Ornoth

I’ve already mentioned how ironic it was that work assigned me to a two-month project in the US Virgin Islands shortly after Inna and I scheduled a tropical vacation to Grand Cayman Island, so I won’t belabor that again.

That vacation took place this past week, and it was really enjoyable. Despite having been in St. Thomas for four weeks, I’d only had one weekend there, and that was the only opportunity I had to do anything recreational down there. So having a week on Grand Cayman, with no work obligations, was still quite a treat.

The only snafu we had getting there was when Inna had to sprint from her arrival gate and just barely made our connecting flight out of Charlotte. During our descent into GCM, it was delightful to see Seven Mile Beach and the cruise ships in George Town harbor. After so many fruitless trips to St. Thomas, I finally got a new stamp in my passport at immigration, which was quick and painless.

The rental car presented some challenges, tho. I’d gotten used to the oddity of driving on the left side of the road during my time in St. Thomas, but Grand Cayman added two new elements. The first was the presence—absolutely everywhere!—of clockwise-flowing rotaries / traffic circles / roundabouts. I think there were seven in the couple miles between the airport and our hotel. The other was that the driver sits on the right side of the vehicle. That made passing easier than in St. Thomas, since the driver was toward the middle of the road, and thus able to see ahead around slower traffic, but it also meant all the controls were reversed. It took a while for me to get used to using my right hand for the turn signal, rather than my left, which was the wipers. And I never really got used to having the gear selector on the left. But I caught on well enough, and didn’t smash into anything, unlike in St. Thomas…

It wasn’t until later that we sat on a second floor porch in George Town and took an inventory of the cars passing by that we realized that about 60 percent of the cars had the driver’s side on the left (US-style), while only 40 percent had it on the right (UK-style).

The hotel—Sunshine Suites—turned out to be much better than expected. It was clean, bug-free, had both hot water and towels. It was, as advertised, across a very busy street from the beach, but that saved us about $200 per night, and with food and gas and everything else at ridiculous Cayman prices ($150 for a two-person dinner wasn’t uncommon), that mattered.

Immediately upon arriving, we fell into a daily routine that never varied. We’d get up around 8am, get a light breakfast at the hotel’s poolside bar/restaurant, and make our way across the street to Seven Mile Beach, which was really quite spectacular, and not overly crowded. We’d soak up the sun and do a little swimming, which included getting out to the 200 yard buoy: a good achievement for Inna, who is a better swimmer than she thinks. The only problem we had was on our last morning, when we seem to have both been stung by some kind of no-see-um in the water.

Around 11am we’d head back to the hotel room to shower. I’d make bacon and eggs, and then maybe a little web surfing and a nap. This allowed us to avoid being out during the height of the day, which was a serious consideration given Inna’s fair skin.

After our siesta, we’d go out and do some late afternoon activity before dinner and bed. We really didn’t chase any nightlife, preferring instead to get ample sleep.

Grand Cayman’s main attraction is the diving, but since Inna isn’t a snorkeler, and neither of us SCUBA, that limited our range of afternoon activities. Still, we managed a few interesting expeditions. On Wednesday we drove around the entire island, taking in the surf at Breakers, the quaint little East End, and the vast mangrove swamps that constitute the majority of the island. We ended up at Rum Point, where Inna found her first hammock; she quickly developed an affinity for them. After that we joined in on the island’s huge Mardi Gras celebration at the beachside Kaibo bar. It was quite a press, and we managed to find a good spot to see a reggae band called Locomotion that was playing there.

On Thursday we went to a butterfly farm, which was moderately interesting. Since there were no cruise ships on Friday, we went into the capital of George Town and took in the soul-sucking tourist shopping scene, which was about as disappointing as one would expect.

Saturday we took it easy and ran a few errands, but on Sunday we had a special plan: we rented Waverunner personal watercraft. That set us back $95 for a half hour, but it was worth it, because neither of us had ridden one before, and it was something I’ve dreamed of doing for many years. Within minutes I was doing power-slide 180s through my own roostertail, and Inna was tearing up and down the beach with the throttle wide open. What a rush!

Monday afternoon I convinced a reluctant Inna to take in the Queen Elizabeth II Botanic Park in the centre of the island, which turned into a big hit. We saw the alien-looking ironshore coral that the island is based on, stood underneath an extremely toxic manchineel tree, sniffed aromatic lime tree leaves, saw some shy agouti rodents, and taunted the incredibly blasé iguanas. It was pretty cool.

As for meals… they were really mixed. We started out with the island’s one Indian place, which—after the lousy food in St. Thomas—suited me perfectly, but was nothing special for Inna. After that, things went downhill. We had very average experiences at local joints Champion House, Chicken Chicken (which proved to be about 30 meters further than we’d walked), the hotel’s barbecue buffet, and Breezes, where we saw the islands two official pirate ships and watched the sun set (despite arriving an hour too early thanks to my camera being on St. Thomas time). But we ended the week strong, with delicious meals at two nearby restaurants: Yoshi Sushi (where I had teppanyaki pork) and Deckers British pub (where I had Strongbow cider and the most amazing pork evar).

By the end of the week, there wasn’t anything left on our “must-see” list, and we felt we’d gotten everything a non-diver could get out of the island. Our routine was a perfect balance of restfulness, beach fun in the sun, and a little light tourism. And, of course, I got a whole boatload of photos, some of which you can see using the Grand Cayman tag or the 2008 Caribbean set on my Flickr account.