A weekend expat dreams are made of

Had a pretty darn fine weekend - some open air rum drinking at Friday, followed by a private beach party Saturday and a spot of wreck diving on Sunday. For a few hours this afternoon I felt like I was on holiday then remembered I actually have a job in between my weekends. 


It was the first housewarming party I've ever attended on a beach but since the place my (new best!) friend Jen is renting comes with a private beach, what's a girl to do?! The house is a former workers' cottage within the grounds of the old Sonesta hotel that was largely destroyed by Hurricane Fabian in 2004. It made for some very interesting directions... "there is a drive which currently says ‘demolition zone keep out’ – but don’t keep out…" 


Apparently the beach used to be quite the party zone, hence the palm trees have power sockets! There I was thinking the ipod was running off batteries. Silly me, it was plugged into the palm tree! We are not quite sure who pays the electric bill for this rather unique power source but hey it works. 

For such a small island Bermuda has quite a few of these derelict beauty spots. My favourite has to be Cooper Island Nature Reserve at the east end. The nature reserve was formerly a NASA tracking station and reopened in 2008 after 50 years of being closed to the public. Being there feels slightly like you've been teleported into a episode of Lost, as it's paradise beaches are backed by boarded up 1970s building and surrounded by barbed wire fences.

Opened in 1961, the station was used to support shuttle launches because of Bermuda's geographic proximity to the Florida launch pad but become redundant once Earth-based tracking facilities were outmoded by satellite tracking devices. During the Apollo missions all voice communication, including Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's first historic words from the surface of the moon, were beamed to Bermuda and routed to NASA's flight control centre in Houston, no problemo. How's that for a claim to fame!

Then there's Morgan's Point, a 240-acre pennisula towards the West of the island, which until 1995 was home to a U.S. military base. Since the clean-up costs have been estimated at $35 million it has been left mostly unused since then, polluted by asbestos, petrol and other chemicals. The base was also home to the Bermuda's only ever McDonald's, but the golden arches were out of bounds to Bermudians and closed down when the Americans left. 


Currently Morgan's Point is involved in 'land swap' negotiations, with the Government offering part of it up in exchange to the owners of the 37-acre Southlands estate along the south coast. Southlands had been earmarked by the owners for a major tourist resort development but this has caused the outrage from environmental activists, who claim it should be protected as it is a unique territory of extensive woodlands, strange and unique quarries, gardens and tunnels. Without knowing too much about the situation, it seems a better option to develop a polluted, derelict piece of land rather than an area of natural beauty, given there is only 24-miles of beautiful Bermuda as it is. But I guess it's easier and cheaper to pave paradise and put up a parking lot!