Changed for the worse

July 15, 2005

Dear Sir,

My wife and I returned from our two week holiday to Bermuda on July 9. We have visited your beautiful island each year since 1972 and have been time share owners at the St. George's Club since 1984.

Each year we eagerly anticipate our vacation and each year we are a little more disappointed. The St. George's Club is a wonderful place to spend a vacation; it is clean and well maintained. Perhaps that is why it is such a shock to venture off the property and see what has been done to the island. To call it filthy is, I believe, an accurate term. Trash lines the streets, beaches are dirty. We ventured to the St. George's Town Cut to watch a cruise ship leave and were appalled at the condition of the area by the channel marker light. Bottles, food wrappers, old fishing lines were everywhere but in the provided trash can.

This is not the way it was in the early 1970s. I very distinctly remember an article in your paper detailing an arrest made for a cigarette butt being discarded on a Hamilton street. It appears to me a trash can could now be dumped and no one would notice or even care.

Out timeshare lease will expire in 2009, after that date we will leave Bermuda for good. Spending two weeks in Bermuda is not a cheap vacation. Air fare from Charlotte was $813 each and our maintenance fees are among the highest in the world. Everything on Bermuda is expensive and for so many years we have been willing to pay the price. Sorry to say Bermuda will be paying the price shortly in diminished tourism and repeat visitors. I am so sorry this is happening to your beautiful island. Please someone do something before it's too late.

SUE AND FRANK SEITZ

Rock Hill, South Carolina