Bermuda: world enough and time - includes related information on shopping and transportation - Travel

American Visions, August-Sept, 1997 by James Ziral

Coughed from the Atlantic seabed by volcanic action millenniums ago, warmed by the Gulf Stream, encircled by coral reefs that stabbed the ribs of ancient vessels before claiming their broken skeletons, Bermuda--or the Rock, as it is called by locals--is a land of subtleties. While some destinations entice with bright lights and revelry until dawn, Bermuda is shy, almost coy, preferring to seduce with a gentle caress. There is a sense of a well-ordered and neat country, its face scrubbed clean, its pastel-colored houses and frosty roofs like candies in an emerald jar.

Bermuda boasts the oldest town of British origin in the Western Hemisphere and a Parliament second in age only to that in England. But though steeped in British traditions, Bermuda's quilt is cosmopolitan, patched with African, European, West Indian and Native American elements. (Indian ancestry--courtesy of the 17th-century New England Indian wars that saw the losers enslaved and deported--is woven within the faces of hundreds of local blacks.)

After you have unpacked, basked on Bermuda's famed pinkish beaches and swum in its sapphire waters, how will you explore an island that proudly claims the world's smallest drawbridge? Before touring Hamilton, the capital, and neighboring parishes, consider hiking along the Railway Trail, which runs the length of the is land. Walking this enchanting legacy of a brief flirtation with a railway (which was dismantled, tracks and all, in the 1940s) allows intimate glimpses of a Bermuda that most visitors never see. You'll stroll past golf courses, quarries, small farms and rural homes nestled off the beaten path.

In this country where no rivers rush to the sea, no streams meander through lowlands, and lakes would be the stuff of fantasy, you'll see that roofs are designed to catch rainwater and funnel it down to a concrete reservoir built beneath each home. ("Tank rain" in the local vernacular, the kind that torrents straight down in buckets, is liquid manna on the island.)

Not far from where the trail crosses Cobb's Hill in Warwick, there's the Cobb's Hill Wesleyan Church, built early in the 19th century by slaves and free blacks as a place of worship It is used by their descendants to this day.

Hamilton, too, offers glimpses into the island's black heritage. Inside the City Hall and Arts Centre is the National Gallery's "Celebration," a permanent exhibition of superb African works of art, many of whose pieces were formerly on loan to the High Museum in Atlanta. "Celebration" opens a window onto the creativity, beauty and resilience of various African cultures.

At the eastern end of Reid Street, you'll find the Regal Art Gallery, owned and managed by artist Robert D. Bassett. His works, a synthesis of color and poetic imagery, have been exhibited at the Museum of African American Art in Los Angeles and at the National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta, to name just two venues.

A 10-minute stroll from the gallery is Fort Hamilton. Built shortly after the U.S. Civil War, the fort overlooks the city. Viewed from a grassy vantage point on the fort's western wall, the city, neatly defined, retreats from the harbor. Two cannons stand on the wall, aged sentinels pointing impotently across the city's roofs. Despite its original purpose of protecting approaching roads to Hamilton and its harbor, the fort today is a tranquil oasis, a park below which lighted tunnels are burrowed and diverse exotic trees and plants bloom delightfully.

You may, during your ambles, hear distant drumming and high pitched whistles. These sounds signal the Gombeys, troupes of dancers wearing elaborate peacock headdresses and capes decorated with ribbons and bits of mirrored glass. Appearing during holiday periods and at odd times throughout the year, these unpredictable masked dancers zestfully portray biblical and other stories as they dance through the streets, stopping traffic, followed by scores of fans caught up in throbbing African rhythms.

At the Rock's westernmost tip is the Dockyard, also known as the Yard, a waterfront village created out of an early 19th-century Royal Navy establishment. Much of the Dockyard's original construction was carried out by African-American labor. During the War of 1812, large numbers of American slaves sought refuge under the British flag. Many individuals and families were brought to Bermuda, where, along with other black refugees arriving from Spanish Florida in 1815, they helped construct the Dockyard's early foundations. At the war's end they were sent to Trinidad and released as free people.

Getting to the Yard from Hamilton by a direct, 30-minute ferry ride takes you past small sheltered inlets and bays where sailboats rock gently at anchor. White, pink, blue and green homes seem only an arm's length away as they perch on lush hillsides that slope to the water's edge.

Once at the Yard, be prepared to spend a couple of hours as you discover several restaurants, a maritime museum (see sidebar), "Bargains ans Getting about" a cinema, a marina, an arts center and more than a dozen shops. If you want to feel the wind beneath your wings, you can take to the air via parasail. And if scanning an undersea world intrigues, slip into the sea to explore silent coral cathedrals, darting angel fish and amazing little sea horses. With its hundreds of 17th- and 18th-century shipwrecks, Bermuda is a diver's paradise.