Cayman Part 2

And the story (finally) continues...

Grand Cayman is a popular stop for cruise ships. I checked online before we left so we could be sure not to go into Georgetown on a day when there were a lot of cruise ships in port. It was good that I checked because on some days there were up to 5 ships in port on a single day, holding over 10,000 people. That probably doubles the population of the entire island! Anyway, Monday had only one ship in port, so we decided to head to Georgetown and do a little shopping and have lunch.

One thing that you quickly notice about Grand Cayman is that there are chickens wandering around EVERYWHERE. At the beach. Along the side of the road. Right outside of shops. I even saw one in a palm tree. But while shopping in Georgetown I saw a chicken that had chosen a very questionable place to hang out:


Maybe he misunderstood the sign? Anyway....


We hit a few shops and then grabbed some lunch (seafood for me, of course) down by the water. We had seen all sorts of souvenir t-shirts, stuffed animals, and jewelry, but Arden wasn't interested in any of it. For some reason the only thing she wanted was some crayons where the wax was surrounded by wood so that they looked like sticks. What? We saw them in the first store we went into and she talked about them nonstop the rest of the shopping trip. I have no idea what these crayon sticks have to do with the Cayman islands. None. But they were cheap and I wasn't in the mood to argue with her about what her souvenir should be, so on the way back to the car Grandpa took her and Dax back to the shop we had seen them in and Arden had her authentic Cayman stick-crayons (and Dax had some too)...Grandpa is so nice!!!
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The kids had had about as much shopping as they could handle, so we decided to drive up to West Bay and visit the turtle farm at Boatswains Beach. My sister Val had visited the turtle farm when she had stopped at Grand Cayman on a cruise, and thought the kids might like it.


She was right...they loved it! It was pretty hot and VERY humid, but the kids had a great time looking at the BIG turtles...
...and the big blue iguanas that wandered around everywhere...

...and they especially loved the baby turtles! These little guys were sooo cute, and these were the only turtles at the farm that we are allowed to touch. I wanted to take one home and keep him in the bathtub! But since I had no room in my luggage, I decided against it. But it was all we could do to keep Dax from taking a swim with the little guys!

Arden had one little turtle that kept swimming right up to her so she could pet him.

And Corbie had the best time of anyone. She was just so excited about everything she saw. She was pointing and squealing constantly. She could have stayed there all day:

I loved to watch the kids, but unless you have kids with you, I would skip the turtle farm. It was kind of a bummer for me to think about how some of those cute baby turtles would be set free when they got bigger, but that others were destined to end up as turtle soup in local restaurants (sad!). After a while we were all pretty hot and tired, so we finally convinced the kids that it was time to head back to the blue house.

That night after dinner, we all headed out into the backyard in the dark. Valerie is the night owl of the family and had seen something amazing the previous night while out on the dock after the rest of us wussies had gone to bed. We were all excited to see it too. So, we grabbed handfuls of sand and a couple of coconuts and headed to the end of the dock.

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We all waited while Val threw a coconut up in the air. When the coconut hit the surface of the water, it lit up with thousands of sparkling, blue-green glow-in-the-dark droplets of water! And under the water, the startled fish darted away leaving streaks of light behind them. It looked just like underwater fireworks! It was like nothing I had ever seen before.

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It turns out our blue house was located on a bioluminescent lagoon! I had heard of the bioluminescent bay in Puerto Rico, but I didn't know there was anything like it in the Caymans, let alone our own backyard.

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We spent the next couple of hours throwing handfuls of sand, rocks, seashells, etc. into the water and watching the light show. The rocks and seashells left light trails behind them all the way to the bottom, looking like shooting stars. The handfuls of sand looked like glittering fairy dust as they hit the water and slowly drifted down. We found some sticks and laid down on the dock and swirled them in the water. It was like having a sparkler on the 4th of July. We even splashed our feet in the water and watched the ripples sparkle and glow and slowly fade into the darkness. While we were playing, a kayak tour where people actually pay to paddle down the bioluminescent lagoon went by, and we learned from the guide that the light was coming from little creatures called dinoflagellates, or plankton. The light they emit is a defense mechanism of some kind, made in response to movement in the water. But for us, it was just MAGIC.

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I was tempted to get into my swimsuit and take a sparkly swim, but I was worried about the jellyfish (see previous post), so I didn't do it. We tried to take pictures or video of the glowing water, but none of the cameras we brought were able to capture it.

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Every night we would go out and play in the sparkling water before we went to bed. The moon was getting brighter each night of our trip, and on none of the nights after that first one did the water sparkle and glow quite as brightly. But it was still amazing. Val and I were on the dock one night, swirling our sticks in the water and watching the fish leave their little glowing trails. All of a sudden what we guess was a HUGE barracuda swam quickly under the deck, a gigantic streak of light swirling around and behind him. Our sticks came out of the water FAST.

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Playing in the bioluminescent lagoon in our backyard was the most unexpected and one of the most memorable experiences from this trip for me.

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Coming soon: Cayman Part 3: