Arnie Weissmann
When a cruise ship docks in Bimini, it's not a long walk from the ship to the island's main road. Arriving there, you can go left or, looking both ways and crossing, go right.
In reality, most passengers won't have to make that decision. Most will have already hopped on a complimentary tram at the end of the pier that will bring them to a beach. If arriving on Virgin Voyages, the tram will turn left to its private Beach Club. On other lines, they'll also go left to enjoy a day at the nearby Resorts World beach.
But if you were to cross the road and go right, you'd head into Alice Town, Bimini's largest community. It's about a 30-minute walk, or you can prearrange to rent a golf cart.
There's not a lot to see in Alice Town. The Bimini Big Game Club Resort & Marina has a plaque noting that Martin Luther King Jr. stayed in Cottage No. 3 and worked on speeches poolside. There's a rum bar on the premises named for Ernest Hemingway.
You'll know when you've arrived at Dolphin House. Photo Credit: Arnie Weissmann
However, a little farther down, to the right of the main road, is something extraordinary: The Dolphin House. Ashley B. Saunders -- Sir Ashley B. Saunders -- is its creator and caretaker. Inspired by an underwater encounter with dolphins, he has, since 1993, been artistically enhancing his childhood home with, well, anything he can find.
Embedded into the walls of Dolphin House, inside and outside, are items "from churches, the resort, private homes, the beach, the roadside, demolished buildings. Scraps of the Hilton Hotel are in this building," he said. "Not a single thing has been bought."
Saunders is 80 years old and reckons he has worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week on the house since he began his mission 32 years ago. He charges $20 for a tour, which will last as long as a visitor has questions (my tour lasted almost two hours). Visitors sometimes give or send him things to put into the walls -- one recently divorced woman gave him her wedding ring -- but most items have been found or brought to him locally.
He is, simply put, an exceptional man. One of 10 children born in that very house to a shipbuilder father and bread-baker mother, he tried to give it a go as an apprentice shipbuilder. But he was called to another life: He went to Madison, Wis., and received a philosophy degree from the University of Wisconsin. He did postgraduate work in philosophy at Harvard and then returned to Alice Town to teach at the local school.
He has written books on traditional medicine, Hemingway and the history of Bimini. A poem he wrote was included in a book with a foreword by then-Prince Charles and inspired a dance performed in Westminster Abbey. After receiving a Commonwealth Distinguished Service Medal, he added the honorific "Sir" before his name.
I did eventually make it to the Beach Club that day, and it was, like all things that carry the Virgin brand, a really good time.
Not to diminish that experience, but I suspect that the lasting memory, one that I have already shared with friends, is about turning right, not left, at the end of the pier. As we all learned but sometimes forget: Look both ways before crossing.