all-you-can-jet -- day 9 -- 9 beaches, bermuda

thought i'd be up and running a tad earlier today, but NO, didn't get rousted until about 10:00.


after cornflakes and hot tea for breakfast, we made a quick round of the property:

(durian?  i don't know what the hell this is)

the 9 beaches resort prides itself in being eco-friendly.  the rooms are some kind of high tech canvas -- something along the lines of tyvek -- that's stretched across a metal frame.  the floors are in planks that are something concrete-like -- probably recycled something.  throw mats are laid over the top of that.

all the cabanas are raised up above the ground.

the housing is water tight, that was proven yesterday, although i have no idea how that would be true.  bermuda as a whole has remarkably few insects.  i've seen one mosquito, a few beetles, a couple little flying things, but really nothing.  (to give you some idea, i'm typing on the patio of the main building right now, there are lights on around me everywhere, i'm wearing short sleeves and bare feet, no insect repellent, and i've had nothing come near me in the 90 minutes i've been online so far.)  

the one thing the cabana does have is little sugar ants.  a couple hundred, i'd guess, but they don't bug me enough to use the insecticide in my place.

staying in the cabana is, very much, like the fanciest camping you've ever done.  running water, electricity, internet, but the occasional flapping of something tent-like and the possibility that you might have sugar ants on the floor or lizards on the roof. 

i think king feddy could tolerate this place, although he'd probably want to book the fairmont immediately.

here are shots taken from the place where the babelonian had the book yesterday, looking back at my cabana, with progressive levels of zoom.

(this is the widest angle my camera will shoot)

what's interesting, and a fact i didn't actually know until this morning, is 9 beaches is a bermuda national park.  i'm not sure if the cabanas are in it, or not, but that gives you an idea as to the quality of beaches here.

unfortunately i'm a super-whitey, so laying on the beach is right-out.  but it's still a pleasure to be around ... especially considering that i grew up in about the most landlocked area of the US (CO) and didn't see the ocean until i was 18.

last night i could see these weird light colored objects in the water.  i thought it might be phosphocene, but when i approached the water with a light i could see it was low tide and they were clam (or something) mounds.  the condition just happened to be there this morning, making it an easy pic:

before the days of google i was known as the guy with an encyclopedic amount of arcane information.  now i'm closer to the blow-hard that won't shut the hell up ... but that doesn't keep me from still having a deep love of superlatives, and that can only mean one thing ... that's right ... a visit to 

the world's smallest drawbridge

yes, that's me straddling the world's smallest drawbridge 

(in my glow-in-the-dark shoes)

it's designed for sailboat ship masts to go through.

i know, i know, so great.

how about ... oh ...

the oldest cast iron lighthouse in the world

this is looking up the water collection ramp

interiors

views from the top

i forgot to take my camera out of black and white mode at the top (i shot black and white inside because i thought it would look better -- it does), but in some ways it helps illustrate a point ... the buildings in bermuda are all roofed with slate, then covered with a lime amalgam ... the lime purifies the water and it rolls off the roofs into collectors under the buildings ... typically the buildings will have collectors as large as the buildings under the buildings ... which is why you never see bermudan buildings blowing away in hurricanes and also why there are no purification plants around the country ... if you're not chucking a lot of pollutants into the air, you can drink your rainwater ... storing it in lime and copper tanks further helps to kill the bacteria.

how.  great.  is.  that?

a quick sprint into hamilton to meet up with ed christopher, the town crier.  he gives walking tours of the city with immense knowledge.  but that's not what strikes you.  what strikes you is everything about him is big: his sense of humor, his knowledge of history, his stature, his playing to an audience, his personality, but especially how well known he is around town.

i could go on and  on about him, but better would be just to give you a slice of tour.

ed/town crier: "on your right you'll see ..."

(man drives by slowly in white light pick-up and motions at ed)

ed: "yes!  yes!  yes!  how's it goin', mack?  'right?  (he turns back to us) ... a statue of a woman ..."

(woman walks past)

ed: "hello love."  

woman: "how are you doin'?"

ed: (kisses her on the cheek) "better now!  ah!  hah!  ha hah! ... she represents ..."

(woman walks near)

ed: "hello, darling."  (kisses her on the cheek)

woman: "all right?"

ed: "better now!  ah!  hah!  that's two in twenty feet!  i better watch out!  don't tell her i told you that!  ah ha hah!  (goes back to addressing us) ... justice, because ..."

(man starts to pass on the street)

ed: "yes!  yes!  yes!  yes!  how about it, bill?  all right?  ah!  hah ha!  (he turns back to us) ... she was burned at the stake ..."

(another man drives slowly by in a car.)

"all right, ed?"

ed: "yes!  yes!  yes!  yes!  ah hah!  how're you?  still on for tuesday?  ah hah!  yes!  (turns back to us) ... and being charged for poisoning her master."

it sounds like i'm exaggerating, i swear  i am not.  it was this way for nearly two hours.  he must have easily known 20% of the people that went past.  kissed at least two dozen women.  many times people stopped dead in the street while driving to exchanged pleasantries.  

and always.  always, always, always, he'd pick up exactly where he left off.  slavery, buring at the stake, hurricanes, riots, famine.  he'd flicker back and forth between the joy of working the populace and the dead seriousness of whatever he spoke.  it twisted my psyche 270 degrees to go from smiling, joking and exchanging hellos with the passers by and then NOT have some alfred e. newman grin on my face as he went on about the history of slavery.

it was stunning.  it was amazing.  it was beautiful.  

there is no question that he is the perfect man in the perfect job.  

so perfect, in fact, that he was asked to be the town crier for one day so the queen of england could be announced (he was a known actor with a one-man show).  he ended up chatting up prince philip while things slowly unfolded on the day of her majesty's visit.  philip asked him to join the ceremony as a guest of the crown (which he did).  on return to england they sent a letter saying bermuda was awesome, but really, they'd like to have ed to buckingham palace for tea.  these things don't happen without charter, of course, so the mayor of hamilton had to put him into employment.  that was 16 years ago and ed's been the best town crier in the UK ever since.

i'm only about 1/4 of my way through all-you-can-jet, but i'll bet you anything that this ends up being my very favorite thing of all.

we went to the lobster pot for early dinner.  i started with their "famous" fish chowder.  unfortunately it was curry-based, a taste i don't particularly like.

this was followed by a "guinea chick," also known as a spotted spiny lobster.  indigenous to this area, this one was stuffed with deviled crab meat.  sweeter than regular lobster, closer in texture to a languostino.  and ex-pens-ive.

desert was banana fritters -- sugar coated and torched in black rum.  i'm not a banana fan, but this is one of the "known" dishes of bermuda, so i wanted to try it before i left.

(look!  flames!)

this along with a salad a soda and crab cakes was a cool $75.  ouchie.

afterward we made a quick run out to paget marsh nature reserve.  an old mangrove swamp that's only four or five blocks long, right along the busiest road in bermuda.  it's like stepping back 2,000 years.  really great.  unfortunately i let my camera run out of batteries (and hadn't recharged my spare) so i don't have any shots from there.  think "swamp for dinosaurs" and you have the right mental image.  

vegas tomorrow.

(thanks for your off-blog comments, they boost me.)

today's good left-overs:

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