Bahamas Food Guide

site map

Are there scammers in the Bahamas?

One of the most wonderful things about the Bahamas is that there are very few people there out to get you, out to scam you. When you compare to other places in the world, even some of the other countries in the Caribbean, the Bahamas is truly, a safe haven.

In general, people in the Bahamas know how important visitors are to their lives and there are incredibly strict penalties for anyone that does anything bad to a tourist or visitor.

Taxis

As with anywhere else in the world, one or two taxi drivers out of the hundreds out there will, once in a while, take you on a slightly over-long route or quote a few bucks more than you should be paying.

The solution is simple - if you can, book a taxi. Not only will they quote you a price on the phone, you will also find that pre-booked cabs are much cheaper.

You can find a list of taxi prices in the Bahamas here - it's a little old (2008), so prices may have risen a bit since then, but it will give you a good ball-park figure to go by.

Price of a Drink

As a tourist, there are a few places that will charge you an extra buck for your beer. No big deal, but this type of thing puts me off going back, or recommending to friends.

Again, the solution is simple - if you worry about this sort of thing, look for the price list, or ask the price before you ask for the beer. There are so many excellent, honest bars in the Bahamas, it is not worth giving your hard-earned cash to someone trying to squeeze you for what they can.

The great Bahamian hot sauce scam

OK, this is just a fun one and no big deal, but we did once get scammed after asking for hot pepper sauce to go with our fish and chips.

After requesting the sauce, a lady brought a bottle to our table (this took 15 minutes), huffing and puffing as if we had just ruined her day, putting her to such enormous effort. When we went to eat some, we discovered, was there was no sauce in the bottle - it was completely empty!

OK, we just presumed they had run out of sauce and that empty bottle was all they had. Fair enough. But.... when we went to pay the check at the kiosk, we saw that the lady did in fact have a whole stack of hot pepper sauces behind her - all of them full :(

So then the scam part.... we paid, thought nothing of it, but after getting back home looked at our check and discovered we had been charged for the (non-existent) hot pepper sauce!

Well, we were looking for lunch again the next day, but as you would expect, we didn't stop and drove right on by.....