Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
destroyed hotels. Check out the mermaid shrine and the glowing pink conch shell lamps.
There's a small museum and gift shop, but the real point of your visit is talking to the vol-
uble Saunders, who describes his work as 'a poem in stone.' If you're an 'artist, poet, hu-
manitarian or dolphin swimmer,' you can rent the two-bedroom upstairs apartment.
Healing Hole
NATURAL SPRING
Local lore attributes the inspiration for Martin Luther King Jr's 'I Have a Dream' speech to
the mystical effect of the so-called Healing Hole, hidden in the middle of the North Bimini
mangrove swamps. The great man bathed in this freshwater sulfur spring shortly before
speaking those memorable words. Many visitors here claim an enigmatic calming sensa-
tion after visiting the hole, though others report nothing but a sulfur stench and mosquito
bites. You'll need help from a local to find the place - plenty will be happy to show you the
way for a fee.
SOUTH BIMINI
Less-developed South Bimini has long been a weekend hideaway for wealthy expats, but
has also maintained large areas of mangroves, tropical hardwood forest and saltwater pools.
This tiny 5-mile-long isle is therefore still popular with waterfowl, who head for duck lake,
their winter getaway. the sweetest spot for sand and sun is
Tiki Hut Beach
, on the west
shore.
HEMINGWAY & THE BIMINIS
The cigar-chomping, rum-swilling, marlin-reeling ghost of Ernest Hemingway
looms large in Bimini. 'Papa,' as the ultimate man's man was known, made the
island his summer home during the mid-1930s. He docked his boat, the
Pilar,
at
Brown's Marina, and spent much of his days indulging his love of big-game
fishing.
Hemingway wrote several of his later works in Room 1 of North Bimini's
Compleat Angler Hotel
, including the 'Bimini' chapter of his posthumously
published novel,
Islands in the Stream,
and several sections of
To Have and
Have Not
. At night Hemingway would take on all comers in a boxing ring he
built in the hotel bar, promising $200 for any islander who could take him for
three rounds. No one ever won. The hotel burned to the ground in 2006, killing
the owner and destroying a trove of Hemingway photos and other memorabilia.
The hotel's chimney and foundation still bear their grim testimony on the
Queen's Hwy just north of the ferry dock.
