Thanks again to all who took time to read and/or comment on my previous post. I try to keep things on topic here at yarnchick40, but I’m a real person that just needs to write sometimes. And it’s my blog. And I can be fickle if I want 🙂 And I’m really happy that you still visit even though I AM fickle occasionally.
Talk about the perfect time to go to a tropical paradise, right? While things were getting more blustery on the plains, I was soaking up the sun, hiking, descending into caves, and totally geeking out over a secluded conservation island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
I’m not sure how much you’re into over-kill explanations, but I learned so much stuff that I want to remember. If all my droning on and on gets to you…just hush and look at the pretty pictures 🙂
In my first post about Bermuda, I stopped after being in the country for all of 4 hours…there is oh-so-much-more!
Before we could even get to our bed and breakfast style hotel, we got to meet Alison & her boss. Alison is my Mom’s main contact with the Ministry of Magic (the Environment actually) in Bermuda. The way we met her boss was quite unorthodox. As we wrapped up our little stroll through Kim’s gardens we were greeted with a couple of very large and very dead piranha fish dangling from a man’s blood covered hands. It took a moment to process that he was not in fact bleeding, but the fish were. These are believed to be pet fish that someone dumped in a protected park’s pond. Remember kids, spay & neuter your pets, or don’t try exotics if you won’t be their forever home.
They sure get huge, no?
Because Bermuda is such a small bit of land in a vast ocean, when a non-native species of anything is introduced it can have a big impact. At the Ministry, they spend the better part of their jobs working to conserve the natural species and minimize the damage done by invasive species. Unfortunately over the years many, many invasive non-native species of plants and animals have wreaked havoc on the little island. We learned about at least 50 different plants & animals from Alison that had changed their ecosystem. She was a wealth of knowledge and interesting to listen to, and of course patient with all of our curiosity. We must have sounded hilarious with all of our questions. Or super annoying, but she was a trooper!
We finished up day one by Alison driving us back to our b-n-b (that didn’t serve breakfast???) through the narrow & twisting roads. Once we were settled in, we got a taxi and headed to the grocery to get outrageously priced food to stock our kitchenette. Nearly everything in the stores is imported and consequently we had some sticker shock. A baguette that I normally pay $1 for in the States was $5, a dozen eggs ran $7 and convenience foods were marked up even more. Needless to say, we decided to divide & conquer to purchase supplies that were healthy, easy to cook and complemented each other to cover some of our meals. As you can imagine, with having to use a taxi every time we wanted to leave (there is literally no place to walk but in the middle of the narrow roads) and with the cost of goods, restaurant food was super pricey. The locals eat deli-style food for lunch when out & about so we followed their lead. It was delicious and more reasonably priced, but the cheapest you could get a lunch was about $20. Sit-down dinners were close to $40 per person before buying alcoholic beverages. Needless to say, I did not imbibe at those prices. I also felt like I needed to be the protector of my mother & her assistant in a foreign country. Listen to me trying to be Miss Badass ~ ha!
~this was the view from our balcony, aren’t the colors divine?~
~ this is a wall of rock and vegetation mere inches from the edge of the roadway, hence the reason taxis were a necessity~
Up next:: my visit to Nonsuch Island where you will meet the guy who calls this his office…
~that’s a ‘wish you were here’ postcard shot~
Like this:
Like Loading...
yarnchick 