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Arrival!
Anne and I landed in Bermuda mid-afternoon on Sunday, August 24th for a combination visit with friends/anniversary trip. It ended up being probably the most relaxing vacation of our lives. Such a good time. |
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We dropped down through the clouds... |
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...to see this. Our first glimpse of the gorgeous coral reefs that surround the island |
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It was obvious why Bermuda was discovered and settled through a series of shipwrecks. These reefs wrap all around the island |
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This was a very exciting sight to see. And we didn't know it when I took the picture, but the portion of the island visible here is the area where we would end up spending the majority of our time...specifically there in the upper right hand area of frame. |
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Walking from the plane to the terminal to pick up our bags and swing through customs. Anne and I have both always loved airports where you walk across the tarmac. It's a real tropical island kind of thing for us. |
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Home Base
So we got to stay in our friend Julie's family's townhouse in Tucker's Point with her, her husband Stan, and our friend Jackie. We spent a good amount of time here relaxing, cooking and stuff. It was such a comfortable place to come back to after a hard day at the beach, or on the boat, or playing with dolphins. And there was only a stretch of golf course between it and the water. |
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The view from the street as you approach the townhouse. That's the Hummer golf cart in the driveway. Yeah....you heard me. A Hummer golf cart. |
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A partial view of the back. Through the windows to the right of frame is the room Jackie stayed in. |
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And the rest of the back. The room with the deck upstairs is the one Julie and Stan stayed in. Anne and I were in the room through that large window to the left of the deck. Our view from there didn't suck at all. |
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A shot taken from that upstairs deck in the first hour after arriving. As you may have noticed, we kicked off our stay with a nice bottle of champagne. It just seemed like the right thing to do. |
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The view from the back patio, located directly under the deck pictured above. That's the airport across the water. |
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Most evenings, I'd be the first one ready when we were getting cleaned up for dinner, so I'd hang out on the patio watching the clouds change colors as the sun set. This picture was taken one evening when Anne was the second one ready and she came out to join me. |
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Taken just down the street from the townhouse. |
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I regret that I didn't get any full shots of the Hummer golf cart, but Jackie did, so we'll have to get copies of hers. But for now, here's part of it. |
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And here's Julie whizzing past in it. It's what we used to get around to the beaches and Julie's Dad's place. |
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The beach at Tucker's Point Club
We all headed to the beach here at Tucker's Point Club for the first time on Monday morning after Jackie's flight arrived. This became our beach to go to if we wanted to be able to have food and drinks brought to us while we relaxed. We loved it. |
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The view of the beach club from the sand. The patio area that you can see from the center of frame stretching to the left is where we sat when we'd have dinner here. There were pools up there too, but we opted for the ocean. |
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These were the views for a good portion of the time.... |
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Anne illustrating one of the more popular activities on our trip - and doing it with ease. |
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Okay, so here's what happened. I got a waterproof housing for our Canon Powershot specifically so I could take pictures like this and others you'll be seeing from the trip. But in my child-like glee over having the housing, it didn't cross my mind that in order to take pictures of waves crashing, I'd have to stand right in front of them as they crashed. So right after I snapped this very shot, this very wave did in fact kick my ass. It was a big mess of disoriented tumbling underwater that ended with a mildly sprained elbow. Nothing bad enough to keep me from enjoying the rest of the trip though. Thank goodness. Felt like a little bit of an idiot though. |
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And here's a fun series of shots that show another surprise I got. |
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All the waves were splashing off the rocks away from me like this, until.... |
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...SURPRISE! |
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Did I mention that in addition to being crystal blue and absolutely clear, the water was usually between 75 and 80 degrees? Well it was. |
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Anne leaning over to pick up a shell she found. And you may have noticed that the sand has a pinkish hue to it. I made sure to get some macros of it so that we could see why. They're below with the explanation I found online. |
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Basically, little single-celled, dark red organisms grow on the coral reefs, and get eaten by some of the local mollusks. When the waves break all of these things down, they create little reddish grains of sand that mix in with the white ones, and voila! Pink sand beaches. |
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This medium distance shot of the sand shows the pinkness pretty clearly. I wish I had found out what was living under the sand to cause those little ripples though. If anyone knows, I'd love if you could pass the info on to me. |
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If you look closely, you can see Julie with her white cap on at the very top of this wave. She's right next to the house. |
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And then Julie without the white cap - possibly lost it in that last wave. And just a hint of Jackie in the water at the top right of frame. |
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Anne gettin' right down in that water. |
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Jackie (left) and Julie (right) |
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Jackie starting to get whisked away.... |
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Proof that I was there too. |
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Most people are bothered by undertows that are starting to drag them out to sea, but not Jackie. Jackie laughs at silly undertows. |
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The colors in this picture strike me every time I see it. So bright and clean looking. |
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As I mentioned earlier, we ate dinner here I think four of the nights we were in Bermuda. There's a bowl of the delicious fish chowder in the foreground, and in the pictures to the side and below, you can see my view if I were to turn my head to the right. |
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It looked like it might be raining way out there where it's darkest between the clouds and water. |
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There's really nowhere better to have dinner than right on the beach of a tropical island. And the next day..... |
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....we'd hop back in the water and start all over again |
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Here's a good series of pictures to illustrate what it was like to get shots of waves crashing right in front of me. It's safe to assume that this picture's a little blurry because I was starting to flinch as the wave raced towards me.... |
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And again, blurry because the wave had just hit me and I was falling as I snapped the picture. |
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....and then this would be my view as the wave hit and I tried to keep my feet, or keep from getting tumbled around again. |
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But no worries, because then I'd come back here with the ladies and my rum swizzles to recover |
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Pink Chimneys
The houses in this area of Bermuda don't have number addresses - instead they have names. Julie's Dad Goeff's place is called "Pink Chimneys". Goeff was very welcoming and the place was beautiful. We ended up spending a good deal of time here. |
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The name out at the end of the driveway. |
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This is a side view of the house taken from the boat. |
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And this was taken from the back porch. That's the pool directly ahead, and the ocean to the left. |
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The back of the house. Around the center of frame, you can see the porch that the picture above was taken from. And the pool is in the area just above the boat. |
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Stan took this - the only truly successful half above, half below water shot of the trip. Obviously, we were in the pool at the time, after having spent hours in the ocean earlier that day. That's Goeff talking to Jackie and Julie - Julie's the one in the water. |
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Another shot by Stan of me doing what I seem to enjoy doing most in a pool - sinking under the water and floating limply. It just feels good to totally relax your body. |
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Caught Anne in this impromptu modeling pose. |
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And now for the diving portion of our time in the pool. |
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Stan was all about the aerial acrobatics in his dives. |
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Limp again. |
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Stan hitting the water. |
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Stan again |
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Personally, I was inspired by the just-concluded Olympic divers, and shot for a goal of creating the smallest splash possible as I entered the water. So this was one of my entries - clearly a perfect, splashless dive. Or at least it was in my mind. |
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I think Stan made a small splash on this one. |
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Looking up through the water at a palm tree. |
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Some dolphin fountains by the pool. I took any opportunity I could to use the waterproof housing for shots I couldn't get otherwise. |
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And finally, this is a view of the water from up by the pool. We did some snorkeling in these reefs a couple times too. |
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Boating
Sometimes, relaxing, swimming, eating and drinking on a gorgeous pink sand beach or in a pool just wasn't enough. So instead, we'd relax, swim, eat and drink on the boat for a nice change of pace. |
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"Aquadesiac" |
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Anne lounging on the boat as I returned from snorkeling. |
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Me enjoying a beer on a truly soulful level in the water off the back of the boat. |
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Lots of ruins of old, British military forts. |
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And lots of stunning limestone formations, too. |
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We did some snorkeling in and around this cave |
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In fact, I took this one from in the water while snorkeling off the boat. |
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My favorite shot of some ruins on top of a limestone cliff. |
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Clearly, as this picture shows, I was totally pissed at that castle turret-looking thing just before I took the picture of it to the left. |
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Some fat stalactites hanging in a little cove we took the boat through. |
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Mangroves... |
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This was the first turtle warning sign I had ever seen. |
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There's no way to know for certain what Anne's thinking here, but it's probably something like "ya' know? I'm pretty sure I would enjoy living in Bermuda..." |
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Jacks and Jules |
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If I'm not mistaken, this and the shot below are of the bridge that crosses over to the airport. |
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Anne sunbathing up front again, and in back from left to right, Goeff, Brian and Diane. |
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Snorkeling
Snorkeling was the other big reason I got the waterproof camera housing, and it turned out to be totally worth it. And no injuries snorkeling – or at least not on the same level as the wave photography injuries. Snorkeling just caused a few little cuts and scratches with all the jagged rocks and coral reefs. Anyway, the life under water in Bermuda is incredible. The shot I wish I had gotten but didn’t was of the biggest lobster I ever saw in my life. I saw it twice in the same area, but each time had to head up for a breath of air before going back to try to get a picture and finding that it had taken off. But I still managed to see and shoot plenty of other great stuff, so I’m not complaining.
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It was actually pretty tough to get a good, focussed shot of any fish. They don't hold still much, and it's hard to hold still yourself while taking the shot. |
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These didn't move though. |
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There were a lot of these little fish around. |
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Seemed like there were always some swimming around below you |
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I wasn't kidding when I said there were a lot of them. |
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Seriously. There were A LOT of them. I dove down in the middle of this swarm, and a bunch of them started nibbling on me. It felt weird. |
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A sea cucumber. |
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Close-up of part of the sea cucumber pictured above. |
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This is it's hole. I don't know what it does exactly, but this is what it looks like. |
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Aptly named "Brain Coral". |
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Strange, rubbery looking, tubey things. |
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It always seems like the little, brightly colored fish are the most brave about defending their turf. This tiny blue thing was totally facing off with me. |
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So I'm not exaggerating when I say that these Parrotfish were probably around three feet long each. They kinda made me uncomfortable roaming around in a gang like this. And I swear I saw one a little earlier that was even bigger, but I didn't get a picture. It made Julie scream. |
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It was pretty great to see a school of squid, too. |
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It was especially hard to get a focused shot of the squid because the water was getting a little choppy at this point. So I was pretty thrilled to get this picture. Doesn't take much to make me feel "thrilled" apparently. |
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Kickin' up dust. |
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Anne as we headed back to the dock. |
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Jackie with clam shell eyes. |
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Just returning to the boat after some exploring. |
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Jackie seemed a little confused about how ladders work here... |
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Nature
And since we're already knee-deep in pictures of living things in Bermuda that aren't people, I might as well segue into a sampling of the rest of the nature shots I got. Before we left for the trip, I had done a little digging about what kind of wildlife we might find on the island, and by all accounts, there wouldn't be much since it's so small and isolated. But we were pleasantly surprised by the variety of life we found. |
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Every night, we were surrounded by what sounded to be thousands of tree frogs (eleutherodactylus johnstonei) chirping up a storm. Surprisingly, despite the fact that you might hear specific ones in the trees and bushes right next to you, it was pretty hard to track them down to take pictures of. I had to do some sweaty crawling through the dirt and bushes before I finally caught a glimpse of this guy... |
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It couldn't have been bigger than an inch or so. |
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tiny suction-cup toe |
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The only other one we saw. I know I said they were hard to track down and I stand by that, but Anne found this one just sitting on the front steps. |
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Lizards were everywhere. These Anoles would run away if you got within 15 feet or so, and then stop and flair their necks out a few times like this. |
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Came across this one at Pink Chimneys, and it was the only one that didn't scurry away while I tried to take some pictures. |
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This was a typical view of a lizard trying to hide. In this case, behind the barbecue. |
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The shutters were a favorite hiding spot, too. |
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While I was getting some shots of the tree frog Anne spotted on the front steps, she and Julie found a big toad in the back yard. It peed on me. Too bad I didn't get a picture of that... |
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The toad's dinosaur-like shoulder.... |
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....dinosaur-like arm.... |
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....and dinosaur-like eye. |
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No idea what this is, but it was a pretty green so I took pictures of it. |
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This June Bug landed on the picnic table out back one night, and hung out there for like a couple days. It kind of became our little friend. |
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Here's it's rear-end if you ever wondered what that looked like on a June Bug. |
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I was having trouble finding tree frogs, so I started taking shots of everything. |
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I discovered that there are a lot of these in Bermuda while crawling through the dirt under some bushes looking for tree-frogs. |
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I had seen pictures of these before, but never one in person. Strange looking little guys. |
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"Gasteracantha Cancriformis" aka "Spinybacked Orb Weaver" |
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And for my parents, these are also known as "Crab Spiders". |
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Now this spider was not little. Relatively speaking, at least. I mean, it was small compared to other things around, like the H3 golf cart, but it was big compared to most spiders I've seen in my life. It's called a "Golden Silk Spider". |
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It had a big, randomly spun, heavy-duty web, full of victims. |
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This one seemed terrified, as you can see. When I came close, it would only just barely stick it's eyes out. |
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These were the biggest slugs I ever saw. They were probably around six inches long. |
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I know this looks like a small little face next to my thumb, but the body stretched all the way down to my wrist. |
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Chickens are sort of like the Bermudian version of pigeons. They just wander the island freely. |
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Couldn't have a Bermuda wildlife section without a shot of a Longtail. They never came close enough to get a better picture. |
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Kiskadee Flycatcher |
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Some cool flora on the island as well. |
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Close-up of some palm tree leaves. |
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A Banyan tree. My favorite tree that we'd pass in the golf cart on the way to Pink Chimneys or the beaches. I took this as we drove by on our last morning. |
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Detail shot of a palm tree trunk. |
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Seaweed |
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There were a bunch of these tiny, green crabs in the rocks by the water. |
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Chiton tuberculatus, aka "suck-rocks" |
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Prehistoric lookin' guys, aren't they? |
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That's a lot of clams. |
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Close-up of the clams, with a tiny crab climbing on them. |
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Tube Worm |
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There were a bunch of these little sea slugs on one rock I came across in the entrance to a small cave. Crazy looking little guys. |
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We went and dug up some sand dollars for fun one day. |
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Close-up of the edge of a sand dollar |
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and a close-up of the underside of a sand dollar. |
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This was the biggest surprise find for me. At first, I thought it was just a pretty shell... |
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...but then this squid-like mollusk started to emerge from it. This and the shots to the side and below are sequential. |
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You could actually see these freaky little tentacles unfurling as it scooted along. |
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I'm pretty sure that black spot is one of it's eyes, but the rest of it is just a big, confusing mess. I mean seriously, what the hell is that trunk thing? |
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A shot of the sort of underside of it. That's my thumb to the left of frame. |
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You can see clearly here that it has sort of a squid-like shape to the front of it's body. |
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I swear those black dots are the eyes and it's staring at the camera right here. I have more pictures of it that I'll use in it's own tabblo soon. |
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The Crystal Cave
The Crystal Cave is chock full of crystalline stalactites and stalagmites that have been forming for millions of years. They were discovered back in 1905 by a couple kids who were out playing. |
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This and the next three pictures were taken by Anne |
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This one was taken by Anne, too. |
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And this one. |
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Dolphin Quest
This was the one thing we did in Bermuda that was scheduled, just to drive home the idea of how relaxed the trip was. Anyway, swimming with dolphins was incredible. They were such sweet, gentle animals. I couldn't take my waterproof camera in with me though because they told us that the dolphins would be fascinated by it and want to play with it. |
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This is the entrance to the marine museum where we would be swimming with dolphins! |
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The dolphin's homes. They seem a bit small, but they're constructing a big open area in a cove out through those gates, so they'll have more room eventually. |
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Some of the old buildings on the premises. |
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This guy wandered the area around the marine museum playing his guitar and singing. He actually did a great version of Kenny Rogers' "The Gambler". |
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His guitar case right by the "he drinying alcohol rohibited" sign. |
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St. George
We took the boat into St. George one day for a little walk around. It's a great old town to see. |
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I loved the old stone roads and colorful buildings. |
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St. Peter's Church. The oldest continually used Anglican church in the Western hemisphere, first built in 1612. |
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We stopped for ice cream. Obviously. |
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Jackie likes prawn cocktail flavored chips with her ice cream. Yummy. |
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End Beach
This was our other beach to hang out at – the one we’d go to when food and drinks were not a priority, and probably one of the most gorgeous beaches I’ve ever been to. There was typically no one else there, so we’d have it completely to ourselves. On one of our trips there, like five other people showed up, and I felt totally violated. Other than that one time, it was all ours. |
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Anne gives this picture such incredible scale. |
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We had it all to ourselves here. From left to right, there's Stan, Jackie, Anne, and back by the rocks, Diane and Julie. And in the background is the house of the man that Jackie will be marrying. She hasn't met him, but we all agreed that it would be a good idea given his taste in locations. |
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I miss this water. And judging from Anne's expression here, I'll bet that she misses it too. |
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Anne again. God, she's really good at this lounging business. |
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Just after snapping this shot of me, Anne learned the same lesson I learned when I took my picture of that first wave. |
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On the lookout for more waves... |
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Happy girl. |
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This is one of my favorite shots from the whole trip. It's just a fun moment, with Anne looking like she's trying to hold the wave back, Julie totally relaxed, and Jackie all happy. |
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We had a couple mornings of rough surf at End Beach, too. |
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Here I am trying to get a picture before this wave reaches me. Mainly because it was big and scary. That's why I look so serious. |
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The violence will be increasing from here on out. |
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Stan bracing himself... |
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....and then getting slammed. In hindsight, I'm not sure how I stayed standing to get this shot. |
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Something about the big, powerful waves as a back-drop to a relaxed conversation makes me really like this shot. |
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This and the shot below were taken one right after the other. I like that Jackie's looking down in the first shot, and then up at the huge, explosive wave in the second. |
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Anne lookin' all hot. |
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Apparently, Stan hasn't had enough yet. |
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On our last day in Bermuda, we decided to get up early enough to catch the sunrise at End Beach. The rest of the shots in this section are from that morning. |
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I liked that Anne got a shot of me taking pictures like the shot to the left. |
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The reddish lighting and violent waves made some of these pictures feel like they were taken in some kind of a prehistoric setting to me. |
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Another picture of me taking a picture like the one to the right. |
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Some of the waves crashing off of that big cliff out there were absolutely huge. |
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Departure
We didn’t want to leave. If we didn’t have a little wiener dog to get back to, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we had changed our return flight to be a couple days later. It was a taste of the life we’d be living if little things like money and day-to-day responsibilities weren’t a factor in our lives... |
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Getting on the plane was bittersweet - that strip of land across the water in this shot is where we spent most of our time in Bermuda. The townhouse, Tucker's Point Club, Pink Chimneys, all our snorkeling, and End Beach. |
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Leaving Bermuda was made a lot easier to take when we were treated to this sunset as we approached L.A. |
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It was one of the most dramatic sunsets we ever saw. A fitting ending to the most relaxing vacation we ever had. |
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