Bermuda has come to feel like home to one repeat tourist who made her 65th visit last week.

Eighty-three year old Cary Wright made her first visit to the Island on the cruise liner, The Monarch, nearly 70 years ago.

She was hooked immediately.

“When I touch down in Bermuda and walk off the plane, right away I smell that Bermuda smell. It's then that I sigh and know that I'm home,” said Mrs. Wright, who is staying until March at the Surf Side Beach Club with her husband of 61 years, Robert Wright. “We love Bermuda.

“The moment I come off the plane I take a deep breath and I just feel myself slow down. Life runs at a completely different pace here. It's just so different from anywhere else in the world.”

“I was a teenager when I first came down, in May of 1937, and living in Milton, Massachusetts.

“The trip was a graduation present from my great aunt who came down to Bermuda quite often. We made the trip from New York on board The Monarch which was quite something in itself and then we stayed at the Harrington House on Harrington Sound for ten days.

“Of course we could only get around in a horse and carriage during that trip, and I can remember getting all dressed up for a party at the Swizzle Inn.

“They threw wonderful parties for teenagers back then at the Swizzle Inn and it really was a great time.

Mrs. Wright, born Cary Ware, was the teenage daughter of a Colonel in the American Army when she first came to Bermuda.

“And I have been coming ever since,” she said.

“Robert and I were married in 1942. He had just finished the Army Officer Training school and of course the war was going on, so we had to wait awhile till I could bring him to Bermuda.”

But with the end of the war, the couple have made the trip almost yearly, accompanied by their three children and now two grandsons.

And since their retirement from the Bath Iron Works Company in Brunswick, Maine in the late 1980s the pair of snowbirds have escaped from winters for up to four months at a time - either renting cottages or staying at guest houses on the Island.

“If we had known the amount of money we would spend on guest house rent through the years, we would have bought a house here long ago,” said Mrs. Wright.

“But I suppose everyone in Bermuda feels that way, especially with real estate prices the way they are,” added her husband.

Mr. Wright, has stayed with his “old buddy” (as he calls his wife) in “all of the guest houses along the Island from Cambridge Beaches in Somerset to the Pink Beach Cottage Colony in the East End.”

The couple has tended to avoid the Island during the heat of high summer and to shy away from the major hotels.

“There was one year when we stayed at the old Castle Harbour resort,” Mrs. Wright said. “But it was so much like any hotel you'd find in New York City that we had to get out of there.

“That was the only time we stayed at a larger hotel. As far as we're concerned the smaller guest houses are the best places to be on the Island. They just feel more like the real Bermuda.”

From the time of her first voyage in 1937, Mrs. Wright has been given a remarkable vantage to watch the growth of Bermuda's society.

But she said she is fearful of the direction in which the Island is moving.

“We have been here for most of Bermuda's crises,” said Mrs. Wright, who worked as an insurance consultant before her retirement. “We were here during riots, the hanging of Buck Burrows and Larry Tacklin, the shooting at the Supermart on Front Street. We certainly have seen Bermuda change.

“But we also were lucky enough to be here for the Queen's most recent visit, which was really wonderful.”

Change has been visible, she said: “Its changed a lot of course since then, when I first came there were no cars, and there were farms everywhere It was a very different island back then and really I don't like a lot of what I see now.

“The island I came to in 1937, and even up until recently, was a place where you felt safe going out at night or being in Hamilton. Now I can't help worrying at night that something bad may even happen in my guest room.

“Its just changed a great deal, and drivers are far faster on the roads.”

“Though the scooter laws have improved greatly,” she added, referring to the period before there was any helmet legislation.

During her stays on the Island, Mrs. Wright has regularly volunteered with the local branch of the Red Cross, but said this year she will just take it easy.

“I hurt my ankle badly before coming down, which makes getting around far more difficult.”

But despite the changes, the couple is sure Bermuda will remain their second home.

“After coming here for so many years, my husband and I went to South Florida last winter, and there is no way that we're going back there,” said Mrs. Wright.”It was just so busy and commercial. We really did miss Bermuda.”