Grand Cayman 6/4 – 6/6
Our journey started early in the morning when our taxi
picked us up at 3:15 a.m. to head to the airport. We arrived at the airport and got through
security without even so much as a swab of my camera bag, which is a rarity
when we travel.
We headed for the United Lounge to fill our water bottles,
use the restroom, and see what kind of goodies they had for breakfast. By the time we got to the gate they had
actually started boarding the plane early so we just walked right up an got on
(we were in first class, which was the group they were boarding).
We had a very nice flight from Phoenix to Houston. They actually served breakfast and I have to
say it was pretty good. They had steel
cut oats with brown sugar crumb topping, dried cranberries, a biscuit with
butter and strawberry jam, a fresh fruit plate, and a vanilla Greek
yogurt.
When we got to Houston we had about a three hour
layover. We took the opportunity to have
some lunch as you never know what you are going to get on the plane (in the
case of coach it is nothing any more).
We decided on Ruby’s dinner as Eric was starving and wanted some real
food. After our “lunch” at 9 a.m. (we
had been up since 2:30 a.m.), we made our way to the United Lounge to relax for
the rest of our layover. Our layover
time went by in a hurry and we headed to our gate to board the flight to Grand
Cayman. After our past trips to Asia and
Europe the Caribbean trips seem incredibly short now.
We had another good flight and landed on time in Grand
Cayman. We got off the plane and were
one of the first few people through immigration. By the time we got to the baggage claim area
they already had three-fourths of the bags unloaded from the plane and off the
belt ready for people to pick up. They
are really on the ball compared to Bonaire where it takes half the length of the
flight just to get your bag--mainly due to the fact that they leave the entire
job of unloading the bags from the plane and putting them on the baggage claim
belt to a single 80-year-old man.
After picking up our bags, we made our way out the front
door of the airport and headed down to the walkway toward the rental car
agency. When we landed we noticed it was
very wet everywhere around the airport and it looked very stormy off in the
distance, but for the moment it was dry.
We got our car rented and loaded all our bags in and headed toward the
condo we had rented for the week at the Turtle Nest Inn.
We decided to stop at the grocery store on our way to the
condo and pick up some things so we would not have to do it later. We ran into the store and got all the items
on our shopping list but by the time we were ready to check out it was pouring
down rain and I mean pouring. By the
time we got our groceries out to the car and got in we were pretty much soaked
to the bone. We made it the rest of the
way to the condo in the downpour and then had to run from the parking lot over
to the Inn to check in and then back to the condo. By the time we got to the condo I don’t think
there was a dry spot on either one of us.
After we got toweled off a little bit, the rain let up so I
took Dick, Katie and Zane back to the grocery store as they had not had a chance
to stop when they arrived a couple hours earlier. We got lucky and made it in and out of the
store without getting wet. After we got
back to the condo we had to decide what to do for dinner. Everyone was pretty beat as we had all been
up since early in the morning or in the case of Dick, Lou, Katie, and Zane
since the day before. So we decided to
stay in and Eric and I made tostadas and Dick, Katie, and Zane had some of the hot
items they had purchased from the deli at the grocery store. After dinner everyone was pretty beat so we
all headed off to bed.
The next morning the sun was out for a short bit. As we were all on vacation, we decided to
sleep in and take our time getting up.
After having some breakfast everyone got their gear rounded up and put
together so we could head out to do our first dive. We decided on Eden Rock for the first dive,
which would also be Zane’s first official ocean dive. This is the spot where I also did my first
ocean dive. It took us a while to get
everything together and get in the water, but we finally did it.
Zane had an exciting first dive. We saw two turtles, a sting ray, barracuda,
and tarpon (which are everywhere here).
After our dive we packed up the car and headed to Turtle Reef on the
other end of the island to do the second dive.
We had lunch at Sunset Diver’s restaurant/bar as we watched the divers
come and go. Everyone enjoyed lunch very
much. Most of the day had been overcast
and just after we finished lunch it started raining. It did not really matter much to us as we
were going to be getting wet anyway, but it does cool things off.
We had a nice dive on the mini wall, but there was some
pretty good current. This was Zane’s
first experience with current and I don’t think he liked it too much. Zane, Eric, and Katie saw a baby ray along
with all the other usual suspects you see on most dives.
After getting out of the water it started pouring down rain
again. We rinsed all our gear and loaded
it in the car for the journey back to the condo. We made the mistake of trying to make our way
from one end of the island to the other through the middle of town during rush
hour on a weekday—Not a good idea. It
took us over an hour to get back to the condo and we had pouring rain the whole
way on top of it.
After we finally made it back and got all our stuff in the
condo, we were all starving to death. We
were trying to decide what to do for dinner and finally decided to just order
pizza. It was pouring down rain and we
did not want to all load into the car and drive all the way back to town to
have dinner. There is a Dominos pizza
just down to the road that we have gotten pizza at before on past vacations
here. So we tried calling but all we
could get was a busy signal. Eric and I
decided to just drive down there and place the order in person. The drive down the road was like driving
through a hurricane. I have not seen
rain like that in a long time, if ever.
The road was partially flooded, there were tree parts all over in the
road and by the time we got to Dominos the parking lot was packed and it was
standing room only inside. I stayed in
the car while Eric went in to place the order.
He came back out to the car for the ½ hour wait to get the pizzas. He went back in after ½ hour but had to wait
an additional ½ hour just to get up to the counter to pick up his order. Meanwhile I waited out in the car wondering
when someone was going to hit the rental car I was driving with all the
maneuvering around in the tiny packed parking lot in the pouring rain. Eric finally picked up the order and we
managed to make it back to the condo in one piece. After dinner we were all pretty pooped after
our full day. Lou stayed at the condo
and relaxed, walked on the beach, and did some reading while we were out all
day.
The next day we were up a little bit earlier than the
previous day. I got up and made Rosa
Parks peanut butter pancakes for everyone after which we got all our dive gear
rounded up and headed out for some diving.
Before we did our first dive we stopped at Diver’s World so Dick could
get a rash guard and some swim trunks, along with some other dive accessories.
After our shopping trip we stopped at Rackham’s bar and
grill downtown to have some lunch. This
is where they feed the tarpon every night at 7:30, so they tend to hang our
around there all the time. They also
have quite a few iguanas that like to sun themselves on the rocks there (and
eat scraps that customers throw them).
The weather was still overcast this morning but it made for beautiful
weather to sit along the waterfront and have lunch.
After lunch the consensus was to go back to Eden Rock for
the next dive as Zane really liked that spot yesterday. As it ended up, Eric, Zane, Katie, and I did
this dive. Dick was having some issues
with his BC and decided to sit this one out.
I managed to find a tiny octopus on this dive along with a huge
parrotfish—just to name a few of the really cool things we saw.
After this dive we packed the car up and headed back to the
condo. The dive shop let Eric and Dick
rent a tank to bring back so that Dick could get his BC set up and test
everything out in the pool. Luckily it was
a weekend so we did not have to deal with rush hour traffic on the way back to
the condo this time.
After we got back to the condo Eric and Dick set about the
task of getting Dick’s BC set up with the new webbing he had purchased earlier in
the morning. They got everything working
well and then Eric also reworked Zane’s BC with similar type webbing. After everyone was thoroughly waterlogged,
they came in and we had some of the left-over Dominos pizza. We made sure we purchased enough the night
before so we could have leftovers for another meal.
Everyone enjoyed watching some of the video clips I had
taken earlier in the day and then we all watched part of the Young Frankenstein
movie before we headed off to bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment