After a hot weekend, Monday morning was cool and windy. Andrew and I visited St George, the oldest town on the island.  The bus carried us along the north shore of Bermuda and up into the hills where the houses became grander and the roads quieter. From the bus stop at the Swizzle Inn, we set off with a couple from Boston who I had pegged as Texans, on a lovely and clearly marked trail to the Crystal Cave.

The Crystal Cave is 84 steps underground.  Limestone stalactites hang like drying candles and gnome-like stalagmites rise up from the ground. What a place of wonder it is: those strange sculptures creating themselves quietly over millions of years. We walked on a trail built on pontoons, which rise and fall with the tide.

Andrew in cave of gnomes

Andrew finally got his ultimate island specialty, the wahoo fish sandwich on raisin bread, at the Café Ole next to the caves. From where I sat, it looked like the goopiest, runniest, most luscious sandwich I’d ever watched someone eat.

Andrew scores his wahoo fish sandwich on raisin bread

Me, I had what I considered the best salad I had ever had in my life. Since I’ve been home, I’ve made it several times, dubbing it the Bermuda salad.

Kale and romaine formed the base. Then carrots strips, slices of avocado, hunks of tomato, pieces of mango, a handful of blueberries and raspberries and a honey-mustard dressing. The flavors mingled delightfully; I decided it was the mango that pulled it all together.

The café is family-owned by lifelong Bermudians. The young woman who took our order had been to school in the states.

“You don’t have an accent,” Andrew commented

“That’s why I work the front,” she laughed.

We walked back to the Swizzler Inn, stopping across the street at Bailey’s Ice Cream Parlour. We sat outside with our desserts and listened to a steel drum band thumping out of the Inn. They call it “Kettle Rock.” At the bus stop, we passed the time, rocking back and forth in the hot sun, singing “Ain’t Misbehaving” and “Across the Great Divide.” On the bus we chatted with another Bostonian couple. This time I thought they were Australians.

St George seemed to be still getting its clothes on for tourist season and wasn’t quite dressed yet. But there are always compensations for traveling off-season, principally the smaller crowds. St George had cobblestone streets and an ancient church; it looked much older than the rest of the island. Even the pastel colored buildings seemed faded and world-weary.

The town is named after the patron saint of England, not to be confused with the George Somers who founded the first British colony on Bermuda in 1609. In the main square stands a huge statue of George Somers reaching his hands to the sky with a ghastly smile on his face. Maybe he was drunk. In any case, the press around George Somers obscures the fact that the English may have colonized Bermuda but they weren’t the first to discover it.

Juan de Bermudez first found the islands in 1505. Apparently uninhabited by humans, the Spanish just moved on. As Andrew put it, there was no one there to massacre or exploit so they left. The British came along a century later.

In 1609, a ship called the Sea Venture was wrecked off the coast of what is now St George on Bermuda, Sir George Somers, being the captain. As I was reading this in the town square of St George, a penny dropped. Shipwreck, uninhabited island, 1609. Shakespeare wrote The Tempest in 1611; it was his last play. It begins with a shipwreck on an uninhabited island–except for a wizard, his daughter, and a slave. News of the Sea Venture wreck would have had time to reach England. I thought I had discovered something: Shakespeare based the island and the shipwreck in The Tempest on Bermuda. Later, I found about ten books and numerous articles about Bermuda being the location for The Tempest; that didn’t bleed me of my joy in having thought it out myself.

Some of my favorite lines from The Tempest are spoken by Caliban:

“Be not afeared; the isle is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.”

I grabbed Andrew’s arm, “Andrew, it’s the whistling tree frogs! Those are the strange noises!” I quoted the lines to him. I was thrilled!

We had fun clowning around in the stocks and pillories, which looked pretty grim, in actual fact. As did the dunking stool, apparently reserved for women who talk too much. We met an entire family of Bostonians who I again thought were Australian. Andrew is clever with accents; he finally just laughed at my attempt to keep up. His accent wizardry is part of the entertainment of his company.

In the pillory

We poked around a bit. One tall, old, black guy behind a cash register responded deadpan to my announcement that we didn’t vote for Trump: “I’m glad we cleared that up.”