Bahamas -- Bimini: Simple Island With Simple Pleasures

Adam Clayton Powell, the late New York City congressman, would spend hours inside the End of the World Bar on the island of Bimini sipping scotch and milk and talking eloquently about world events. He would refer fondly to his getaway among the coconut trees with one patented phrase: Shaggy Paradise.

Powell had a point.

Bimini, in the Bahamas, is a remote retreat of old boats and young fishermen that is devoid of tourist crowds, teen-agers selling trinkets and guides pushing tours to nowhere. Bimini is not a party hot spot of these islands: It has no gambling, no towering hotels with 24-hour room service, no jacket-required restaurants and no limousine service.

It is a simple island with simple pleasures.

"We don't have big-city attractions but we don't need any," says Ossie Brown, 44, the owner of the Compleat Angler hotel and bar where Ernest Hemingway drank vodka martinis, extra dry, with olives. "No rushing, no pressure, no heart attacks."

It was Hemingway who captured the charm of Bimini through a character in his novel "Islands in the Stream," who observed that all there was to do was "swim, eat, drink, work, read, talk, read, fish, fish, swim, drink, sleep."

Bimini is the first island in the Bahamas chain, 47 miles from Miami. It is seven miles long and has about as many churches as it has bars. Many of its 1,648 people are fishing guides or otherwise connected to the fishing industry.

This tiny island produces some of the finest marlin, tuna and wahoo catches in the world. The Bimini Big Game Club has been the center of sport fishing activity for decades and now has a total of 100 boat slips to handle luxurious yachts up to 100 feet long.

A scenic flight on Chalks International Airlines, a Miami-based seaplane operation, will have you relaxing in the sunshine and azure waters of Bimini in about 25 minutes. The planes seat 17 people and the ocean is your runway.

The airstrip in North Bimini is about a quarter mile from the major hotels - all four of them. Alice Town is the main settlement, where one can quickly find a collection of restaurants and bars to absorb the easy lifestyle. Although the islands are collectively referred to as Bimini, the group actually includes South Bimini, a rectangular-shaped island about three miles long and one mile wide, which also has an airstrip and waterfront houses owned mainly by Americans.

There are two cheap ways of getting around Bimini: walking and walking slower. Stroll past merchants, stopping to eat fresh grouper, snapper, conch salad and peas and rice.

The Red Lion and the Fisherman's Bar and Restaurant are favorites, along with the Anchorage Restaurant, which serves up excellent food and a gorgeous ocean view. Dining in Bimini is reasonable. A dinner for two with drinks will average about $40.

As for hotels, the Bimini Blue Water has 12 neat and basic rooms that start at $65 in the summer and $90 in the winter. All of the rooms face the ocean and are just steps away from the beach. You'll pay a bit more for the Big Game Club and the Compleat Angler Hotel.

And remember, Bimini is casual. A shirt that buttons is considered over-dressed. Take only shorts, a pair or two of pants, sandals and plenty of T-shirts.

Diving in Bimini is spectacular. There is a choice of blue holes, coral reefs, wrecks and limestone formations that some believe to be the Lost Continent of Atlantis. Bimini Undersea Adventures handles diving packages. If you enjoy snorkeling, you need not pay to take a boat tour: marine life just off the beach includes several species of tropical fish, barracuda and sting-rays.