The last port stop on our cruise was at Grand Cayman in the British West Indies. Grand Cayman is known for its off shore banking industry and its great snorkeling and scuba. The diving is so great because of the crystal clear water and we definitely had our best snorkeling here at our last stop. (Justin pictured below)
(Pause for overall snorkeling recap)
In general I was excited to do some snorkeling on this trip and I was more than satisfied at every stop we did. At Cozumel the beach we payed to play at advertized a "Sunken Mayan Ruins" They had buoyed off a snorkeling area and dropped concrete mini replicas of pyramids the biggest of which were probably 4 or 5 feet high. It was a little bit much to call it sunken ruins but it did attract fish and we saw at least 20 different species of small tropical fish that were on average about the size of my hand. I did see one
lion fish which I thought was pretty cool.
At Roatan our shore trip package included a stop at a private beach that was beautiful. Justin and Rhett and I threw on our masks and flippers and went out looking for stuff with high expectaions. I swam clear through the bay but the water was quite a bit murkier and I didn't see anything but a couple stray and uninteresting fish. When I swam out of the bay I got into an area that was shallow and the frondy growth from the sandy bottom grazed up against me as I tried to swim futher out. After a couple of minutes I started to feel a sharp stinging first on my hip, then my other shoulder then my ankle. I figured I was into something noxious either in the water or on the vegetation so I turned around and tried to get out of that as quickly as possible. I swam back and showed off my new rashes to the group who were mildly impressed. It turns out all that swimming was wasted because the beach had about a 60 ft x 60 ft chain link snorkel area that they had set aside for snorkeling. I asked one of the custodial guys cleaning the beach what was in there. He said arraya, something else and tiburon which was the only word I knew and I knew it meant shark. I jumped in and started swimming around the far edge. I had to cross an underwater fence that came up just about as high as the water and I was a little nervous as to what I might encounter. The water was still murky but when I got to the back end I found a sea turtle which was pretty exciting. At that point the custodial guy was showing Rhett, Justin and the girls how to find queen conch on the near side of the enclosure. I found happened upon their homemade reef in the back that had a few coral and a few fish and mostly some really large shrimp. There were two other sea turtles - one big yellow one that wasn't too interested in me until I tried to grab him at which point he swam away. There were definitely some sting rays in there but the water was murky enough and they hung out in the deeper middle where I only really got a sense of them as they swam away from me. Justin eventually found a 6 to 7 foot
nurse shark which was pretty impressive
if not ferocious. Anyway it was a fun time even if it was more like walking through an exotic petting zoo than actually finding stuff out in the wild. The girls polished up some of the live conch shells before we were told they were not keepers and we had to put them back. (You can see the fenced off snorkel area behind Kelli and Shannon on the beach here)
(Resuming Grand Cayman account)
Our first adventure in Grand Cayman was to head out to Stingray City which is the iconic thing to do at Grand Cayman. This had been spoken very highly of by people who had been here before so we were excited for it, though Kimi said it turned out not to be what she was expecting. We took a twenty minute boat ride out to a sand bar where there were probably three or four other boats doing similar tours. The water was blue and beautiful and we saw a few stingrays down in the water along the way. When we got there they jump you down into water about up to your belly button where you are surrounded by big (three to four feet across) friendly stingrays that are excited to give you big hugs (in the hopes that you have a little bit of squid to feed them). The tour boat gave us hot dog sized pieces of squid that the stingrays would smell in the water and come suck up out of your hands. At first
they were a little too friendly for Kimberli but she eventually warmed up to them. Apparently kissing a stingray is worth seven years good luck. Our boat guides were happy to take our pictures with a fancy water proof camera and sell us a burned copy.
After our stingray encounter our boat took us to the "Coral Gardens" spot where we could do a little snorkeling. Here there were real coral mounds and quite a few interesting fish. There maybe wasn't quite the variety here that I had seen at cozumel but the fish were in general bigger and still beautiful. Kimberli was game to snorkel alongside me and we had a good time for fifteen to twenty minutes.
When we got back we split up as couples for lunch and then Rhett and I did some snorkeling just off the pier that turned out to be the best spot we snorkeled all week. It was a rocky entry and there were three or four big silver fish you could see right off the shore. Again the water was incredibly clear. With the rocky bottom I bet we could see 20-30 yards underwater. Down in the water there were lots of colorful fish some as big as my head. The rocky bottom was cut up into canyons that you could swim down and explore and again probably 20-30 different kinds of beautiful fish. I saw one thin silver fish up high in the water that looked a little barracuda-esque but if it was it was only a small one about 12-18 inches long. It was interesting that the fish have no real fear of you because you're really not much of a threat to them (I tried unsuccessfully to touch a few). Sort of like bird watching here above water. My
favorite were the
parrot fish. Kimi and Kelli each did some independent souvenir hunting and we met back up to board the ship. The room staff stayed true to their theme of towels shaped into animals we might have seen that day. The rest of the trip involved sailing for Miami and flying home (even hopping some earlier flights so we got back to San Antonio two hours ahead of schedule). All in all it was a great trip with great friends. Special thanks to Grandma Cindy and Aunt Lacey who kept our children so entertained they were almost sad to see us return.
