It’s Just Like Florida

January 27 – Feb 8, 2025

We watched a video of a couple and their son leaving Grand Cayman and sailing to Panama on their Catamaran. In the video, the mother asks her son how he liked the Cayman Islands. His response was, “It’s just like Florida.” The child was not far off.

Does that not look like Florida? There are miles and miles of these canals cut into the ancient coral with pretty first and second homes along the water.

The Cayman Islands

The Cayman Islands are the most prosperous country in the Caribbean, a GDP per capita of over $109,000! As a comparison, the GDP per capita in the US is between $86 – $89,000. (source Google). There are over 140 nationalities represented in the Caymans. We have met, besides native Camyanians who are a mix of African and European blood, Hondurans, Nicaraguans, Cubans, Jamaicans, Italians, Brits, Canadians, US, Morocco and German. We of folks from Asian countries and the Middle East as well. The population is very roughly split 50/50 Camyamian and non. Oh and don’t forget the chickens which are VERY well represented, free to roam (and be eaten) and quite pretty. They are everywhere!

The chickens come in all sorts of colors, but they are all good looking and well fed. There seems to be an abundance of food. This is one of the many chickens that live next to our dock. We hear them crowing all day.

The Cayman Islands are small, Grand Cayman being the largest and most populated by far. Total Cayman islands population is less that 80,000. It is very conservative and religious (grocery stores are closed on Sundays). But, it is incredibly friendly and lives by the ARK mantra Acts of Random Kindness. It is not just something they say. We see it all the time.

Now isn’t that a nice piece of VERY fresh tuna? $30! The best deal we’ve found in Cayman. Most everything is very expensive here. A $20 bill is only worth $16. And it is an island where everything is shipped in.

I knew nothing of the Cayman Islands before we headed north here from Honduras beyond it was in the Caribbean and a haven for offshore banking (where much of the wealth derives). And it turns our tourism; 2 – 4 huge cruise ships per day disgorging between 2000 and 10,000 visitors for a morning or afternoon! No idea how many arrive by air but it is not small. Just think of 10,00 visitors invading a population of 80,000.

A two ship day. I just hate seeing these outsized boats in any port. It just looks so crazy obscène to me. Cayman is being pushed by the cruise industry to build a real port such that they don’t have to ferry everyone on launchas. There is quite a bit of opposition to a real port.
This is the entire current port of Cayman. You might be able to put two cargo ships at this dock, one on the pother side. it would greatly changed the whole sense of the island.

But enough of the background.

Having Fun

Harvey and Nadine were staying for a week after we arrived so we told them lets do the things you want to do as we have no idea how long we’ll be here. So, we rented a car, got the dinghy down and played full bore tourist for a week.

Snorkeling

The diving and snorkeling in the Caymans is quite good. Although none of us dive, snorkeling is easy and can be done from the beach in many places or from our dinghy. 7 mile beach is a great place to just walk into the water and look at fish off the coral heads.

I think the beach is actually 9 miles lone although called 7 Mile Beach. it is never overly crowded, a mix of tourists and locals. Sadly, there are few bars to just pop in for a drink as most of it is taken up by “resorts”.
There are several decent snorkeling spots where you can just walk into the water and find reefs very near shore.
One day we took the dinghy out into North Sound to a spot a local boat captain suggests was good for snorkeling. It was quite nice. About 10 – 12 feet deep, perfect for snorkeling, clear water, coral heads, minimal wave actions (inside the reef and not much wind) and lots of fish.
Then on to the favorite cruise ship activity, Stingray City. It is a sandbar in the North Sound where stingray congregate to be fed by the tourists. We brought a bag of squid a couple varieties of fish which I can’t remember right now. One can buy them at the local convenience store at the marina just for this purpose. All the boats back in and then everyone gets off the boats and wades on the sandbar feeding the rays. The such the squid out of your hand. Believe it or not, we were early before all the tour boats arrived. We had fun but were glad the guides were there to show us how to feed them. We would not have understood how to do it otherwise. No closeup pics here as we anchored a bit deeper and thus had to swim from 7 feet of water to the 3 food deep bar.
Then we complete the journey across the sound to Rum Point and Starfish Beach. Another stop for some of the tours, but not nearly as many. Again, most boats back in but we beached the dinghy. There is a nice beach part here (where we drove our rental car on another outing). It is quite protected and for whatever reason, the starfish do like it here. It is easy to see see LOTS of them.
They seem to like this shallow water with turtle grass. It was a nice day on the water. Sadly, since that day, we put the dinghy up and for the past two weeks have not used it. we did got for a little spin around Governors Creek were we are docked yesterday. It feels more like we are in an apartment as opposed to boating right now.

An Island Drive

We made a visit to the National Museum which was small, but informative and then did some further driving on the island visiting some beaches in more local neighborhoods and stopped at a “more locales bar” for a drink and the sunset.

We happened upon Smiths Barcadere, a locals beach with beautiful coral and a nice sandy beach alcove. A very pretty spot.
There was great tide pool activity here with lots of urchins and other little critters.
These snails are not as big as my pinky nail but o so pretty.
And lots and lots of chitons in the coral the coral. They were everywhere. Apparently they feed on algae and lichen at night.
We finished our drive around with a nice drink and pizza at the Sunset Bar. Aptly named.

Lets Change to Strategy

Lets cut to the chase, I am struggling since Harvey and Nadine left and the Orange Man and his cronies took over our Country. I cannot focus and getting this post finished in a normal fashion. I’ve been stuck for several days making no progress. So, I will change my strategy, post pics and talk about what we’ve done in that fashion. Hope that works for you! Follows are more fun things we did with Harvey and Nadine.

The QE II Botanical Garden

With Harvey and Nadine we visited the Queen Elizabeth II Botanical Garden. A very nice garden with some wild orchids and pretty trails.
This seems to the the only cactus on the island. We also saw them in the Bahamas. They are just little runners that seem to grow out of nothing. Very cool though.
Jim found this little frog resting on a railing. He was pretending to not be seen.
The garden also had a Blue Iguana breeding facility. Cayman used to be covered with alligators (thus Cayman, a Spanish derivative for alligator) and turtles (it used to be called Turtle Island). There were no people living here until the 1700’s when Spanish explorers discovered it and then the British began to colonize it. The Blue Iguana lived here as well. In the early 2000’s, there were less than 30 Iguanas left on Cayman. The program has greatly increased the population and they now live in the wild as well.
Isn’t that a pretty eye?

The Bio Bay

Cayman has a bioluminescent bay. Perhaps the best known is on Vieques in Puerto Rico, but the one here on Cayman is quite nice. It is on the far side of North Sound and we did not want to dinghy back late at night, not knowing how choppy it might be, so we took the tour lancha.
It is hard to take pics of bioluminescence and we were in kayak’s so I have none. I tried a few with my cell phone, but mostly just enjoyed it. Here is a pic from the bay out of a US News story. Here, we were all looking at upside down jellyfish.
And the upside down jelly. Their sting is generally not so bad.

National Gallery of the Cayman

We visited the National Galley of the Cayman, a small art museum which provided a good overview of art in the Caymans. We were not expecting much, but really enjoyed it. It turns out the arts in Cayman is just starting to find it’s voice. Almost all artists here are trained elsewhere at this point. The above is by David Jungquist, titled “Stones We Throw at Women.”
Fish Skeleton by Rasitha Sanjeewa. Sanjeewa is from Sir Lanka and moved to Cayman in the late 2000’s.
Amen by Randy Chollette. A rasta view of the Creation of Adam. Randy is native born Caymanian.
One floor of the museum had works by fashion designer Jawara Alleyne from Jamaica and Cayman. This was my very favorite of his pieces. he has made quite a name for himself in London and focuses often of reuse and rework of materials.

Cayman Turtle Center

The Cayman Turtle Center is also a hot spot for the cruise ships. Despite this and many of the somewhat hokey things like a “beach” and place where you can swim with fish and turtles (try the ocean), they do real conservation work here. They are the primary Green Turtle breeding facility in the world, having released over 40,000 green turtles. The green turtle is endangered or threatened worldwide due to climate change, fishing, egg harvesting, nest destruction and pollution. The educational information on the turtles was very limited, but we did meet a worker there who was a wealth of information and answered lots of questions for us.

And What Else Have We done?

All the above we did while Harvey and Nadine were here. We have been more low key since they left and wallowing in politics and the lack of weather windows to move south. Although the weather has been pretty nice here, 70’s and 80’s with little rain, “reasonable” humidity and not a ton of wind (where we are), offshore the Christmas Winds were late and still blowing like crazy; why we are in Cayman in the first place. We could find a window north but not south from Roatan and from this vantage it is often easier to move south. This feeling trapped in many ways has weighed on me. But, I’ll stop my wallowing now and tell you about what else we’ve done.

National Heroes Day

Grand Cayman celebrates different heroes each year. This year was a cerebration of icons of business and entrepreneurship; those that have shaped the economy of the island. We skipped these awards but visited the small street activities, a few food vendors, crafts and a bit of music.

The crafts at the celebration were quite limited, but we did find a few basket makers. Sadly, the art is not surviving. The youth don’t show much interest. We had a nice chat with this woman about making baskets and life in general. This is the little basket we bought.
We waited around for dark for the fireworks. They had a very nice display. Clearly money is no object when it comes to fireworks. The fireworks barge was basically at the entrance to the harbor. Glad we did not make a nighttime entrance to Grand Cayman. How confusing that would have been!

Hiking the Mastic Trail

While we had a car we decided to head across the island again to hike the Mastic Trail. It’s only a bit over 2 miles and shaded most of the way in virgin forest. But, it is rather rocky and hard walking. No place to sit as the coral very spiny. After finally spine sitting at about the half way point, we walk on another 5 minutes and there is a bench!

There was lots of birds, we saw 17 species which was good for a mid-day walk and bird watch. This is the Cuban Amazon parrot. We always love seeing parrots!
Lots of pretty butterflies too!

The Moon, Stars and Planets

Jim read on the local “what to do” app that the Cayman Island Astronomy Club was going to have a star gazing to see the planetary alignment. it was very close to us, so we drove over. There were hundreds of cars. The Club was surprised at the turnout. we managed to hook up with a guy with a telescope and a short line so saw the Moon through his very nice scope and Saturn. Given the angle, it was a dot with a very clear line through it. Very cool. We also saw the Space Station Fly-by and could see Jupiter, and Mars as well with the naked eye. I took this pic of the Moon and Venus when we got back to the boat.

And a bit more…

Otherwise, mostly hanging at the boat. We did a nice walk in the local mangrove yesterday. It looks like we can bike through a big chunk of it to a bar on the northside of the mangrove. Maybe tomorrow. We did bike to the grocery store the other day. Did I mention the grocery stores here have EVERYTHING! Best we’ve seen since Santa Fe. Just bring your checkbook.

We finally got the dinghy down and did a little putt around Governors Creek Bay last evening. Lots of big fancy houses. Soon we’ll take the dinghy out into the sound and head down to Camana Bay, a fancy shopping center.

Does this look like a little Caribbean Island?

We’ve also been doing boat chores. Had all the cushions cleaned, had the boat lettering fixed on the transom, laundry, toilet vents, tank pumps, etc, etc.

What is Next?

We have considered going to Cuba or Jamaica if the weather does not clear south. Unfortunately, weather is not cooperating north or east right now either. Very strong winds not supporting a nice trip. Cuba; apparently you need to use a credit card for many things but US credit cards do not work. That makes it trickier. The kittens also add a kink. I’ve chatted with Jamaica agriculture and we COULD get the kittens in with the same restrictions of them really being “illegal” as they don’t have a Rabies titre test. So kittens would have to stay on the boat. We could get the test, IF we could get a vet to come to the boat, draw the blood and send it to one of the acreditad labs in the US or UK (there are only 3 or 4). A month later we’d be good to go. Or, we could fly home and wait for better weather. But, the kittens can’t leave the boat. And if we did work that out with Cayman Agriculture, the airlines very well might not let us board as they tend to follow the rules of the leaving country, not the arriving. And then, to get them back in, there is al sorts of official permitting we’d need to do.

What we do for our kittens!

There IS a chance the weather will provide a window around the 17th or 18th to head to Providencia. Fingers crosse. Likely this will be Jim and I only with no crew. 3 days on our own! Ought to be interesting. Fingers crossed for an escape window and smooth sailing.

Ok, I’ll stop whining now! Complaining in paradise!