This will be my last post about my recent getaway to the Cayman Islands. I had to send off to get my photos developed from my disposable waterproof camera, and a week later I finally have them in hand. The coloring of the photos are a bit off, so they don't give a true idea of what it was like, just know that it was beautiful!
Our final excursion on for the weekend was the Waverunner Snorkel Safari with Red Sail Sports, located at The Westin on Seven Mile Beach in the Caymans. This was, by far, my favorite activity of the weekend. If you ever have the chance to combine waverunners and snorkeling, do it, you won't regret the experience!
When I was in high school, Kristalynne and I actually spent a lot of time at the lake with a group of friends from our church youth group. This was the time period that I learned how to water ski and also got comfortable on a waverunner. It's been well over 10 years since I have sat on a waverunner.
But, like riding a bike, I don't think you ever forget how to operate a watercraft like this. It was so exhilarating going fast, riding over waves, and spinning in circles to my heart's content. I had forgotten what it feels like to ride like that. And if we had just done waverunners, that would have been a ton of fun. However the excursion also involved following our guide out to two different spots to snorkel on the reef.
I have only snorkeled once before – in Hawaii about 13 years ago. I was with Daniel, the water was cloudy with limited visibility, and I felt somewhat seasick from the motion. We didn't see a whole lot, so it wasn't the best of experiences. On this same trip, Daniel and I got our open water scuba certification. The whole time I was terrified of seeing a shark. Thankfully we didn't see a shark and I have stuck close to shore when we go to the beach.
Fast forward to this trip, my fears were mostly gone. I was relishing the freedom of no responsibility and riding fast on my own waverunner. Our first spot to snorkel was in open water just off of Seven Mile Beach. Due to the recent rain, the water was a bit cloudy and not particularly calm, but we still managed to see several schools of fish. It was extremely peaceful laying in the water, watching life unfold around me.
Unfortunately K started feeling a bit seasick and decided she would head back to shore when we moved on to our second snorkeling spot.
I stayed with the group and we headed to Georgetown where we stopped right next to a cruise ship that was in port. The water color was a more vibrant blue here (the photos are not even close) and visibility was much improved. As I was searching the water below, I noticed a shark swim right under me. It was probably about 15 feet below.
I jerked my head out of the water and informed our group. Our guide said it was "just a nurse shark" and we had nothing to fear. I calmed my nerves, stuck my head back in and took a photo. Our guide swam down to the ocean floor and brought up a conch for us to look at. My parents have a conch shell that is over 100 years old, so I was familiar with it, but I was surprised at how heavy the live conch was. The Caymans are known for their conch and that night we sampled some at dinner – it was delicious!
While we snorkeled we noticed a group of scuba divers below us – down where the shark was. For the entire trip, I kept thinking how much fun it would have been to do this with Daniel and eventually my boys. I hope to do a similar trip with them in the future.
I hate that Kristalynne missed out on the better snorkeling spot. When I got back to the beach, she was enjoying the scenery. We enjoyed the rest of our afternoon – watching other people take their turns doing various excursions. It was a great way to end our girl's weekend. I'm so thankful that it worked out for me to be able to join my friend and take a break from reality for a few days.
I've been home from my girl's trip for a little over a week and I wanted to share a bit about the food we ate, and some additional information about the Cayman Islands. For me food is an important part of vacation, and being in a new country means trying new foods.
The Cayman Islands are a British territory, encompassing three
islands in the western Caribbean Sea (next to Cuba). Grand Cayman, where we stayed, is the largest island and is known for its beach resorts and varied scuba diving and snorkeling
sites.
In the Caymans, you drive on the left side of the road and road signs say things like "Reduce Speed Now" and "Give Way" instead of yield. These islands are a fairly expensive place to visit and the US dollar is not strong: $1 CI is equal to $1.20 USD. So when the menu says an item costs $10, it really costs $12. And drinks (which we partook in, because we were in the islands!) were expensive.
While breakfast is my favorite meal
to eat out when traveling, we only managed to eat one breakfast out on this particular trip. Even so, we still managed to have some really excellent meals. Due to the cost of everything, we chose to only eat out for two meals each day to offset some of our costs. Following is a look at where we dined on this trip...
TORTUGA BEACH GRILL & BAR
When we arrived at our resort on Friday, we ate lunch al fresco at the Tortuga Beach Grill & Bar
(#85 on TripAdvisor). The weather was amazing and I couldn't get over
how blue-green the water was. The Tortuga had amazing wraps
with fries and we both had a Pina Colada for dessert. While we dined,
I noticed a fairly large iguana propped on a tree next to our table. I
also noticed that the birds in this country were different from
home – no seagulls on the beach here.
SUNSHINE GRILL
For dinner, we walked across the street to the Sunshine Grill (#8 on TripAdvisor). I tried the Tres Tacos which included Cuban,
Shrimp and Fish
tacos. All three were excellent but I had to get used to the spiciness
of the Cuban taco. Spicy foods normally give me heartburn and I was worried about this
spicy taco. Surprisingly it didn't bother me at all. Unfortunately, though the food was
excellent, our glasses of ice water tasted dirty. The water in the
Caymans is safe to drink so we were surprised at the water here.
Thankfully it didn't make us sick. We paired our tacos with the featured Rum Punch (when in Rome the Caymans...) and finished the evening with a small Pina Colada ice cream cone
on the house. It was all delicious and our bar tender was super
friendly.
BEACH HOUSE
Our only sit-down breakfast on the island was Saturday morning. We had been told about the great breakfast buffet at the Beach House
(#26 on TripAdvisor) – one of the two onsite restaurants at our resort. Unfortunately
for us, their really good buffet must have been on Sunday, not Saturday.
We both thought it was ok, but not fantastic. My favorite thing were the
coconut pancakes and the made-to-order omelettes.
We skipped lunch and got massages instead, but did grab drinks to take down to the beach from Tortuga Bar & Grill – a Pina Colada for K and a Mud Slide for me.
EATS CAFE
We were on a time crunch to make our bioluminescence excursion so we had dinner across the street at a small dive called Eats Cafe (#34 on TripAdvisor). I had a truly amazing burger – the only thing that would have made it better would have been to have a fried egg on top, and K had the fish ad chips. This ended up being our cheapest meal by far (no alcohol!).
On Sunday I grabbed a latte and croissant from the small cafe inside our resort before heading to the beach for our Snorkel Safari.
THAI ORCHID
For lunch we took a cab to the Thai Orchid (#22 on TripAdvisor) which had been recommend by our spa concierge, Sarah (she
must love Thai places!). Both the massage and lunch were great. At Thai Orchid we had a buffet that included fresh sushi and Thai food. I had been hoping to grab breakfast for lunch, but the Thai food was worth the visit.
CATCH
For dinner we followed another recommendation by Sarah and hopped in a cab to Catch in West Bay (#37 on TripAdvisor). Kristalynne had originally booked Wharf but we changed our reservation based on Sarah's suggestion since she had yet to fail us. We enjoyed our meal at Catch.
We were on a northern tip of the island, so we didn't see the sunset, but it was lovely to sit overlooking the water. We started our meal with Cracked Conch – which was amazing. The Caymans are known for their conch, and it was so good! I tried the Snapper and Shrimp plate while K had the Crusted Mahi Mahi. We finished our meal with a Molten Chocolate Cake. It was an excellent meal to end our lovely weekend in the Caymans.
AIRPORT FOOD
As honorable mentions, while traveling home on Monday, we stopped at Einstein Bagel in the Miami airport where I grabbed a cinnamon sugar bagel and a latte.
I ended up spending most of my day in the Miami airport (with flight delays, it ended up taking me 20 hours to get home!) so I went to the Islander Bar & Grill for lunch and tried the Fried Shrimp and Mahi Mahi with a Mojito.
For dinner I was in the Charlotte airport, so I savored an amazing barbecue plate from Carolina Pit BBQ. It was all excellent food, even if I was stuck in an airport!
Being that this was my first girl's trip since college (I graduated 15 years ago), I wasn't really sure what to expect. Thankfully I was with a friend who I knew well, and while being lazy was on both of our lists, doing fun activities was also important.
When we arrived at our hotel at noon on Friday, our room wasn't
ready, so we quickly changed into swimsuits, had lunch at the onsite Tortuga Cafe, then took our pina coladas down to the beach. Not a bad way to wait.
We watched as large waves rolled in, breaking as they reached shore. We were told that the ocean was typically calm here and these waves were unusual. As a result, the water sports at our resort had been cancelled for the day and visibility for snorkeling/diving was low.
Kristalynne persuaded me to
swim in the rolling ocean with her. The waves would come in and lift us up 2-4 feet. It was
pretty amazing. The water was cool but not cold, and I'm glad that I got over my initial discomfort of being too cold to get wet! After our swim, our rooms were available. K took a nap and I
hung out by pool to read and was able to Skype Daniel and the boys. Technology is fantastic – I was able to walk around and show them the beach and where I would be staying for the weekend.
Before dinner we watched the sun set (The Westin on Seven Mile Beach faces due west) before walking over to
the Sunshine Grill for dinner. We ended up eating at the bar where
we met a lovely retired couple from Montana. They were ending their vacation and we swapped stories. After dinner we walked back to our resort and crashed. I had been running all day on a measly three hours of sleep!
Which made it weird that the next morning, when I could have slept in as late as I wanted, I woke up at
5:45am and could not go back to sleep. At 6:30am I grabbed a water bottle and headed down to the beach to watch
dawn arrive. By 8am I felt awake enough to participate in a yoga class on the beach before breakfast. Sun salutations on shifting sand are no joke!
Kristalynne and I had agreed that whatever else we did, we wanted to book a Waverunner Snorkel Safari excursion, take a bioluminescence tour, and get a massage. Preferably in that order. That was not exactly how things worked out...
We were able to schedule a bioluminescence tour for that night with Cayman Kayaks, but the only time available was
9pm-midnight. We asked if we could get a ride with the early group and just hang out at Rum Point – the front-desk concierge told us we could not do that and there was nothing to do at Rum Point. She then directed us to go to the water sports hut outside to book our Waverunner Snorkel Safari with Red Sail Sports. The previous day she had told us we would have to wait until this morning to book anything, she also failed to inform us that you had to book your excursion by 9am or reserve
ahead of time. Thankfully we were able to snag the last 9am Snorkel Safari spot for the following day.
We then attempted to book a
massage. After getting great service from the spa concierge, Sarah, she
had to apologetically tell us that everything at the spa was booked for
the ENTIRE weekend. Not to be deterred, she suggested we go down the
street to a Touch of Thai and
went above and beyond, proceeding to schedule our appointments offsite. As luck
would have it, Touch of
Thai only had
availability for one 90-min and one 50-min massage. It was K's birthday
so I said I should do the shorter massage. No big deal. Sarah told us we
could still take advantage of the hot tub and saunas at the onsite spa, so we
made sure to do that before
getting our massages down the street. When we arrived at Touch of
Thai, they offered to give us a couples massage so we could
both get 90 minutes, instead of me getting the shorter massage. We laughed at the situation and promptly said, "Sign us up." It helped that we have known each other for 25 years. We just
laughed at how ridiculous our "relaxing" morning had gone so far. K had a
Lomi Lomi (traditional Cayman) massage while
I tried the more intense Balinese massage. It was fantastic.
After our relaxing massages, we received a call from the front-desk concierge letting us know that two spots had
opened up on the earlier bioluminescence tour. We accepted the 6-9pm trip,
then went to grab a quick dinner at Eats across the street. As we took the hour van ride across the island, we were both thankful for the earlier availability. I don't think either of us would have been able to stay awake until midnight!
The bioluminescence tour from Rum Point was pretty cool. As the crow flies, Rum Point is about 15 miles away from our resort at Seven Mile Beach, but it took an hour to drive since the roads only go around the perimeter of the island. Three college students from Canada were on our bus and they were cracking me up with
their idealism and thoughts about life. It's hard not to eave's drop when you are stuck on a small van with strangers. K and I are so far removed from college, but I vividly remember my own dreams and expectations about life when I was their age.
Our tour started on the beach at Rum Point and we were split into two groups with about 8 two-person kayaks per guide. We hugged the shoreline until we reached a bay. Unfortunately the bay is developed and most of the surrounding houses had outdoor lights on which provided a lot of ambient light that took away from the experience. Even so, we enjoyed interacting with the lights in the water. We learned that there are over 10,000 forms of bioluminescence on our planet. I knew about lightening bugs, eels, and certain types of jellyfish, but had no idea so many life forms produced light like this. To be honest, I expected that the glow in the water would be more pronounced – the brochure certainly makes it look like that. But the reality of our tour was that the water only really lit up when our paddles moved through the water or when we dipped our hands in. On our paddles it looked like lots of tiny bubbles in the dark water. On our hands it looked like little sparks or like you had dipped your hand in glitter. It was bizarre in that the water was completely dark except for where we moved paddles or hands through it. It was strange and amazing, though I wish it had been pitch black. One of the college girls was with the other group and she evidently got in the water to swim. I think that would have been a much more fascinating experience.
Sunday was my turn to sleep in a bit. When I was awake enough to get moving, I grabbed coffee and croissant from
the onsite cafe before meeting up with K on the beach to watch the Red Sail guys get the jet skis in water.
I will write a separate post about our Waverunner Snorkel Safari excursion next week when my photos are developed. I will say that it was amazing and one of my favorite experiences.
I will also share a more detailed blog post about our meals while in the Cayman Islands. For lunch we went to a Thai Orchid on the recommendation of our spa concierge (who we loved by now!) and then had dinner at Catch
(also recommended by Sarah). After dinner we joined other resort guests on the beach to watch part of the Oscars on a big screen. After the opening I wandered down to the water to enjoy my last moments in this beautiful country.
When you have kids, your vacations become trips. While vacations for Daniel means he gets a bit of a break from work, the work of a stay-at-home-mom never ends. I adore my family, but as I mentioned before, I had been running on empty. Never taking a real break in 5 years. Never having the time to really step away. This trip was fun, but mostly it was a break that I desperately needed. I still do a fair amount of adventurous things, but compared to the me before kids, the adventuring isn't exactly the same. Getting to spend a weekend relaxing, doing fun things, and not having to worry about anything or anyone else, was just what I needed.
In February I completed two books and am currently halfway through a third. I was lucky to take two last-minute trips to the beach and honestly thought I would read more, but relaxing with no agenda had its perks too.
The first book I completed was The Unsettlers: In Search of the Good Life in Today's America by Mark Sundeen. I really wanted to like this book but it kind of fell short of my expectations. The author follows the lives of three very different couples as they attempt to leave mainstream culture to pursue their personal visions of the American dream. The first couple, Sarah and Ethan, leave the world as they knew it behind and move to a plot of land in Missouri with the Amish as their closest neighbors. They had high expectations with strict rules for their style of living including living without electricity, running water or cars, growing their own food, having a just cause, and not supporting industry. At their compound they host visitors throughout the year who come learn their way of living.
The second couple, Olivia and Greg, live in Detroit, Michigan where they are part of a grassroots effort that is converting abandoned city blocks to urban farms. Their daily struggles are very different from the other couples in the book in that they encounter violence on a seemingly daily basis. But they are not afraid to protect themselves or their farm. In their case, they are using the skills they have acquired to grow food and make a living in a place that it is next to impossible to get ahead, especially if you happen to be black and don't work for the auto industry.
The third couple, Luci and Steve, are older and have been farming in Montana for several decades. As an original part of the organic, and then local food movement, their goal was never about healthy or gourmet food choices per se, but rather about ethical economic behavior. They currently use solar as a main source of energy which means they have electricity and make money from selling their power back to the grid. This poses some ethical issues for them, but they choose to participate in the system in this way, even though they are predominantly off the grid.
The stories of these families were fascinating and I would have like to learn more about them – an entire book could probably be devoted to each family's effort to pioneer their portion of the country. My issue with the book has to do with the author. He spends a lot of time interjecting his own feelings and experiences on to the other people's stories in an attempt to figure out his own life and whether or not he should follow through and marry his fiance. It was very distracting and didn't really add to the book. Also, it felt like there wasn't actually much of a point to the book, other than to say, "Hey! These families are living off the grid in different ways. They grow their own food and don't have electricity, isn't that cool?"
The best parts of the book for me was that these families seemed to recognize that they could be friends with people who were vastly different from them politically. That is a view I have long held and I think it needs to be examined by more Americans.
Some of Ethan and Sarah's closest friends these days were not fellow activists, but rather their conservative neighbors, Don and Dana Miller. The two couples agreed not to broach certain subjects... "If we looked at our differences, we could not have a relationship. We love them for who they are not for how they live." – Dana Miller
The people in this book believe –and show– that sacrifice leads to abundance. And that's the same allure of marriage, that by giving up one element of freedom we gain something greater.
I gave this book 3 out of 5 stars on Goodreads.
The second book I finished was The Wonder Trail by Steve Hely, a writer for The Office and American Dad! As someone who loves to travel and read other people's travel experiences, I found this book to be mediocre. The beginning was humorous and promising but Hely spends a good portion of his book quoting other people's books and very little time describing his travels – mostly recounting his experiences partying with strangers who are much younger than him. If you are looking for a humous travelogue, I would suggest you pick up Honeymoon with My Brother: A Memoir byFranz Wisner or The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific byJ. Maarten Troost.
Best quote from The Wonder Trail:
The experience you get isn't always what you were looking for. What you were after sometimes turns out not to be the point. But who cares? What matters is the trip you took to get there.
I gave this book 2 out of 5 stars on Goodreads.
Honorable Mention: I read Flat Stanley: His Original Adventure by Jeff Brown to my five-year-old this month. He is excited to read more of the Flat Stanley series.
