My high-school buddy Nate and I left some stories in our rambunctious wake. Thinking about them makes me chuckle. And wonder whether a few might disqualify us from holding public office — which, these days, is saying something. Nate’s elder brother (whose employees today call him “Mr. C”) had always been hospitable to me, even when others might justifiably have responded to various shenanigans inhospitably, so it came as no surprise when I learned that he’d pursued what would become a flourishing career in hospitality, first honing his craft at a boutique resort in the Rockies and then migrating to warmer climes.
Mr. C ended up in Bermuda, and for the better part of a couple of decades had an open invitation extended to “come visit sometime!” Evidently he was serious, because when I e-mailed him with an inquiry after many years without any contact, I could hear his friendly voice and see his full-faced smile in the “Absolutely!!” reply.
Near the top of Bermuda’s many advantages as a foreign, passport-stamping, beautifully-beached destination is the fact that it’s a mere two-hour flight from several east-coast cities. Also right up there is the warmth of the people, evident the moment we queued up at customs upon arrival. Many other features would come to crowd the top of this list over the three days of our stay.
DAY 0.5
We were Mr. C’s guests at Cambridge Beaches, which dates back more than 100 years as the island’s first cottage colony. The luxurious yet laid-back, adults-only resort’s location on a peninsula just north of Somerset Village gives it claim to four private beaches, and the surrounding reef makes for remarkably calm waters. Seeing no reason to go elsewhere, we devoted the balance of our arrival day to exploring the resort’s pristine grounds and decided to settle down here, specifically on the powdered-sugar sand of Bay Beach. (If there’s an anti-Mohs device to measure softness, this sand could be used to calibrate the upper threshold.) Here, we could walk out 200 yards before raising to our tiptoes, and noticed hints of bioluminescence in the water after dark.
Dinner was on-property at Tamarisk, where, on a star-canopied terrace, we enjoyed grilled mahi, tomato-base seafood chowder, red kidney bean kebab (my note for this reads, “WOW!”), and fried green apple for dessert. At night the croquis’ serenade was as loud and hypnotic as you’d imagine, and yet I found that after that first night I never noticed them unless I tried.
DAY 1
Bright and early, the resort shuttle took us to the Royal Navy Dockyard, where we caught the 45-minute ferry (faster and breezier than driving the island’s single, two-lane corridor) to St. George’s at the island’s northeastern tip. From the dock, it’s impossible to miss or dislike the UNESCO-listed Parish’s little web of streets, lanes and alleyways with irresistible names (e.g., Water, Duke of York, Silk, Aunt Peggy’s, King’s, Old Maid’s, etc.), lined with charming, bold-colored buildings, their whitewashed, hurricane-resistant roofs terraced and channeled to collect rainwater. The cemetery at St. Peter’s Church was especially interesting.
We didn’t stick around to watch a ceremonial reenactment of the town’s time-honored tradition of dunking the local gossip into the canal, but instead took a cab northward, past the Unfinished Church and to Fort St. Catherine, the largest of the island’s five forts, where a self-guided tour instructed us on its various military uses through more than three centuries, including during World War II. The beach immediately south of the fort looked like it would soon fall under the dominion of another saint, St. Regis, the under-construction hotel’s astonishingly intimate proximity to St. Catherine raising questions about both the presumption of celibacy among the beatified as well as the sanity of local zoning. Just west of the fort are two small bays, Achilles and Tobacco, the latter teeming with fish in shallow, crystalline water, making it a perfect spot for protected snorkeling.
We ferried back to the Dockyard, where we opted to peruse the Craft Market and surrounding shops and galleries rather than visiting the National Museum. Our visit was cut short by sudden rain for which we were unprepared, and we asked the Cambridge shuttle (which runs regularly between the resort and the Dockyard) to drop us off at Woody’s Restaurant on tiny Boaz Island, where, on local recommendation, we devoured traditional fish sandwiches on raisin bread, served with rice and peas.
In the late afternoon we rented a kayak from H20 Sports (at the south end of the Cambridge complex) and paddled out to snorkel at the partially-submerged remains of the H.M.S. Vixen, an 1865 gunboat that in 1896 was scuttled just beyond Daniel Island. We’d been told to watch for turtles along the coastline but found none where there were supposed to be many (“in the seagrass several dozen yards out from the south shore of the bay”), only to learn later that National Geographic had been doing some tagging and the spooked turtle population was behaving abnormally. Dinner was at Breezes, another top-notch Cambridge restaurant, marking, as far as I can recall, the first time in my many travels that I’d ever had dinner served directly on the beach, i.e., the gentle surf was lapping at our feet. If you’ve read any of my “Meals” posts, you know my rules a) to get gnocchi whenever available, and b) to avoid crustaceans, “the janitors of the ocean floor.” On this occasion, Rule A trumped Rule B, so dinner featured shrimp gnocchi (which got another “Wow!” note), as well as giant prawns and crusted mahi.
DAY 2
Now somewhat accustomed to left-lane traffic, we boldly rented a scooter in the morning from the agent / mechanic / comic / historian / ambassador / treasurer at Oleander Cycles (also on the Cambridge property) and set off to explore some beaches. But first we stopped for much-better-than-expected fish sandwiches and grilled chicken burgers at Mr. Chicken, just south of the resort at the intersection of Cambridge and Somerset. Continuing southeast, our 50cc machine opened all the way up, I belted “Born to be Wild” as I tried to remember to stay in the left lane. At Church Beach, we found fine coral snorkeling in about twenty feet of water, at the small reef encircling two big rocks about 75 yards from shore. We also found a demoralizing amount of plastic on the beach. This showed every sign of being not local litter (which, as you’ll appreciate when you visit, seems unimaginable on the island) but, instead, the toxic dross from the rest of the hemisphere congregating here on a beach whose visitors are too few and too infrequent to keep it all cleared, although there was some evidence of that Sisyphean effort.
We also tried our toes in the sand and surf at other south-facing beaches in this area: Warwick Long Bay, a sprawling, pink-sand beach whose west end features Jobson’s Cove, a great place for kids; and Horseshoe Bay, a shorter beach bracketed by its own coves, Horseshoe Bay Cove to the west and, to the east, Butts Beach (not, despite what you may be thinking, a naturalist enclave). Horseshoe seemed to be the most popular along this stretch, but what you lose in seclusion you make up for in easy access to cold drinks, ice cream and foot showers. On the way back to Cambridge we paused at Somerset Drawbridge, which at one time was the smallest functioning drawbridge in the world. For dinner, Mr. C generously hosted us at the aptly-named Bella Vista Bar & Grill, which served tuna sushi salad, the best rockfish I’ve ever eaten, and tiramisu.
DAY 2.5
Because any value one can siphon out of a departure day is a bonus, we got up early and spent a couple of hours snorkeling the shore immediately north of the resort, including the area around Cambridge’s Turtle Cove, which might be as close to a bucket-list seclusion beach as you’ll find anywhere without the help of a local guide, DEET and a machete. (Resort guests can reserve the tiny Cove for intimate catered meals.) We saw at least a dozen turtles out stretching their flippers for the morning, and in the narrow, shallow channel to the bay between the resort and King’s Middle Point, swam among what appeared to be happy, thriving coral up to five or six feet tall. We asked our driver to stop at Mr. Chicken so we could enjoy some more fish-on-a-bun en route to the airport, and imagined we could still taste it when we were back on the mainland a couple of hours later.
QUESTIONS FOR READERS
- Any nominees for Bermuda’s best beach?
- What are some of the most memorable cottage-configured resorts you’ve visited, anywhere?
- If you’ve been to the Caribbean, the Yucatan, the Bahamas and the Keys, do you think any of them beat Bermuda for the combination of convenience (from the mainland), charm and beauty?
- Did you do anything today to reduce plastic waste, even a little bit?
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