimming Pigs on No Name Cay. You will have fun, we certainly did, as you can see in this YouTube episode.