Rum, Turtles and Stingrays

Georgetown, Grand Cayman, BWI
Thursday, May 4, 2006

The Cayman Islands, are three small islands located about 480 miles south of Miami, Florida in the Carribean Sea. It is a tax-free British Crown Colony and tax-haven, home to over five hundred banks and streets of high-end shops that sell luxury items tax free!
Daniel, our bus driver and tour guide, a wiry young black man from Jamaica, working as a tour bus driver on a work permit, picked us up at the ship at 8:45 AM. On the bus radio a hell fire and brimstone preacher from Dallas tells us that "Eve wasn't told not to touch the tree but not to eat the fruit. Eve had freedom with boundaries. A football player cannot play football without goal lines and boundaries...

"Welcome aboard," said Daniel, "it's a pleasure to have you with us today, don't you know."
We passed a number of hotels along the world-famous Seven-mile Beach with its white sand and shallow azure sea, perfect for swimming. "The beach is actually 5 1/4 miles long," explained a local woman with a wink and a wide grin, "but the length was estimated by a man, and men are prone to exaggeration when it comes to size, don't you know."

Many of the hotels are still being rebuilt after they suffered damage from Hurricane Ivan two years ago. Six months ago the 7-star Ritz Carlton Hotel and Resort opened, with rooms starting at US$1,000 a night, and it became the largest hotel on Grand Cayman. This moved the Westin into second place.

Our first stop was Hell, a strange rock formation that looks like scorched rock, which inspired the name. Some enterprising soul saw the potential and now there is a post office and gift store at the site where you can purchase post cards and mail them from Hell.
Next, we stopped at a shop that specialized in rum and rum cakes for free samples. Janet loved the rum cake so much she bought one to bring home.

Then, we went just down the road to the Cayman Turtle Farm, which raises Green Sea Turtles for release into the Carribean Sea to restock falling population and as a food source for local residents, to whom turtle meat is a delicacy. It was amazing to see sea turtle from one-year old to seventy-five years old, although they can live to one hundred and twenty-years old. The older turtles loose their colouring as they age.

Finally, we arrived at our final stop, Safe Haven Harbour, to catch our tour boat to Stingray City. We are greeted by Dayton, a tall, muscular , tanned, Grand Cayman native who was our guide for the stingray swim.

We boarded our boat, "Free Willie", and took the four mile trip over calm, tourqoise seas to a sand bar where stingrays feed on squid, known as Stingray City. Four other boats were already there.

We climbed down the ladder into warm seas that swelled from waist to shoulder depth and stood on the soft sand of the sand bar. Almost immediately the stingrays swam right up to us and rubbed are legs. Dayton began feeding the stingrays squid and Christine, a twenty-something blonde from Nicaragua, joined us in the water in her bikini and photographed us as we interacted with the stingrays.

Jan and I held a stingray, remember this a wild stingray in the sea, on our hands and we were amazed at how soft and smooth it felt and how calm and docile the stingray seemed. Since it was a girl stingray, she kissed me goodbye before she swam away. She had incredibly soft lips. Both Jan and I loved snorkling with the stingrays and would have gladly stayed longer.

Once we reached shore and returned to the main pier in Georgetown, Jan and I did a little shopping. Jan bought a watch and a gold stingray charm. I paid. Then we returned to the ship exhausted but happy, very happy.