Grand Cayman was a bit of a shock after the previous ports.
It’s the only “first world” country we visited, and it was a bit jarring to see
American fast food establishments, other familiar businesses (such as ReMax and
ScotiaBank), and lots of traffic lights.
The water was beautiful, and we had an up close and personal
view as we tendered from the ship to the pier. It was quite clear, a lovely
shade of light jade green, and turned out to be pleasantly warm. The island
itself must be a coral atoll as it’s quite flat unlike many of the volcanic
Caribbean islands that have impressive topography.
We awoke early enough to meet at 6:45 for our tour. Eight of
us, the others from Nova Scotia and Ontario, were together and were about 1/3
of our tour group in an extended van rather than a full bus. This used to be a
British colony, so it was another drive-on-the-left island.
We drove along the coast, stopping briefly at a beach that
fortuitously had a new cache. I’m sure it looked odd to the other tourists when
8 of us made a beeline for a nearby tree. After we found the cache, I took some
pictures of the water before it was time to go to Hell. That’s not an
expression, it’s a mention of a destination, namely Hell, Cayman Islands. Hell has a small, stark, black limestone formation that feels not unlike the Badlands of South Dakota. Hell
has lots of fun with its name, the "town" seems to be just a couple of buildings that sell lots of shirts and other items. It also contains 3 caches – a traditional, a
virtual and an earth-cache – and yes, we were able to log all of them. I even participated
in the a few non-limestone attractions such as getting an unofficial passport stamp and sending
a postcard and taking pictures of oneself as both a devil and an angel. If it
had a less, um, provocative name it would probably not be such a tourist draw.
There were 2 other stops – at the rum distillery (yummy, and
apparently not available in the US), and at the Cayman Turtle Centre (which
doesn’t treat the turtles as well as it could/should). We did both activities
and still had time for the nearby caches.
The main attraction was “Stingray City”. We were on a
not-catamaran (though the tour promised a catamaran) with a friendly (though
not particularly professional) crew. It took about 20 minutes to ride the ~2
miles/3 kilometers to a sandbar. Imagine standing on said sandbar, in
waist-deep clear green water, that far from shore. The water was moving quite a
bit, but once I learned to “bounce” rather than keep my feet on the ground it
was fine. The good part was getting to hold a stingray – no, we didn’t get to
feel the interesting suction of feeding this one – but the bad news was the way
the crew handled it. At first I thought it was ok, that they seemed to be keeping
it wet and cool. Later it became obvious that they’d selected one stingray to
abuse while the captain and his crony took photos that they tried to sell for
outrageous prices. Others noted how quickly the boat was reloaded and moved
once the authorities arrived. Sadly, there was no opportunity to do any
snorkeling so my fins travelled to the Caribbean and I schlepped them around
Grand Cayman but they were never used. I did get to use my mask briefly to
admire a few fish who looked gray-ish from above the water but were aqua with
gold stripes through the snorkel mask.
After our abrupt departure from Stingray City, the crew had
to kill time so we meandered through some canals in the high rent district. It
was quite obvious, and easy to confirm as I had breadcrumbs on the GPS showing where
we went. Our friendly bus driver came to pick us up and return us to the cruise
port.
From the cruise port we wandered over to the event cache and
continued our quest to find 8 cache types. We’d already covered virtual,
earthcache and traditional. We reconnected with many other cachers at an event cache,
attended by a local and together found a wherigo, multi, letterbox and puzzle. All
of the exploring, time in the water, and caching built up our appetites so 4 of
us found a nearby eating establishment and consumed shrimp tacos, fish n chips,
virgin daiquiri, and beer before finding a few more traditional caches, grabbing
a sorbet and heading back to the ship.
Great minds think alike and quite a few cachers found ourselves
at the same pool. The 5’3” (1.6 meter) depth was perfect for me. Remarkably as I'd only applied sunscreen once, I didn't burn.
A fine day at an interesting location but probably not a
place high on my list to return to as I prefer more topography.
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