Added: 09/07/2005 |
Dreams come true in Bermuda resorts and hotels.The tiny semitropical isle of Bermuda balances beautifully on two circles of extinct volcanoes. It has long been part of travel literature. Shakespeare's play The Tempest takes place on a desert island somewhere between Tunis and Naples; however, some of the details were taken from accounts of an expedition of ships taking 500 colonists from Plymouth to Virginia which set sail in May 1609. Two months later on 29 July, the flagship, the Sea Adventure, was wrecked by a storm. She was presumed lost but those aboard had found shelter on the island of Bermuda.
Still a British dependency, the island has strong colonial traces (red pillar boxes, portraits of the Queen)
Bermuda resorts and hotels advertise themselves as a haven of order and social discipline. Taxis are easily available - no taxi touts, no rushing and shouting from job seekers, no sales persons offering local trash. An amazing quietude.
The size of the island means limitations all round, though not in any way heavyhanded. No rent-a-cars here but instead tiny mopeds which allow the visitors to put-put their way around the island. The local bus routes, ferries and small boats are laudable means of transport. And there is much to see and enjoy.
Bermuda resorts and hotels have avoided fast food outlets, wild discotheques, dancing until the still of the morning. The island produces nothing, no jostling of industry side by side with sand and sea. No large-scale agriculture, just an evergreen island with a nautical and military past, meticulously chronicled in a single museum. Another not very well known delicacy: at the Fairmont Hotel in Hamilton where Winston commands the bar, there is fried chicken with hot rolls - a lip-smacking, finger-licking experience. We need to establish the mood of the island; this is a rather unhurried tourism.
Bermuda resorts and hotels are not the busy overpopulated rush, more the laid-back and languid upmarket kind. Vendors offering all manner of second-rate mementos are completely absent from the landscape. It just is not allowed. When Daniel's Head Village opened last year - with no formal dress codes, no cocktail lounge, no cabarets and no televisions - some people viewed it as verging on bohemian.
The site, a former Canadian military base at the island's south-western tip, is a 20-acre rocky peninsula with stunning views, creamy pink sands and coral waters. Daniel's Head Village is a breath of radical air in Bermuda, a world away from the island's typical, cruise ship-style bermuda resorts and hotels offering formal afternoon tea and leather-bound wine lists.
Simply but comfortably furnished, all materials - decking floors, acrylic, aluminium - are recyclable. Electricity and hot water are part solar-powered, sewage is treated by environmentally friendly enzymes while water is reclaimed rainwater, supplemented with a reverse osmosis (seawater conversion) plant. No radios or vehicles are allowed on the site of bermuda resorts and hotels: transport is by electric buggy - and smoking is discouraged. The cottage stilts not only ensure little damage to the ground but give privacy and uninterrupted views, while those built over the water enjoy an almost Robinson Crusoe-like isolation. Over breakfast on the veranda of the former military "mess hall" - definite feeling of being on the set of White Mischief - copies of the Daniel's Head Village Voice described the "daily activities": snorkel trails and botanical tours, photographic safaris and kayaking trips, cycle rides and scuba expeditions.A tour of the island is a must. A sceptic may ask what is there to see and do in an island so tiny. There are three main arteries running east to west along the north, south and centre of the island. The south road offers sand and sea. A short ferry ride cuts the journey somewhat. The Atlantic Ocean which surrounds the island can be pretty rough, with strong undertows. It is adorned by a necklace of corals which can inflict severe cuts but there are excellent snorkelling facilities over shallow reefs.
The tourist season begins in April and ends in October. It is a quiet paradise with a long and settled history of rest and recreation. Enjoy, as they say in Bermuda.
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