The best thing about going to sea is getting to go back on land, as long as that land is somewhere else! Sure home is nice but somewhere else is an adventure! Not to mention there is something to be said for travelling over the horizon of blue water and seeing land again. It still gets me excited and that day was no different! So we gathered up and met our group (they were well prepared and in line to get in line while we were….not) and waited for our boat to go ashore. The process was smooth and a very pleasant little trip! Not to mention that it was warm/hot, sunny, and a new place with nice people. Hot and sunny is a nice change from our normal November weather and it was a JOY to see my bride drink in the sun! She was aglow and tanning shades by the second, and that is just walking down the pier! Her ability to tan is something that I am not capable of doing and I am constantly jealous of, just don’t tell her that! Anyway, so we do a little walking and find some bus tours. Our group is trying to decide the best value for our buck when Cash Money comes up. Cash Money is 6’ 3”, 220 lbs of Grand Cayman magic! He sells us the exact same deal that all the other drivers for his bus company have been trying to sell us for 10 minutes and we love it! We say yes we will take the deal and head to the bus. As we begin loading up he hands us over to another driver and the 14 people in our group go nuts! “Nooo! We want him to drive us!!” we moan! “That wasn’t the deal?!” we cry! So after a bus shuffle and my bride helping to wrangle more tourists for the 30 person bus we head out.
Now Grand Cayman is a new destination for me and most of the others. It is small, a few miles long and even thinner than that wide, however it is very pretty. We drive up the main road and learn a bit about the place, who owns what, what kind of damage was sustained during the big hurricane, the entire time we are the epitome of American tourists. Our heads swinging left to right with the occasional click of digital cameras on the cell phones. Bliss! It is so nice to be comfortable as a tourist without having someone hocking wares at you! So we travel up the island until we end up in Hell. Yes Hell. Hell is a limestone formation built up from sea critters that look remarkably like the flames of, you guessed it, Hell. Turns out way back when some English fella was shooting birds there and between misses and the hits (that fell into the jagged rock formation of course) the gentleman would exclaim “Bloody Hell!). The name stuck! Now there is a fence to protect the area and a small gift shop where we sent my Mom and Dad and the kids a post card. Then on the road again!
The next stop was a small tourist trap where we got loaded up on free rum samples and rum cake, best samples ever! Tortuga rum is great! Why? Because of something extra they do with it…they give it away as free samples at a gift shop! YAAY RUM!! The next stop we got to peek between the chain linked fence and look at a turtle farm. Which was great because I sure wouldn’t pay to look at large concrete tanks full of turtles? However right across the street is a place where you can swim with dolphins and have them give you kisses and stuff. Which was very nice because our group had a fantastic time making out with the dolphins and got some very nice photos too? At this point some of our group went to shop while a few of us stayed at the beach. The beach was beautiful! We ate conch fritters and marinated conch and got a good top off of sunshine. It was so nice to see Shona and the kids playing in the water, while my pale self slowly roasted on the sand!
So we wrapped up the day by taking a short walk downtown, which was less impressive as the beach and eating a little more food not from a buffet. It was average but filling! Returning to the ship we napped as the ship headed out on to the Riviera De Maya. A great time for all!
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