Lesson No. 1: Emphasize, when making plane and hotel reservations, that one of your party is a handicapped person. There is help out there, but not if you don't insist on it. Alerted in advance, the airlines cope fairly well. Facilities at the Bermuda airport, however, are fairly outmoded. Debarking passengers still have to use a steep staircase, rolled up to the side of the plane, and then cross a long stretch of tarmac by foot. Gurney chairs and wheelchairs are available for the disabled. But a certain disorganization reigns and it's hardly a reassuring introduction to an island that tends elsewhere to function like clockwork.

Two of the three modes of transportation open to the Bermuda tourist-the bus and the moped-were out of the question for us. We relied on the taxi, requesting a "blue flag" driver each time. On the whole, Bermuda's taxi drivers are a gregarious bunch, easily engaged in conversation. The "blue flag" driver has, in addition, passed a government exam that qualifies him as a guide.

One driver, learning of my mother's interest in gardening, made a point of pulling over to the side of the road periodically to snip a sprig of rosemary here or a branch of allspice there, and would have picked her a bunch of bananas from a mini-plantation along the way, had she asked. Subsequently, she got into a long discussion with another driver on the construction of the typical Bermuda roof, how it gathers rainfall and drains into a cistern. The mechanics were all beyond me, but she was absorbed.