Pride Review to BERMUDA...9/18-9/25 lots of pics & details!!!

[GRTKJ]

As promised.....here is the rest of our 2nd day in Bermuda.

Now, as mentioned earlier, I got up and went shopping in dockyard. Got back to the ship, we ate lunch, and then left around 12:30 to go meet our "Jessie James tours".

The tour stopped at 2 places to pick people up, 1st in Hamilton, then they come to Dockyard. So when we got to the "meeting bench" there was another couple there and they said we started talking and we were all 4 in the right place! So we waited a bit and.......here comes Chloe! She said she had a bright yellow boat so its hard to miss, boy was she right!! She picked us up as close to the actual ship as anything. Here she is coming to get us.......

 

So it was a nice little boat that probably would have held about 20 people total. There were only 3 other people on the boat when we boarded so there was a total of 7 people on the tour, which wasn't bad! So we give her our tickets, in which here is the link to the tour in case others are interested after my explanation of our trip with Jessie James Company: http://www.jessiejames.bm/

Here is the link to the tour we did: http://www.jessiejames.bm/snorkelling.asp

Now, for some reason when I originally booked this, I swear the website said 5 different locations, but now it says 3, so I am not sure whats up with that, if she changed it or if its only been 3 all along. At any rate, when we boarded her boat, she told us the wind direction or something was off for the day and that there were a couple spots we couldn't snorkel that she normally took her tour. So I was sad, as we were soooo looking forward to this, not to mention we bought "special lenses" and very nice snorkeling equipment before we left and were excited to use it. Joe wears glasses all the time, his vision is -2.5, mine is -1 and -1.25, so mine isn't that bad but since Joe was getting special prescription ones I thought I would too so I could fully see all the nice things!! So anyway we made the best of the trip even though we only went to 2 places instead of the previous 5 I had read about.

This is a picture of the largest bridge in Bermuda, I know sounds funny but its a small island, so what do you expect!! :) Anyway, we went under this bridge to get to our 1st snorkeling place:

The first place we went was in the Great Sound Area, there were 3 islands not connected but had some space between them. Chloe said the islands were literally called the middle island, left island, and right island, or something silly like that, with no originality!!! Anyway, so that is where we snorkeled first. Here is a picture of the middle island, with the other 2 islands on each side:

I jumped in the water pretty quickly, again I was sooo excited to do this in this beautiful water!!! Here is Joe getting ready to hop in with me!

 

So here is a picture I took of our little yellow boat after we had swam toward the reefs:

[smalltimecruiser100]

The pictures and the review were fantastic. Best I've seen. We are going on the Enchantment to Bermuda next May. We want to hire a blue flag cab as the bus and ferry have their own problems. Thank you so much.

Mike

[GRTKJ]

So, off we go snorkeling away! For some reason I was under the impression that Chloe was going to get in the water and go with us, and point things out, but that wasn't the case. She just told us where to go, but that was ok with all of us! We were just ready to see some colorful fish and the underwater life in Bermuda......so here we go, head first!

One thing I will tell everyone about, Chloe told us to be very careful of the reef, its very sharp and can cut you severly. She said she never had this happen before but a couple weeks back there was a guy snorkeling and he kindof jerked his head the other direction and came out of the water with a big gash in his head, ouch! Anyway so she warned us to be extra careful, so we were! :)

Here is Joe and I in the water snorkeling away, having a blast!!!:

And of course my underwater pictures from that area of the beautiful fish and reefs.....you may have to look very carefully at some of these, those durn fish move so fast!! LOL But I did catch them in action a couple times! Some of these pics you really have to look to see the fish, but they are there!!:

 

 

[GRTKJ]

More underwater pics from the Great Sound area of Bermuda. And....in case you are wondering, the water in this area was probably about 6 foot deep, some areas it was a little more shallow but I would say thats a good average:

 

 

 

 

 

I didn't think I was EVER going to get this little sucker's picture!, but I finally did! I guess patience is a virtue sometimes!:

 

 

[GRTKJ]

The pictures and the review were fantastic. Best I've seen. We are going on the Enchantment to Bermuda next May. We want to hire a blue flag cab as the bus and ferry have their own problems. Thank you so much.

Mike

 

 

Mike, such a nice comment, and thank you so very much! I am proud so many have enjoyed our wonderful time in Bermuda. You will LOVE Bermuda!! I promise, and as if you can't tell from our pics, right?! :) We only wanted to see a couple "history" items so we would have hired a blue flag one otherwise.

There is so much to see and I have some great recommendations of some "tour cab drivers" if you want them. We had some other friends that went one time and they had a list from another friend of great cab tour drivers - I specifically remember one of the recommended names - Colin Jennings. Let me look thru my file of stuff from Bermuda and see if I can find that for you. Not there there is anything wrong with the other ones or the ones that are just there waiting, but I've got a list of some highly recommended ones that kindof give you a little more than the standard for a tour.

 

Yes, I do not recommend the buses at all. The ferry was fine we had no problems with it, but we heard multiple complaints about the bus system, so we decided to avoid it completely!

[GRTKJ]

We spent close to an hour at the Great Sound area snorkeling away, it was a lot of fun and we saw sooo many fish!!

Up next, we started heading toward the shipwreck Vixen, however before we started getting close to it, Chloe noticed the Bermuda Zoological Society nearby with 3 boats, so she got close to them and realized they were clipping turtles....we all thought...WHAT??

She went on to explain that this society supports the BAMZ, Bermuda Aquarium Museum & Zoo. I know there is an area I think in St. George where you can go and view this. It may not be St. George, as we didn't go but I did read about it, so it could be another area of Bermuda. I am sure if you google it, you will find it easily.

At any rate, what she meant by "Tagging Turtles" was that in Bermuda the turtles do not nest and reproduce. She said they are brought in other ways. They have a 2000 ft net in the bottom of the ocean they put in to catch them, tag them, & study them.

They said they have tagged over 2,500 turtles and the net is designed specifically to trap them. They are tagged and studied on board the research vessel before being released at the capture site. They are researching their size frequencies, sex, growth rates, habitat preferences and all kinds of other things. Anyway we were so fortunate to be able to watch them do this!!!!

The interesting this is they said all the turtles tagged in Bermuda have been recovered in Nicaragua, Panama, Cuba, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Grenada and St. Lucia.....wow thats a long way for a slow animal to move!!!!!!

Here is some pictures of that event we got to witness, now take a look in the distance at how HUGE some of the turles are, it had to take 5 people or more to pick some of them up out of the water!!

 

 

 

 

 

[GRTKJ]

I forgot to post the REALLYYYYYYYY BBBBBBBBBBBBIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG ones!!! :eek::cool::rolleyes:

[lrmrtn]

Katie, thank you so much for the wonderful review! We are going to Bermuda next spring and this is so helpful. (Yes, I'm already in hyper-planning mode!) I don't know if I can wait another 8 months! :)

[GRTKJ]

Katie, thank you so much for the wonderful review! We are going to Bermuda next spring and this is so helpful. (Yes, I'm already in hyper-planning mode!) I don't know if I can wait another 8 months! :)

 

Laura - You are welcome!!! :) I hope I have given you some tips on some things, even though the island is so small, there is soooooo much to do!

Regarding hyper-planning mode, don't worry I was the same way. It was funny at times in the evening Joe would say we have 7 months till we go, and you are studying this place like we are moving there! LOL :D I can't help it I like to know as much as possible when I go! So there is nothing at all wrong with it! Yes it will be hard to wait 8 more months, but as fast as time goes by, it will be here before you know it! Hope you have a wonderful time and hope I have helped you with my review! :)

[smalltimecruiser100]

Thank you for any info on the tour cabs you can get. I would appreciate it.

Mike

[GRTKJ]

LOL, ok I got way off the subject of snorkeling with the turtle tagging, but anyway thought it was too neat of an experience to not share!

So after all the ooohs and awwwws of the turtles, we continued to the Vixen shipwreck. This was a ship that was built in the early 1800's and was one of the first twin screwed (double layer) vessels of the Royal Navy. Basically the ship was built out of a heavy cast iron type metal and so heavy that it was slow as could be and basically useless. Back then they added teak wood to the sides to help with a lot of problems with the iron ships attracting marine organisms. The teak also made the ship have more drag, in other words, this was a pretty super slow, useless vessel. So they decided to just sink it since it was of no use. So this is where they did it. They purposely put it here to protect the Dockyard area from any possible attacks. Here is the bow of the ship sticking out of the water. They say the hull of the ship is completely still in tact.

 

 

Believe it or not, but over 1500 years later and there is still some teak wood left!!!!:

I wanted to hop out and snorkel this thing, that would have been so cool, but we couldn't because the water was rough, or the wind, or something along those lines. Oh well.....

After learning all about the Vixen, we headed out further into the ocean to do some more reef snorkeling, but this was even deeper water!! This water was probably more like 10 foot deep, and 6-7 foot in other areas. As you know by now, I take lots of pictures, so here they are at the 2nd reef. Oh and Joe thought he would take some photos of me before he hopped in! I was the first one in, I think most the others weren't that experienced with snorkeling, so thats ok, I just went in head first!:

 

 

 

 

 

[pacarolinagirl]

Fantastic review! Loved it! :)

[GRTKJ]

I forgot to mention, in case you didn't know....the pictures of me in the water with the really dark places in the water behind me, that is reefs!!!....AKA great snorkeling places!

 

 

 

Here is a picture of our boat I took on my way back toward it:

 

 

 

So we stayed at that reef area about an hour and half. Lots of fish, but this time I had a harder time taking pictures of them, I think because the water was a lot choppier than the Great Sound area, but anyway it was still lots of fun!

[GRTKJ]

Fantastic review! Loved it! :)

 

Thanks Amy! :)

[GRTKJ]

Our snorkeling trip was coming to an end too soon, but thats ok, we had a "Bermuda Triangle":eek: Glass Bottom Night Cruise later that evening that we had to look forward to!

Once we were all back on the boat, here is a picture of Chloe & Dominic. If you set a reservation up with the company or call, she is the one you will speak with, very sweet lady. Dominic was her helper for the day, both great people!:

 

Here are a few more shots we got before we left the reef area heading back to Dockyard:

 

 

 

And yes that is me way out there!!:

[GRTKJ]

ONe last picture on the Jessie James Tour Boat:

 

This was actually taken on the opposite side in which we boarded, this was the Norwegan Gem in the background.

[GRTKJ]

After our several hour tour with Chole and Jessie James Tours, we were ready to be dry again! As soon as we got off the tour boat, we headed to our stateroom for showers, again! :) Speaking of showers, its funny Joe and I were joking one day about how many showers you take on a cruise, I literally think we took atleast 2 a day and some days 3!! I would never do that many for a week back home, oh well its vacation right!

We relaxed in our room for several hours and you know me, I couldn't help but to put the camera down, so I took this one of our view from our stateroom for the days in Bermuda:

 

Next that evening we did the Fantasea Bermuda Triangle Glass Bottom Night Cruise.....long name, amazing results, wait this isn't a commercial, but it was a VERY, VERY FUN & FUNNY tour!!! :cool::D Before I get to the details of it, we booked this actually as a last minute thing because in our roll call we had several people that were doing it and talking about it, we thought, what an interesting tour, and who would ever get to do something like that anywhere else, so we knew it would be original so we went ahead and booked it to! Here is the website for the Fantasea Bermuda Company: http://www.fantasea.bm/

Here is the direct link to our specific tour we took with them:

http://www.fantasea.bm/sightseeing-cruises/bermuda-triangle-nightlife-cruise/

 

While I am thinking of it, the Jessie James snorkeling tour was $65 per person. This tour with Fantasea Bermuda was $60 p/person......lots of details on this tour coming soon.....

[ragtiki2004]

We also went to the Vixen shipwreck! Great place to snorkel. Saw lots of cool fish there also. Really like your pics. Bob:)

[magic&buddy]

I have never had much interest in going to Bermuda - I do now! Thanks for your review :).

[TheCalicoCat]

I can't wait to hear about your night cruise. That was one of my reasons for booking a Bermuda cruise - but I have since waffled about going on that cruise. So I'll be interested to see what you have to say about it.

[hancogran]

I'm loving this review! :D We sailed Pride this past May on the PC, Nassau and Freeport itinerary but now you've got me wanting to sail her again and see Bermuda! :)

[cruisegal40]

OMG please finish it. I leave on Sunday and want to know all about your cruise. thanks so much. we have not been to Bermuda in about 12 years and can not wait to see all the changes.

[cmk0123]

Katie - Thank you so much for your review. I am taking this trip in about a month and am so grateful for your insight. I think it will definately take the edge off until I cruise.

[Shelli]

She went on to explain that this society supports the BAMZ, Bermuda Aquarium Museum & Zoo. I know there is an area I think in St. George where you can go and view this. It may not be St. George, as we didn't go but I did read about it, so it could be another area of Bermuda. I am sure if you google it, you will find it easily.

 

We *loved* going to the aquarium! The zoo part wasn't quite as entertaining, but still nice. Very enjoyable place to visit, and easily accessed by the bus system. Here's the link.

[smeck]

Interesting info regarding the smaller ships. I think now days "the bigger the better" and they obviously try to sail full since they sometimes call with upgrades. Someone else in Bermuda as one of the ferry stops I think was telling us something similar that even Carnival use to have a smaller fleet and that is would dock at Hamilton, I don't remember which lines though.

 

I cruised twice to Bermuda once on RCL's Nordic Prince and NCL's Majesty of the seas. On the Nordic we docked on front street Hamilton and on the Majesty we docked at both front street and St George.