Bermudian Rhapsody
Hamilton Sound looking east
It was a short trip. We had only a week's opening at our brother's place because their condo lease only allows them to have 2 guests at a time in their guest bedroom. Their proximity to the east coast and my dear sister-in-law's friends and my brother's constant business travel results in limited openings to catch both of them. We picked the week of his milestone special birthday.
Bermuda is different. You can't get a mortgage unless the term ends before you turn 65, or as the BDMV terms you a "special person". My youngest brother is now a "special person". Of course we all knew he was special LOOOOOONG ago.
Bermuda is different. Be prepared for sticker shock. Prices are a lot higher than what you see in the States. An apple at the grocery stores was $1.29 and the Bermudian dollar (BD) is at par with the USD. Despite the equity in value you will find it hard to change BD for USD if you return home with any. Change out at the airport or before you leave. The last time we visited was 11 years ago and we had $80 BD that was no longer any good. They pulled the Queen off the bills, finally. When I went into various banks I found they were understaffed. Long lines, single to two tellers, and everyone had issues that took a long time to resolve. I finally found a majort Butterfield branch, mid-day, in Hamilton that had an express service window and I got them changed out.
Bermuda is different. Each household is restricted to one motor vehicle per address. Motorinos are the rule. Gas is about $9 per gallon. Tourists can not rent cars. Roads are left-hand drive and narrow, 8' lanes are the rule and very few roads have more than two lanes. Maximum speed limit on the islands is only 30 kph (25 mph). Only as you get near the business center in Hamilton is there a motorway with 4 lanes. Roads in the rest of the island are often cut through the Bermuda limestone and just wide enough for the lanes. There are usually no shoulders so if you meet a semi tractor-trailer rig you'd better hope for a slightly wide spot because they take up more than 1/2 the pavement. Tourists can rent scooters, maximum 125CC engines, and there are "motorcycles", miniature vesions of real-sized motorcycles. My brother owns a 125CC Black Shadow. It looks like a real bike, except for size and sound. Lately there have been electric cars, in-line 2 seaters about 1/2 the size of a Smart car, that can be rented by tourists.
Bermuda is different. Average temps are 85 F. Ocean water temps rarely get below 65 F. The beach sands are pinkish, some more than others, and the beaches are not filled with trash like many in the US. That's where we need to make amerika great again. You aren't supposed to walk around in public in your bathing suit. At the Dockyards, the old British Naval base converted into a tourist mall where the giant cruise ships now dock, tourists in bikinis or even one-piece suits are scolded by locals to put on a beach cover-up dress or wrap.
Bermuda is different. There is no fresh water. Most drinking water is captured rainfall. The roofs of the houses are stepped peaks, kind of like juggurats. They are coated with a lime paste material that serves to purify the rain as it courses down the roof and is captured by gutters that direct the run-off into pipes and tanks under the house. The tanks are chemically treated when necessary to maintian purity and clarity. There are some commercial water operations on the islands and you will see water trucks delivering to private structures. If you have a pool, odds are you need to have a truck deliver the water to completely fill it. The houses are usually painted in bright pastels, looks like Burano in Venice. If a house is not a pink, blue, green or yellow it's probably white.
Bermuda is different. The residents are friendly, outside of financial and insurance companies headquartered there for tax purposes, the majority of the nation's income is from tourism. The residents are also fairly formal, compared to the US. This is definitely a result of the long running British control and societal mores. There was not a strong slave society in the islands since there was no agricultural resources that benefited from slavery, like sugar cane. The black residents were craftspeople, many supporting the maritime needs of the British who colonized the islands in the early 1600's when George Somer's expedition to the New World, was shipwrecked there.
St. George's used to be the docking point for cruise ships but the entrance to it's harbor (harbour) is narrow and modern ships can't get through. The town has seen a real fall-off in visitors because of this. The ships now dock at the Royal Navy Dockyard site at the opposite end of the islands. It does make for a much more pleasant visit though. There are passenger ferries from Hamilton, the capital city, but not as frequent as needed so most visitors have to pay for a taxi ride to get here. The township isn't wealthy enough to pay for their own boat and so the town is slowly strangling. There may be smaller cruises that would dock here but the economics probably argue against that.
The capital, Hamilton, is the business hub and cargo port. Front Street, along the harbor side of Hamilton Sound, has the feel of an active port because the east end of "downtown" is the port. The west end and uphill from Front St. is the land of insurance companies, well populated by multi-story buildings that you'd find anywhere. There are no skyscrapers, not much of anything over 8-10 floors.
On Wednesday nights Front Street's commercial/tourist area is turned into a street fair, of sorts. Arts and crafts, foodstuff and music take over the main drag. We went to Finnegans Irish Sports Bar for dinner and had a table reserved at the end of the terrace over the street. A fine place to take in the music from the stage and the Gombey dancers. Gombey is a mix of African and Carribean costumes and dance. The costumes remind me of the ones from Kenya and Gambia in the Seattle Art Museum. It was a nice night. It did rain, more Seattle spitting than rain, and the pub put out the awning in case it got worse. Thankfully it didn't. We had a great dinner. Go for local seafood. The wahoo is really good. It reminded me of swordfish in texture and flavor.
We had to hit the Royal Dockyards while here, for no reason other than outside of seashore sightseeing there ain't a lot to do. The Dockhards are now the main cruise port because the ships are too big to get into St. George anymore. Our mission was to hit the Rum Cake shop on a mission of mercy for our daughter. The place has become a lot crazier since the ships now dock here for two to three days. Cruises come here with Bermuda as a main stop and the taxi industry really profits from it. My brother had one driver he always hired. That dude retired and Larry had to make new connections. This way you can schedule well in advance and be sure to have a ride available. Good thing to have because the island is hard on drunk drivers. You don't want to loose your license because cabs are not cheap.
On our way to the Dockyards we hit a couple parks on the coast. The coast? The whole island is a coast, just some more developed and private than others. The shoreline is not public, like in Washington, so resorts carve up a lot of beachfront. There are national parks that the public can use and Astwood and Warwick Long Bay are two of the more beautiful. Not much beach at Astwood, but it is secluded, except from the cliffs above you. Warwick had a few people at it. I was surprised at how unpopulated it was, but then it was Thursday and residents need to work to afford to survive here. Hence the pink sand laws that allow you to buy small amounts but not take any. If everyone did the beaches would disappear over time. In Pilgrims' Progress Mark Twain complained about the tourists on the first Atlantic / Mediterranean tour cruise right after the end of the Civil War stealing artifacts. He wrote about people with rock hammers taking pieces off the Sphinx and the pyramids and that, if left unchecked, the monuments would soon cease to exist, piece by piece.
We didn't spend a lot of time at the Dockyards but we did go through the Victualizing Yard where the fleet was outfitted for sea. This was because the restaurant we wanted to try was on the other side. Britain held the island with much fear of a US invasion throughout our Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. It was their western outpost in the Atlantic and a strategic asset. The space looks quaint now, but remember at those times a 150' ship was about as big as you got. Today's cruise ships would drawf a ship-of-the-line with 50 - 60 cannons. Lots of tourists wandering around and many of them don't realize the local customs requiring that swimsuits in public, not on a beach or at the pool, be covered by a beach dress or wrap. We saw a tourist in a bikini get scolded by a Bermudian that no one goes about in public as undressed as she was.
On our way back to Hamilton we stopped at a couple places we passed by, intent on making it to Dockyards before it got too late. Since every road is generally only two lanes getting caught in day-end traffic is always a concern. We stopped at the world's smallest drawbridge and at Gibbs Hill Lighthouse. The drawbridge is only about 18" wide, big enough to allow a sailboat's mast through if the pilot's good enough and the current's running true to the bridge opening. We can add this to the world's biggest wind chime and rocking chair from our trip through Illinois last summer. The lighthouse at Gibbs Hill is made of cast iron, one of the few in the world. Gibbs Hill is the highest point of Bermuda and the view is great. It costs only $2.50 BD/USD to enter and climb to the top. We did this years ago in the winter and it was just too damn hot and humid to do that climb this time so I cheated and only took pictures from the bottom outside the gift shop.
Panorama from Gibbs Hill
Just a few more lines and I can finally get this post done. It's been 3 weeks since we got back and I kept allowing myself to get interrupted. On top of that Comcast's modem was getting hinky and shut off my internet connection after over 2 hours of writing and photo uploads. I got pretty pissed and didn't get back to this for over a week. Mea culpa.
While there we got a bit of weather. Hurricane Gert trundled up the Atlantic between Bermuda and the US. We got some nice sunsets from it and a couple rain squalls with 25 -30 mph winds. Enough to fill the pool and drop its temperature from 85 to 76 over 2 days.
We had great weather for the trip home and it gave me some good photos. Living proof that you can survive the Bermuda Triangle. Despite the northwest fires the wind was blowing inland when we got home and we had one of the clearest landings, at sunset, in Seattle so I was able to get great shots of Seattle and Tacoma as we came in from the north and landed from the south over Tacoma.
Well, that's about it for now. We were planning on returning to Glacier this week but the fires in the park squelched that plan. Had to reschedule to next July in order to get the fishing trip in on our stay at Glacier Guides in West Glacier. For the moment we're considering a trip to the Washington coast in a couple weeks. I'll have more to do then, eh?
Ciao for now.