{"id":68745,"date":"2019-02-04T09:09:04","date_gmt":"2019-02-04T14:09:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.tablethotels.com\/en\/?p=68745"},"modified":"2023-03-29T10:53:44","modified_gmt":"2023-03-29T14:53:44","slug":"pig-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.tablethotels.com\/en\/2019\/02\/pig-beach\/","title":{"rendered":"Pig Beach"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pig Beach is exactly what it sounds like. It’s one of the most intriguing tourist attractions in the world. It also raises some serious questions about how we travel.<\/em><\/h4>\n

On Pig Beach in the Bahamas, the eponymous inhabitants hear your boat and paddle out to meet you. You can swim with them, hand them food, and take photos by the thousand. The pigs live on an uninhabited island without supervision, but they’re not the boar or warthog you picture surviving in the wild. They’re just pigs \u2014 and you’re only human. Of course you want to frolic in paradise with the piggies.<\/p>\n

But if you watched either of the recently released Fyre Festival documentaries, and you saw how some tourists treated the residents of Pig Beach, you might find yourself wondering: <\/p>\n

Is this the right way to travel? Am I harming this place by engaging with it?
\n <\/p>\n

\"Fyre
A still from a 2017 Fyre Fest promo video on YouTube.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To be fair, it\u2019s a question you should often ask yourself as a tourist. Even when the context could hardly be any different, the question remains the same. Take Matera, a small, ancient Italian city where the mayor bemoaned<\/a> “we don’t want tourists” even as his city initiated a year-long celebration that would bring thousands. <\/p>\n

Travel is complicated. <\/p>\n

Because you can\u2019t just beam down, leave no trace, and beam back up. You\u2019re not just one person when you leave for vacation. Whether you\u2019ve come as a group of hard-partying models, the picture of tourists run amok for spring break, or you\u2019ve come alone for solitary meditation, it doesn\u2019t matter. You are a tourist, and you are one of many. And through sheer numbers, you are changing a place. <\/p>\n

Is that a good thing, a bad thing, or something in between? An interesting setting for that question is Big Major Cay, the island also known as Pig Beach. <\/p>\n

\"Pigs\"<\/p>\n

How They Got There<\/strong>
\nYou want to know how the pigs showed up here? You\u2019re in good company. The pigs aren\u2019t native to this Bahamian island in the Exumas archipelago, some 80 miles off Nassau, and the legends of how they first arrived swirl like clear water swarming with hooves. <\/p>\n

One story tells<\/a> of meal-planning pirates who deposited them on the island and didn’t return, another of a man in a Y2K panic with an identical strategy about stashing leftovers. Whichever narrative you believe, it seems like these pigs were fated for pork… until the tourists showed up. <\/p>\n

When They Blew Up<\/strong>
\nCNN<\/a> weaves what seems like the most credible pig origin story, a tale that sees locals exiling farm animals from their idyllic Exuma islands to make room for a wave of glamorous travelers. As wealthy visitors flocked to the region in the ’80s and ’90s, residents sought an uninhabited, well-watered place to deposit their more odorous livestock. Presumably, they thought hogs weren\u2019t the ideal hotel amenity. Which was short-sighted, considering what happened.<\/p>\n

As the years went on, the pigs on the island multiplied and became an attraction. In 2013, a hotel owner turned them into a viral video \u2014 and, for lack of a better cliche, the pigs flew. Six years and a thriving Instagram location page later and they\u2019re nearly as big a draw as the sand and sun. The Bachelor featured them in 2016, the same year Amy Schumer<\/a> brought Jerry Seinfeld to take group photos. A Kardashian showed up. So did a Jenner. By 2018, an astronaut was narrating a movie about them.<\/p>\n

\"Hulu

\nA scene from “Fyre Fraud,” a documentary about the festival-turned-scam. (Image courtesy of Hulu)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Tragedy<\/strong>
\nAccording to CNN, there are no laws that protect the pigs, much to the chagrin of PETA and the like, although their use as a food source has abated. And besides reports of the pigs\u2019 aggressiveness, and a tendency to bite the hand that annoys them, critics seemed to especially have a point about the lax relationship between the pigs and humanity. In February 2017, just around a month after a curious piglet appeared in a Fyre Fest promo, tragedy swept ashore.<\/p>\n

As anyone who watched the Bachelor clip above can see, a lack of regulation allowed visitors to do seemingly whatever they wanted to the pigs, including feed them hot dogs (\u201cchicken hot dogs,\u201d the bachelor assured us, in the face of the haunting implication that he might have fed the pigs pig). <\/p>\n

After seven died, some locals blamed<\/a> excessive tourism. \u201cRight now it\u2019s blowing out of proportion with people, anybody, bringing food there, anybody doing what they [want to] do. We have people coming there giving the pigs beer, rum, riding on top of them, all kinds of stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

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