It's my final full day in Bermuda, and I'm always really hard on myself when I set a goal. 100 geocaches I wanted to find in Bermuda in a week here, and I'm leaving tomorrow. Until today I'd searched for over a hundred but had only found 63. Last night I received a message from a member with the name "BliminOnion" offering to take me on a trip today. It was a gorgeous albeit windy day. I've only flown Juliett (my drone) once on this trip due to the wind, and that was at Spanish Point yesterday.
Diana would pick me up with her son, Tim, who is nonverbal. Diana is 84 and lives part of the year in Bermuda and the other part of the year in Oklahoma. She was born in Bermuda but married an American many years ago. Diana asked me where I wanted to go, and we went west. She seemed determined that I could find 37 caches in one day even though my daily record is 38, and that was on a power trail in Australia. We decided on Somerset to start. Bermuda is divided into nine parishes, and Somerset is located in Sandys Parish. Somerset Bridge is the world's smallest working drawbridge at 22 inches: it is opened by hand and is only big enough for the mast of a sailboat to pass through.
Onions were first brought to Bermuda in 1616, and the British would eventually refer to Bermudians as "blimin' onions" so Diana adopted that name as a generic username. Next up we stopped at Fort Scaur. With so many old forts in Bermuda, the islands are a strategic military point for the UK much like how Hawaii is for the USA. Where is there a bad view in Bermuda? Absolutely nowhere!
After collecting and replacing a few caches along the Bermuda Railway Trail, we called in at the supermarket to use the wifi and get a much-needed ginger beer. Such a fun day it has been already and it was still early afternoon. Diana said at first she assumed I was on one of the cruise ships but with the ability to track my geocaching logs, she realized I was here a bit longer than a day or two. We replaced a few more caches along the Railway Trail and then we made a run for the St. George's area. One of my favourite spots today was an old fishing wharf.
As I searched for another cache I was fortunate that I wasn't bitten or pinched when I stuck my hand into a hole, as I heard a creature moving round in there. It started to drizzle a bit as I had a view that looked straight out of Norfolk Island.
We would have another attempt at a cache at Gate's Fort but we couldn't find it, and since it doesn't belong to Diana we didn't replace it. Except for a slight drizzle for about five minutes, the weather stayed beautiful all day. For some reason I can't download Wherigo cartridges to my phone but a Wherigo cache on Cooper's Island was placed by Diana's other son, so I cheated a bit and signed it. Even if it's a 5-star difficulty mystery cache, if my name is in the logbook in my handwriting, it counts as a find.
After a furious run of finding at least 28 geocaches, we decided on going to dinner at the Swizzle Inn. As Bermuda's oldest pub, it's where the rum swizzle originated. Along with the signature drink, I would have one of Bermuda's most famous dishes: fish chowder.
It was absolutely divine, and I felt bad that I didn't try it the day I got here. Rum and pepper are provided to flavour the chowder to your liking. It gave me an opportunity to sneak a bit of extra rum into my rum swizzle. Fish and chips are what I had next, and for dessert I had bread pudding. It was all delicious, and this makes a nice final touch on my fabulous week in Bermuda. By the end of the day I was up to 94 geocache finds in Bermuda, but Diana gave me approval to log some that I couldn't find as she will replace them. Our final find of the day was a cache that a homeless man has been unofficially looking after. Diana would drop me at home at approximately 10 PM, and she told me to stay in touch. I had such a great day geocaching, exploring, drinking, and eating all over these beautiful islands.
In all, I give my time in Bermuda a perfect 10. It is most certainly a place I could see myself coming back to. Anil and I would have one final evening to chat about future plans over Bermuda's most famous cocktail, and I'll be taking the recipe home. I reached my geocaching goal, and I snapped many photos during my time here. One thing I'll certainly miss is the sound of the whistling frogs. Bermuda, I will certainly miss you.
As a footnote, I got to do something special on my way back to New York.
