Three and Three are Fourteen

"Pardon?" I asked.

The information desk woman repeated her previous mathematically impossible statement verbatim, "Three and three are fourteen. Board either the 7 or 8 bus at the Dockyard,  ask for a transfer to the 10 or 11. Transfer at Hamilton, that will take you back to Flatts."

I've come to believe that getting to know the public and private transportation systems of an area is a good way to get to know a place. Bermuda is no exception.  The well maintained pink buses travel from one end of the 21 mile-long-island to the other along the same incredibly narrow, limestone-carved, shoulder-less  roads as the cars and bikes (motorcycles and moped with engines no bigger than 150 cc)  The people on board are polite, and quietly gregarious with one another.  At every stop someone would get on, sit in a seemingly random empty seat and begin talking about aunt so and so, or what happened last night at Joe's.

The bus fair system, like island life, is effortless to the locals, but enigmatic, apparently hard to explain, and really very simple. The island is split into 14 zones. Anyone and everyone will tell you that, however, they're not clear on where those zones are and zone maps haven't been printed in years. But really, that doesn't matter.  There are few options. You can either buy a day, week, month or three month unlimited pass, you can pay $3.00 (in coins) every time you board, or you can purchase deeply discounted 3 Zone tickets.  A 3 zone ticket will allow you to travel through 3 of those unknown zones. And here's the tricky part: 2 three zone tickets are used for any travel over 3 zones. 4-14, it doesn't matter, three and three are indeed fourteen.