Bimini is crowded. Not that there are a lot of people here, but almost all the buildings are crammed together on one sand spit about two hundred yards wide and two or three miles long. There is more land on this island, and two more islands, including one that has the airstrip, but all the locals seem to live here in Alice Town.

At one end of the jumble of homes, shops, restaurants, bars, and marinas there is a huge resort complex with hotels and mansions and a cruise ship terminal.

Getting here from Freeport yesterday was interesting: first a twenty minute ride in a tiny fourteen seater plane. We were the only white people on board. Nobody even told us to fasten our seat belts on take off, let alone explain about emergency exits or life vests. Nope, if this plane is going to crash we are on our own. That’s a distinct possibility, too. If you google “flamingo air” the first suggested search is “flamingo air bahamas” and the second one “flamingo air crash”. Though Flamingo Air has more crashes that you might expect for an airline with so few destinations, most of them are just bad landings that end up in the bush rather than the runway, and the passengers get to walk away. Still, I was happy to be down safely. From the airport there was a bus ride to the ferry dock, and a short ferry ride across to Alice Town.

We met Barry, who is the local agent for our AirBnB, and also rents out golf carts. After carting us back to the rental to drop off our luggage, we roared off up the main drag so Barry could show us all the grocery stores, liquor stores, and webshops that dominate the local economy. A “webshop” is a Bahamian term for a gambling joint offering numbers games. The term dates back to before they were legalized in 2013 when they had to pretend to be Internet cafes.

We are across the road from the beach, with a view west to the glow of Miami. Sunset was lost to a bank of cloud, but there were a selection of interesting looking crabs scuttling around on the rocks when we went for an evening walk.

This morning we walked round the corner to Dolphin House. This is an insane folly decorated and filled with found objects. The creator of this Ashley Saunders. Twenty seven years ago he went swimming with a pod of dolphins, and was so moved by the experience that he became an artist, devoting his whole life to this one glorious three story work of art.

The third story is a recent addition, reached by a narrow external staircase. Ashley is proud of how well constructed his building is. Paula happily discussed rustproofing rebar and concrete roofs with him while I took pictures of the shell and tile mosaics on the outside of the building.

The decorations inside are even better.

I’ll probably post some more of these when I get back to decent Internet connectivity, but for now let’s end with a selfie.