Grand Cayman

It's been an entire day since we were at Grand Cayman. Just too many things going on to get to posting. My computer has been acting up, giving me a lot of script errors, so I spent yesterday evening with the Microsoft guy onboard to see if he could help. Not much help at all. Hopefully it'll get over itself and work!

We were expected to arrive in Georgetown, Grand Cayman, at 8 a.m. I had booked an onshore excursion for snorkeling, meeting in town at 8:30 - 8:45. Well, I'd forgotten that it was a tender port, which takes more time to disembark. Also, they announced that the swells were too large to tender into Georgetown so we'd be gong to Spots Bay, about 3 miles south. We were waiting to board the tender by just after 7 a.m. We didn't get to go to the tender until after 8. I figured we would miss the tour. We got on the free shuttle into Georgetown. On the way, the guide on the bus called the tour company for us. They said we could go on the next tour, to meet them at 11:30. Guess that worked. In the meantime, Georgetown is a Free Port, so we shopped!

Grand Cayman is known for it's "Sting Ray City", so they sold ray items in every store. Both Lalique and Lladro made ray figurines, exclusive to the Caymans. There were ray ornaments, jewelry, you name it. We made a few purchases then went to meet our tour.

A nice young girl picked us up and drove us to the boat. We stopped for "paties", a typical Cayman food, pretty much like empanadas. They were delicious. Glad I had that to eat. I would have been really hungry by the time we got back to the ship. The boat was pretty old and run down, but ran, so fine. There were about 10 others with us. We were taken to Sting Ray City where about 7 boats were already anchored. Some were much larger than ours. There must have been 200 people out on that sand bar in the middle of the bay! I guess years ago fisherman used to clean their fish in that area, so the rays started coming to eat the waste. Then they started feeding them for tourists and they just never left. There were a lot swimming in about 3' deep water, most over 2' in diameter, a few smaller ones. Our guide caught one so we could hold it, kiss it and get a back rub, with pictures being taken of course for an extra cost. It was fun to be up that close to them. We moved from there to deeper water for snorkeling. It wasn't the best we've seen but there were many colorful fish, some brain coral, and some sea fans. The water is crystal clear and warm. We remembered to bring our swim shirts this trip, so our backs didn't get fired like they did on our last trip!

While on the boat one of my free replica coins fell out of my pocket and disappeared in a hole. I wanted to return to the store to get another one. When we got back to the dock, it was after 3. The last tender was to leave for the ship at 4. We still had to get from Georgetown to the tenders! I was sure we'd have time, so had the driver drop us off in Georgetown. We went back to the store, got 4 more coins, then did a fast walk to the shuttle to the pier. We were on the last shuttle, boarded the last tender, and were back onboard at about 4:45. Nice day.

Today was another day at sea. We did Tai Chi in the morning. We made friends with the instructors from Australia on our last World Cruise. I told Robert I would attend his class on 25 hour days, when we turn the clocks back and I get an extra hour of sleep. The class was good. I hope we'll be able to attend a few times. Nothing scheduled for the afternoon that we wanted to attend, but tonight was a formal night. We dressed for the Captain's reception before dinner. On the way, passing by the jewelry store we talked to the emerald rep whom we'd met 2 years ago when Mel bought me an emerald ring. I asked if I could model something, she asked what I wanted to wear. Of course I chose the $55,000 emerald necklace with $7500 matching earrings! Fun to go to dinner wearing that much jewelry. We had escargot, lobster and chocolate souffle for dinner. Yum! Of course Mel had THREE lobster tails. Nice.

The show was Mitzi Gaynor. The younguns out there will have to Google her, but most my age and up will remember her. She starred in South Pacific as well as other films and did many shows in Las Vegas. It was fun to see her in person but I think she should have retired a few years ago.

Tomorrow is Puerto Limon, Costa Rica. Not sure what we are going to do since the tour company I emailed never replied. I'm sure we'll find something interesting to do.