Kamalame Cay's Season Is Opening With the Fresh Creek Bridge Still Closed. Which Way In Works Now?

Kamalame Cay's arrival page still lists two airports. Andros Town / Fresh Creek Airport is shown as roughly a 20-minute taxi to the ferry dock, and San Andros Airport as roughly 45 minutes. Since early August, the shorter of those two rides has depended on a bridge that cars cannot cross.

That changes how the season starts for anyone with a home on the Cay or near Staniard Creek. The Cay closes every September and October and says it may reopen in the last week of October. Its current Fall Into Savings offer sets travel to begin Thursday, October 29, 2026. Owners flying in now, and the guests they host through the winter, are working out their arrival around a creek they can't drive over.

The Short Transfer Used to Cross Fresh Creek

The Fresh Creek Bridge links Andros Town and Coakley Town, according to The Tribune. It was condemned in early August. Ministry of Works engineers told ZNS that an intermediate pier at one of the pile caps had sunk, which shifted the weight onto the two outer piers and dropped the three middle slabs by about nine inches in total. Officials stopped all vehicle traffic.

The geography explains why this matters so much for the Kamalame side of the island. When the bridge closed, Central, Mangrove Cay and South Andros MP Leon Lundy described the split this way to ZNS:

"The airport is on the south and most of the residents live to the north. So definitely we need this connection in order to survive and thrive."

The government's Andros master plan places the Staniard Creek Bridge, just west of the settlement, about 10 miles north of Fresh Creek. So the 20-minute transfer from Fresh Creek Airport to Kamalame's dock assumes a road across the creek, and that road is closed. Kamalame's page still lists the Fresh Creek transfer and says nothing about the closure.

Since then, residents have been parking at one end, walking across, and looking for a ride on the far side, according to The Tribune's October 21 report. That works for someone carrying a day bag. It is a much harder plan with a family's luggage for a month, a cooler, and a flight that lands late in the afternoon.

Where the Repair Stands on Arrival Week

The plan for the bridge has changed several times since August. Here is the order of events:

1. Early August. Officials closed the bridge and said they would put in a temporary crossing while a permanent replacement was designed. The Tribune reported that a temporary bridge had been located in New York and could take about two months to arrive.
2. September 22. The Ministry of Works and Family Island Affairs dropped the temporary bridge after contractors estimated it would cost more than $10 million. Minister Clay Sweeting announced a repair of about $400,000 instead, to begin October 1 and take four to six weeks. Director of Public Works Robert Mouzas said crews would install four steel tubular piles and use steel beams to jack up and support the damaged span. The work would be done from the water, using a barge brought in from another Family Island.
3. October 21. Sweeting told reporters that a structural component needed for the repair had arrived in the country, and that the contractor would do the work when the weather allowed.

As of that latest report, no new completion date has been given. The four-to-six-week window was counted from October 1, a start date that had already slipped by October 21. Even once it's done, the repaired bridge is an interim fix while the government tenders for a permanent replacement.

The ferry between the two sides of the creek hasn't filled the gap. A Central Andros business owner told The Tribune there is no reliable crossing. One ferry ran for about a month before it stopped, and another started earlier in the week of October 19 and left after a single day.

The Routes That Stay North of the Creek

Two kinds of arrival never touch Fresh Creek. Both are on Kamalame's own list of options.

Every price above comes from Kamalame's Getting Here page, and the page says flight and taxi rates can change without notice. Its airport taxis are independent public-service drivers who are paid in cash, and waiting fees are up to the driver.

San Andros also works for anyone flying in from Florida, because international arrivals can clear customs there as well as at Fresh Creek or Bimini. A charter that normally lands at Fresh Creek can be pointed at San Andros instead, and that keeps the whole trip on the north side.

Published schedules for San Andros don't agree with each other, so they need checking before you book around them. Kamalame's page lists Western Air on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, leaving Nassau at 9:00 a.m. The national tourism flight table shows Western Air between Nassau and San Andros daily, and Makers Air from Fort Lauderdale Executive twice daily. Makers Air's own San Andros page says seven days a week in its description, but its summary leaves out Saturday. Confirm with the carrier, not with a third-party listing.

The other limit is daylight. Kamalame notes that aircraft can't fly over Bahamian waters after sunset or before sunrise. Going through San Andros adds about 25 minutes of driving compared with the old Fresh Creek transfer. That means a late-afternoon connection out of Nassau has less room for delay than it did when the shorter ride was available.

The South Side Is Still There, Just Harder to Reach

The creek also splits the places owners drive to once they've arrived. Androsia, the batik maker whose fabric is one of the best-known souvenirs of Andros, is in Andros Town, on the side of the creek away from Staniard Creek. So is the Andros Lighthouse Yacht Club and its marina. Before August, a stop at either one was a short detour on the way to or from the airport. Until cars can cross again, no driving route from the north side reaches either one the way it used to.

The water route is the one the government has relied on. Its repair plan works from a barge, and its first answer to the closure was to ferry vehicles across.

The closure has hit Fresh Creek's own businesses hardest. A Davis Creek business owner told The Tribune that businesses in the area had lost at least 50 percent of their profits because customers could no longer reach them easily.

The bridge also carries more than cars. District Administrator Jackson McIntosh said in August that it carries water and electricity infrastructure across Fresh Creek, and that those lines would need to be rerouted when the structure is eventually replaced. The water line might go along the seabed. The closure also held up Bahamas Power and Light crews, who couldn't move heavy equipment south to restore power in Cargill Creek and parts of South Andros.

What Brings Back the 20-Minute Ride

The short transfer returns once the repair is finished. Mouzas said in September that vehicles would go back on the bridge when the work is complete, the temporary ferry would end, and engineers would keep monitoring the structure. The next step after that is the permanent replacement. In August, Mouzas described it as a two-lane bridge raised to about 16 to 20 feet.

The bridge has a long record of trouble. It is more than 50 years old. It was closed in 2020 after a mailboat hit it, and in 2023 officials acknowledged that it was in poor condition.

For more on the island and the Cay, see our guide to Andros & Kamalame Cay and our wider Andros page.

Whether you're opening your Kamalame Cay home this season or hosting guests on the north side of Fresh Creek, The Agency Bahamas knows Central Andros well beyond the airport transfer. Contact the team now!