Grand Cayman - What a trip!
- Frank’s 50th birthday celebration took us on the Metro to spend the night close to National airport for an early morning flight. Up at 3:30am, we made it to the airport and headed to Orlando. We enjoyed the views from the plane on all the flights.
- Hot, hot, hot in Grand Cayman, and it started raining! As Frank said just before our trip the weather forecast was “dull and dreary.” On day 1 the early morning caught up with Frank, and he took the pouring rain pretty hard.
- Wild chickens everywhere - apparently the population got out of control during the Hurricane Ivan in 2004. Also, quite a few outdoor cats.
- Buzzed in at the grocery. On Sunday’s stores over a certain size must be closed, so our only option was a smaller grocery.
- Driving on the left side of the road. Lots of round abouts, Frank did great.
- Hot, hot, hot. The temperature never really varied, so it was just hot all the time.
- I got mosquito bites on my evening walk and Day 1. I put on bug spray after that.
- After Day 1, it was still hot, but not as bad. We all got out paddle boarding and kayaking. We took our snorkel gear and headed to Starfish Point.
- Overall, we explored the entire island on our trip. We were really happy we stayed further away on the remoter side of the island.
- We visited the Cayman Turtle Centre, had lots of outdoor lunches, and listened to local radio. We enjoyed fruity beverages and beaches all around the island.
- As a family, we took the Slip and Slide boat tour and got to go down a slide into the water and snorkel further out. The guide on this boat trip informed us of several crazy things. One, the mosquitos used to be so bad on the island that livestock suffocated. Because the mosquitos were so bad, fisherman took their catch out to a sandbar off the shoreline, and all the fish guts over time attracted the sting rays, creating Sting Ray City.
- Frank and Zach had a couple days on their own, and they visited more beaches and took the tour to Sting Ray City.
- On our last day, we visited the Pedro St. James National Historic Site and learned about the first settlers on Grand Cayman. They made their fortune by making rope.
- I was proud of how we took advantage of local food. We bought local juices, mangoes, and coconut water. We bought local peanuts, lots of plantain chips, and ginger beer and had ginger beer floats as recommended to us by a couple on our Slip and Slide tour. I used the mangos to make a fruit salsa, and we had lots of avocado with beans and rice. The restaurant next door had a fantastic slaw and beans and rice! On the last night, I wanted ice cream. Zach was hoping for lemon sorbet, and we wanted to make one more round of ginger beer floats. While Frank was trying to “bring us back to reality” from our vacation diet, I announced that excess was about to take place as we had a little of three different frozen desserts!
- We gave all of our leftovers to a family we met on the last night. We commiserated on the cost of food on the island.
No comments:
Post a Comment