Trip Report - Part Three!

Today I really am going to tell you about Grand Cayman.  As many of you who know me are aware, it is one of my favorite places to visit.  I have often dreamed of selling all of my worldly possessions, packing up my two cats and going to GC with nothing but a bag full of shorts and flip flops and starting my own charter boat business.  Although it is an expensive place to live, I figure I could do just fine with a little shack on the beach.  But until that happens, maybe I should just tell you about the day I spent there last week.

Wednesday - Grand Cayman

Originally, Jenny (the travel buddy) and I had thought we might rent a car and get around GC on our own.  But it seemed like it was going to be a huge hassle to pick up and drop off the rental car and we didn't have that much time on the island anyway.  So we didn't want to spend a big part of it dealing with logistics.  So just a few weeks before we left, we decided to go ahead and book an excursion.  I have been to GC before on several occasions but it was Jenny's first visit.  Since she had never been to Stingray City before, we decided to do the excursion where a Catamaran takes you out to Stingray City.

Our excursion wasn't set to begin until 1:30 and we were able to get off the ship at around 10 a.m. so we got off the ship in the first tender and headed to shore.  Jenny wanted to shop for some black coral jewelry and we had decided to have lunch on the balcony at Breezes by the Bay.  After a few hours of walking shop to shop we each wound up with a tee shirt but Jenny didn't find the black coral that she had been looking for.

Around noon we went into Breezes and got a prime table right away.  Considering that there were 6 ships in Grand Cayman on Wednesday and George Town was packed with shoppers, I wasn't too optimistic about being able to get a table on the balcony or that the service would be up to par.  But we were pleasantly surprised.

There, I got the best mojito I have had in a very long time and ordered coconut shrimp from the appetizer menu.  They also had coconut shrimp on the entree menu, but I didn't want all the other stuff that comes with a meal and on the appetizer menu they gave you a choice of 4, 6 or 8 shrimp.  I got the 4 pc. shrimp order and wished I had gotten the 6 pc. because it was the best coconut shrimp I have ever had!  It came with a spoonful of black bean and corn relish that was delicious and the sauce for the shrimp was outstanding.  Jenny got a 4 pc. order of sliders of which she was only able to eat two.  The meat patties on her sliders were very thick.  Her sliders came with fresh made potato chips.  I had one of them and it was great.

One of the things I like best about Breezes is the view of the harbor.  It is a great place for people watching or to just sea how pretty the water is and watch the ships tenders come in and out of the harbor.  The next time your ship stops in GC, I would highly recommend a visit to Breezes.  You can see from the pictures below how great our table was.  All of the tables on the balcony offer the same view.  There is also a bar on the balcony.  So, even if you are only stopping in for a drink, you get the same fantastic scenery.  This is a pretty crummy picture of me, but I wanted you to be able to see the view behind us.

After lunch we went over to Margaritaville which is right across the street and I got a ball cap to wear during our Stingray City excursion.  We each had a Landshark upstairs in the restaurant and I took Jenny's picture with this friendly guy who just wanted to be a part of the group....

Once we finished our beer it was time to go over to the pier and head out on our excursion.  For the excursion, we were taken by bus across the island to get on the catamaran which was over near the yacht club.  The name of our catamaran was the Cockatoo.  As we waited for the last group of people who went out to unload, it was surprising how many had been on board.  They had over 60 people in their group.  We had 18 in ours.  On the ride over to Stingray City, everyone relaxed and a lot of people laid out on the trampolines on the front of the boat.

 In case you don't know anything about Stingray City, I'll tell you that it is basically a sandbar off the shore of Grand Cayman.  You can see in the picture below the waves breaking on the sandbar.  But keep in mind that it is a mile or two off shore.  So, it is really weird to see waves breaking that far off shore.  Back in the day, fishermen would clean their catch out there and throw the scraps overboard.  That attracted the rays and before long, they started bringing tourists out to the sandbar to feed the rays who race up to boats as they arrive.  In the picture below you can see the black spots in the water as  we approached the sandbar.  Those are hungry rays.

The rays on the sandbar go from baby which had a wingspan of about 12 inches to big bull daddy which can have a wingspan of 4 feet.  Our guide told us that most of the interaction is with the females since the males don't like to be handled too much.  When you go out there, you are always encouraged to feed the rays from the buckets of squid that each boat carries, you get your picture taken kissing a ray which supposedly results in 7 years of good luck and on this day, they ran a ray across your back for what they called a "ray massage".  Anytime you got close to the squid bucket, the rays would rush toward you and practically knock you down trying to get the squid from you.  The guide also told us that they get the same rays on a daily basis and that the ones they handle for pictures and so on are usually the same ones since they sort of "know" them.

I think we were probably the last trip of the day out to the sandbar for the Cockatoo.  By the time we got back to shore it was pretty late in the day.  While we were out there, the number of boats was much smaller than I had seen out there before.  I think this was due to the later timing of our trip.  That made it very nice.  We were swarmed by rays since there weren't so many boats out there and there were a lot fewer people on our boat so you had one on one time with the crew.

 I took dozens of pictures out there.  So, these are just some of them.  When I was there before, all of my pictures were from the waters surface.  Now I have an underwater camera, so I just held it under the water and pushed the button every every few seconds.  Doing that, you were almost sure to get a ray in every shot because they were everywhere!

Close up, this guy looks kinda creepy!

Yes, that is a ray going between someone's legs!

After we got back to the bus, the driver told us that he was going to take some shortcuts and drive a little fast in order to get us back to the ship in time.  He was true to his word.  Everytime I've ever been to Grand Cayman the afternoon rush hour traffic has come to a complete halt around 5 and this day was no exception but the driver did a great job cutting through residential areas and was able to cut off some of that traffic.  Our last ships tender was set for 5:15 p.m.  We got off of the tender at exactly 5:15!  I think there was probably one that left the pier at 5:15, but regardless, we were cutting it close.

While we waited for the tender to leave shore, we got to see the most spectacular sunset, you might recall that I used it as the top picture on the blog a few days ago.  We joked as we sat there with another tender in front of us which was blocking the view as tourists swarmed the front of the boat trying to take the picture.  We figured that the tender captain was like "What????  It's just a sunset.... we get 'em like this everyday!"  But it really was beautiful.