Bushwacking in Bermuda

Friday morning the weather forecast showed that we should have a few hours of good weather for some more exploring, and so the 3 Drowned Rats from the other day decided to give it another try.  Today's goal was to walk through Tom Moore's Jungle to the blue hole and some caves.  There seems to be 2 ways to get to the same sights -- to Start at Tom Moore's or to start by the Causeway at Blue Hole Hill Park.  We opted to start at Tom Moore's as the path there seems to be a straight entry into some trees, whereas there are a number of roads and driveways on the causeway side, and I wasn't sure if it would take a while to find our way to the actual "trail head."  Things are not always clearly marked around the isle.

The trail starts off nice and clearly marked, not by signs but by a people sized path 3-D path through the trees.

I quickly pulled out my camera to get a good spooky old tree picture.  You all know I like pictures of spooky old trees.

It is really nice to get these glimpses of what Bermuda might have been like with less people and more wild spaces.  It is also a little sad, because there just aren't enough of them here or anywhere anymore.  However, not too long into the trail we came to a place where it dropped off suddenly about 7-8 feet and the path below was littered with sharp slippery lava rocks.  Jumping down seemed like it could have a number of bad endings.  I was debating trying to scoot down on my butt but we quickly agreed going the other way around was probably a better idea.

OK, the photo doesn't do the drop off justice, but, this is where the trail led us

We knew the path was supposed to be a loop so we decided to go back to the fork in the trail we saw earlier and go that route.  We found some good wilderness, and not a whole lot of trail.

Looking for the trail

It wasn't long and we were literally bushwacking...ok maybe the literal description is more that the wet bushes were whacking us as we tried to make out paths in the heavy growth.  We would think we had found the trail, and crawl our way through to dead end after dead end.  After 10 or 20 minutes, we did find our way and made it to the first sight, the entry to a crystal blue water cave.

Entrance to an underwater cave I presume

Dev was the first to see it an exclaimed with excitement "fungus grow underwater!" rather than something more mundane like pretty, or cool cave, or neat water colour.  And that's why I like my fellow lab friends, the are just as weird as I am.

Dev and Shibby at the cave

We again spent some time "bushwacking" until we found the trail again, and then we were off looking for the rest of the sights.  We were supposed to see 2 caves (which is why I am sure the photo above is a cave, it was on the map I saw earlier that we did not bring with us to follow), Walshingham Lake (per a sign outside of the trail that I quickly skimmed as we walked by), and The Blue Hole, which I was expecting we would know when we saw it.  After a little trek we started seeing mangroves and water right at the edge of the trail and rightly guessed that we had found the lake. It took a little guesswork to find which rocks to scramble up to get a good view of it, but we were successful after not too long.  To be fair, Dev found a way and Siobhan and I just followed the sound of his voice.

Walshingham Lake

It was a pretty big lake for Bermuda.  But I am left to wonder if it is actually a "lake" or if it is seawater.  I am not one to stick my fingers in the outdoors and taste it to see, in case you are wondering why I didn't just test it myself.  After that it was further down the trail and we started finding little caves.  We did not have lamps...but by the light of the android phone, Dev was able to lead us a little way into one.  They were just dark and cavey.  Photos with flash make them very airy and bright though.

A little further along the way we came to a cave with water in it that has concrete stairs going into it so that you can swim in the caves.  We passed a few people coming out and they confirmed that it was indeed very very cold.  It was not warm enough for me to even think about it.

We kept on walking, as the Blue Hole still had to be around somewhere.  In a little clearing we came across a tiny patch of blue water, about 2 feet in diameter, and began debating whether this was the Blue Hole or not.  "It better not be!" I said, as I had grander expectations, and so tromped off determined to find it.  A few paces later I got to yell "I found it!"  It was just on the other side of the clearing.  Now, if this indeed is the Blue Hole, as nothing is marked, it really wasn't that much bigger than the other small hole with water in it, but in comparison to the last water filled hole, it seemed quite grandiose!  It was at least 10 feet across!

The Blue Hole...I think

And, in the personal highlight of my day, we looked in and saw fish.  Lots of little blue fish, and better yet, this fish.

Lord of the pond next to his minions

I was strangely ecstatic that we had found the legendary big fish in a little pond!  My day was a win no matter what now.  A few paces further on the trail it appeared we would be looping back towards the way we came.  It was literally only a few steps when we heard Dev exclaim something like "Oh for the love of..." and start laughing.  Turns out the trail leads directly to the drop off that we had detoured around.  We would have walked directly to everything, 10 mins from the restaurant, had we just hopped down the rocks.  So we now had to climb up the rocks to get back.  I snapped one more picture from the wilds of Bermuda before we headed back to the bikes to continue on with our adventures for the day.

Tom Moore's Jungle