Ausflug 35

Back to the Beaches of Bermuda

June-July 08

Day 3: Docking in St. George and Swimming in Tobacco Bay on Bermuda.

We arrived almost an hour earlier than scheduled in Bermuda, and that caught us off guard. We had thought we had time for a leisurely lunch in the dining room before we entered the narrow entrance to St. George's harbor, but right at the end of our meal we noticed rocky outcroppings passing by on either side of the ship and, sure enough, we were already entering the harbor. We ran to retrieve our cameras and back up on deck, but the best we could do was to photography the narrow gap sinking astern of us.

After entering the wide, central part of the harbor, the pilot rotated the ship using the bow thrusters and we edged carefully up to the dock next to the reconstruction of the Deliverance that had carried shipwrecked colonists to Jamestown and then back again to Bermuda around 1620. The town crier was also there to greet us and ring his bell as an official welcome to the island.

Just uphill from the waterfront was St. Peter's Anglican Church that we had enjoyed visiting on our last transatlantic crossing. Near the crest of the hill stood the ruins of the "Unfinished Church". Those ruins looked, however, considerably more cheerful on a warm, bright, sunny day than they had looked on the cool, dark, and rainy day of our previous visit.

After carefully assembling our gear for an afternoon at the beach and cooling off a bit in our cabin, we set out to walk through St. George, uphill past the Unfinished Church, and back downhill on the other side of the peninsula to Tobacco Bay and beach. This sounds like a hike but the distance was really only about a mile and the walk took us only about 25 minutes total. It was sunny and hot enough, however, that we were all eager to jump in the water when we reached the beach.

We spread the blue and white striped towel provided by the Majesty in the shade of a very small cedar tree and shucked off our shoes, socks and outer layers of clothing before we could actually get in the water. Monika beat me in by a mile because I was further delayed by assembling my Aqua gloves, beach shoes, snorkel, and swim goggles. I felt rather foolish with all that gear on, and the guy next to us remarked that I looked like a character straight out of the old TV show "Sea Hunt", but it was ultimately worth it because I had a very nice time snorkeling around the lagoon for the next two hours.

Snorkeling is a lot easier than swimming for me as I have negative buoyancy and the snorkel lets me effectively swim under the water rather than on top of it like most normal people can do. Fortunately the lagoon was salt water and I found that as long as I breathed deeply I didn't sink below the level of the snorkel's air intake on the surface, which does happen on occasion in fresh water.

Getting into the water at Tobacco Bay beach was easy as the shoreline was quite sandy and shelved very gradually to deeper water out near a rim of surrounding rocks and pieces of coral reef. It helped that the water in the shallow areas was very warm, almost bathtub temperature. That meant I didn't have the normal jolt I feel when entering a cold swimming pool or even the cold water in the lagoon where we went snorkeling in Kauai, Hawaii during Wanderung 17.

The local fish population, as it turned out, lived mostly in the deeper water out near the rim of barrier rocks. In fact, I found a deep blue fish and a large striped sea bass (maybe!) only when I had snorkeled out to the outer edge of the rocks lining the lagoon. A school of silvery-sided fish accompanied me back into the lagoon; they seemed to be the really friendly fish in that particular lagoon, at least.

After a couple of hours of unadulterated fun my skin was wrinkling and I was starting to get tired and even a bit chilled despite the warm, sunny day. So we all decided to call it quits, wash the sand of our feet, and amble back to the ship for dinner. One advantage of the "Freestyle Cruising" system used by NCL is that we did not have to be back by a specific time and could so take our time walking back to the ship, taking showers, and dressing for dinner. As we left, our shady spot on the beach was immediately co-opted by a group of friendly Russians!

Back in St. George we wandered around a bit looking for Cafe Latte, which functioned as the main bus station in St. George, in the hopes of purchasing bus passes. After perambulating around the town a bit we did find it, but of course it was closed as by this time it was well after 5 p.m. It was nice to see the pastel walls and white roofs of the houses of St. George in the brilliant sunshine rather than in a cold, dark rain as on our previous visit. In fact, the town looked completely different than on our previous visit, which just goes to show how much difference the weather can make. The pastiche of pastel colored buildings reminded me of the "Tidy Towns" of Ireland that we saw on Wanderung 9, but the solid phalanx of white roofs was unique. The reason for the white roofs is for the collection of rain water in underground cisterns below each home or building. Rainfall is Bermuda's sole source of fresh water, so catching every available drop of rain in this fashion seemed quite important to the islanders.

Returning to the ship for dinner, we had another wonderful meal and then went dancing for a bit afterwards. The duo providing the dance music were quite good and I enjoyed dancing the slow, non-Latin dances like the foxtrot and the Lindy or jitterbug. Afterwards Lois and Monika visited the ship's library room while I returned to our cabin to update the journal, which on this trip had to be done in longhand as I had decided to leave Baby (our small Toshiba notebook computer) at home. They returned with a couple of paperbacks and then we all settled in for the night.

Copyright 2008 by Robert W. Holt and Elsbeth Monika Holt
Prolog
Day1

Leaving Baltimore

Day2

Sailing to Bermuda

Day3

Docking and Swimming

Day4

Snorkeling

Day5

Helmet Diving & Crystal Cave

Day6

St. George and Leaving Port

Day7

Sailing Home

Epilog

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