Getting There & Getting Around
Fifty miles from South Florida, four ways to cross it, and a set of on-island realities that catch out almost every first-timer. This is the section where a wrong assumption costs you a day.
Bimini is the closest point in the Bahamas to the US mainland — about 50 miles due east of South Florida, with published figures ranging from 48 to 59 depending which airport and which shoreline you measure from. That proximity is why the logistics are unusual. You can be here in 45 minutes by air or two hours by fast catamaran, and you can also do it in your own boat, which is a genuine offshore passage across the Gulf Stream and not a day out.
The four options are not interchangeable. Balearia Caribbean runs the ferry from Fort Lauderdale on a Jaume II catamaran, a couple of hours each way, a few days a week. Silver Airways flies into South Bimini Airport, which is on the wrong island for almost everything you came for — there is a short ferry hop at the end, and it is the bit nobody warns you about. Seaplane and small charter operators serve the island too, and we hold no confirmed schedule or fare for them, so we publish none. Your own hull is its own conversation about weather windows and wind against current.
Then you land, and a different set of rules applies. Bimini is a standard Bahamian port of entry, so arriving by sea means clearing customs and immigration properly. A valid passport is required for every visitor. The Bahamian dollar is pegged one-to-one with the US dollar and US cash is taken everywhere, which is fortunate, because card acceptance is inconsistent and we have not been able to confirm a reliable bank branch or working ATM on either island.
Getting around is golf carts and walking. Theres more than a dozen cart operators on an island this size and the quality gap between them is enormous. Taxis do not run on meters. The mail boat lands once a week and the shops follow its rhythm, which is the kind of thing you only learn by being here on the wrong day.
Most of this section is unwritten on purpose. Fares, schedules and operating status all move, and the pieces below only ship once someone has confirmed them rather than inherited them from a search result. In the meantime, the transport and cart listingscarry the operators themselves.
Nothing published here yet
8 pieces are planned for this section and none are written. They are waiting on sourcing we do not have — prices, schedules and operating status that change often enough that publishing them from a desk would be publishing them wrong.