Bermuda (Swim) Shorts
Surprise! We’re in Bermuda!
We took off from Boston, and less than 90 minutes later, we landed in beautiful Bermuda. Easy peasy.
A few weeks ago we received a call from Campbell, of Camp Stories. He’s a consultant who is working with the Hamilton Princess Hotel in Bermuda. They came up with the idea of having a Wild Swimming Vacation operate from the hotel, and thought that SwimVacation would be a good fit. Smart fella. After a video chat with Campbell and Keisha, who is a marketing director at the hotel, we settled on some dates for a scouting trip, and here we are.
The Trip: Easy Easy Easy
Most of SwimVacation’s trips are fairly far-flung, and they tend to take a couple of airplanes with flight times long enough to watch at least two movies. Not so for us East Coasters with Bermuda. Heather and I glided through security at Logan. No lines. No waiting. Okay! Our flight time from Boston was 1.5 hours, not even long enough to see if Brad Pitt wrecks a race car for the third time in the F1 movie. Landing in Bermuda, the airport was clean and fresh and modern. The customs and immigration officials were friendly and welcoming. Customs entry forms could be completed on our phones by scanning a QR code. Easy peasy. We got our passports stamped with real ink, which we love but unfortunately is becoming more rare in this electronic world.
Bermuda is only a mile wide at its widest point, and about 21 miles long, about ½ the size of Manhattan. It’s actually a collection of about 150 islands, many connected by bridges and causeways. Bermuda is formed from an ancient volcano, the crater forming Harrington Sound, the land formed from limestone that has built up on top of the remnants of the volcano. It’s encircled by reefs, dotted with caves, and lined with pink sand beaches. Yes, please.
I have visited Bermuda a few times before, to compete in the Round the Sound swim held in October every year, and Heather visited as a young child. We know of the Hamilton Princess Hotel as the oldest and most famous resort in Bermuda, but not much else. Our first impressions upon check-in are that 1) this place has its act together, 2) the art collection here rivals anything we’ve seen and 3) this hotel is upscale, but not in a fussy way, which makes it seem even more upscale. Get my drift?
Among the celebrated artists in the Hamilton’s INCREDIBLE collection are Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Picasso, Andy Warhol, Carlos Santana and Denz to name only a few. There are literally thousands of incredible works of art lining the halls of this beautiful hotel.
Let’s get to work!
We met with Keisha over lunch (I had a Bermudian fish chowder that was out of this world) and Campbell joined via phone. We made a general plan for the week, and they connected us to some local watermen and waterwomen to coordinate with. In fact, local waterwoman and avid open water swimmer Jennifer arrived soon after lunch. We had a lovely meeting with her in a gazebo overlooking the harbor. She gave us a rundown on the best swimming spots around the island, taking into account weather, boat traffic, currents, scenery, ease of entry, all the stuff we care about. I use google’s MyMaps (this links to the actual map that we have created) to plan all of our trips, and added a lot more potential spots to it. Jennifer is a delight and we plan to swim with her later this week.
Our work on a scouting trip is to immerse ourselves in every experience that our future guests may encounter. Tonight that means dinner in one of the Hamilton Princess’s 3 restaurants, Intrepid. We sampled from both the wet bar (custom cocktails with lots of infusions) and the raw bar (oysters, poké tacos, and tuna tartare). Everything was beyond delicious and we noticed how all the staff have a friendly, refined, elegant way of helping us make the most of everything at the hotel. This is a rare thing to see in a hotel of this size.
In our introductory meeting with Keisha and Campbell, they mentioned that the Hamilton Princess has become Bermuda’s “front porch'“ - a place where everyone gathers and everyone meets Bermuda and each other. We like this.
Tomorrow we’ll do some freestyle exploring, check out some swims, sample the culture, and probably make a few mistakes. It’s why we like to scout new locations when we can. We make the mistakes so our guests don’t have to.
Follow along as we discover what this tiny island nation in the middle of the Atlantic has to offer and teach us as open water swimmers. So far, the welcome has been warm and wonderful.
Hopper