Hilly Spicy Dicey Flip Flop Fun in Bermuda.

Is that Gin I smell?

We love caves, and we love swimming in them, through them, or climbing into them from the water. This morning we found the cave jackpot at Admiralty House Park, just a 5 minute drive from the Hamilton Princess Hotel. This place used to be the nerve center of the British Navy’s Atlantic fleet from the late 1700s to the 1950s, and the ruins of the original Admiral’s Headquarters are still here. It also served as a cultural hub back in the day, with grand balls and dinners held here. You can almost smell the gin and tonics.

Over the years, a network of tunnels was carved into the limestone beneath the hill it sits on, extending all the way to the ocean. Old roads and paths and stairs lead to cliffs for jumping and beaches for swimming, the landscape showing its years but still holding a sense of the glory of time past. Heather and I walked the grounds and scouted the caves and beaches, thinking about the best way to get a group of swimmers to a good entry (and exit) point, and generally scoping out a swim course. 

We got in our shorty wetsuits and dipped into the shallow, blue water of Clarence Cove. Even here on the west side of the island, the water is a bit confused and choppy from the winds that have been blowing all week. We charged across the cove to a series of caves and generally splashed around. Swimming back along a cliff face that is popular for diving, we found the cave/tunnel system at the base of the cliff that we had hiked into earlier. The whole place is like a set from an Indiana Jones movie, if there was one that involved swimming. Our takeaway from this scouting mission is that this swim would stand up to any of the great ones at our other destinations. Notes: watershoes for guests and guides, flashlights for guides.

Freestylin’

Back in our tiny car, we headed northwest along the shore, looking for more swimming spots and staying on the LEFT, this time with no particular advice or X on our map. We found an unnamed pulloff that looks popular with locals. A little rough around the edges, but a strong candidate in a pinch.

Heather made friends with a few local guys, and they blew a conch for us. Would it surprise me if one of these gentlemen visited Heather in Maine in the future? It would not.

Our new friends Sydney and Henry, brothers in law. Sydney blew a conch shell for us and nearly blew the roof off our little tiny car.

From there I plugged Art Mel’s Spicy Dicy sandwich shop into google maps, hearing it had the best fish sandwiches on the island. Have you ever had google maps bring you into a completely untenable situation, where you’re not quite lost but definitely not on a road that you’d choose to drive on? That’s where we found ourselves, climbing an impossibly steep hill on a ridiculously narrow road in a laughingly small car. The road simply came to end at a house with a short driveway. There were two guys doing some work there, and they knew right away what had happened to us. One of them hopped on his moped and said follow me! We did, and he brought us out of the maze of tiny streets and right to Art Mel’s Spicy Dicy.

A note on the Bermudians we have encountered. They are some of the most friendly and polite people I have ever met. Everyone says hello. They wish you a nice day. They smile at you, help you find your way, and forgive your touristy screw-ups (for the most part). As we walked into Spicy Dicey, we were greeted by a young woman behind the counter, then again by every customer who walked in. We ordered the fish sandwich, a monster of a meal, with two layers of fried whitefish, tartar sauce, and coleslaw on 2 thick slices of raisin bread. Yes, raisin bread. We ate it on the tailgate of our tiny car, and it was as delicious as advertised. Heather took a side trip to a little corner grocery store and met a guy whose brother lives in Bangor, Maine. Small world. 

Round the Sound

Bellies full, we headed for the Bermuda Aquarium, in search of a good place for a group of swimmers to enter Harrington Sound. I’d been here before to race in the Round the Sound swim. The inlet to the sound was raging with the outgoing tide, and the opportunities for getting in near here seemed rather poor. We took a tour of the aquarium and zoo, anyway, and happened to meet the bespectacled curator on our way out. We drove couter-clockwise around the sound, looking for little jump-in spots for a group. We found and noted a couple of them on our map. One was near an elementary school, and a little kid came running out with a huge smile on his face, exclaiming that he was TAKING THE BUS HOME!!!  He is either in for a big disappointment, or the school bus is a much nicer experience than when I was a kid. Before heading back to the hotel, we stopped at Shelly Beach to scout around. Lots of parking, easy beach access, cool looking rocks to the north. Check, check, check.

Today we walked almost 10,000 steps (in flip-flops), swam over 1000 strokes, and drove 100 kilometers (probably more like 50 but it felt longer driving on the LEFT).  A tiny dinner of crackers and cheese sufficed after the King Kong of sandwiches earlier. An evening walk around our host property, the majestic Hamilton Princess, was the perfect night cap. We are exhausted but pretty jazzed about the potential of running a SwimVacation here. 

Hopper