Florida + West Caribbean Cruise 2016

Day 5 – 29/03/2016 – Cayman Islands, more than banks…

The first day we would be back on land. We arrived on the Grand Cayman early in the morning.

Because we had to be at the rendez-vous point at 7.30am we had ordered room service for breakfast between 6.30am and 7am. We ordered via a card outside our door. We had indicated everything we wanted and put it on the door before 3am. But at 7.10am we hadn’t received anything. Weird.. We called the reception and they told us they didn’t get our order! They could take our order now, but it wouldn’t be on time. Luckily we had brought some cookies with us..

Small boats took us to shore. Wow, humid here.. Normally it’s less humid, but there was bad weather coming. We had booked the Jeep Wrangler Adventure and Beach Break. There were 28 people in our group and we had to divide in groups of 4. We were in a jeep with Donny and Jennifer from Kentucky. You have to drive on the left side on the Cayman Islands. Jelle didn’t like this, so he let Donny drive.

Our first stop was a beach in Barkers National Park. The water was very clear and blue. This is because the island is surrounded by a coral reef. You could walk up to 200m in the sea since the water was just 1m deep. There were also huge shells on the beach. The 2 guides told us more about the Cayman Islands. No taxes, driving on the left side and everything is imported (even their own rum!).

We returned to our jeeps and drove to the Rum Cake Factory. On our way there we passed through some residential neighbourhoods and a mangrove. At the Rum Cake Factory we could taste 2 pieces of rumcake, one with vanilla and one with chocolate. There was also a great view of the ocean.

We ate Rum Cake, so now we were going to Hell! Really, we took the highway to Hell, a village on Grand Cayman. We even got a visa stamp in our passport at the local gift shop. Behind the gift shop there was an open space with towers of limestone. This used to be a coral reef, but the island has risen a little, so the coral reef had dried up.

After the Jeep Wrangler Adventure we drove to Tiki Beach. We had 2 hours to relax on the beach. There were snorkels and flippers available. We could have a drink in the beach bar or relax on the lounge chairs. We decided to spend the time on the beach on a lounge chair. We chose a spot under a tree so we wouldn’t be directly in the sun. Right above us there was a giant iguana!

Heidi is not really ‘into sea’, so Jelle went swimming alone with all his attributes. He didn’t see much except for some small fishes.

It was boattime again! Boattime is the official ship time. If the ship is in another time zone, the ship time is not changed. The Cayman Islands are 1 hour behind boattime, so we had to be sure to be back on time!

It was a nice excursion, but we were happy to return to the ship. It was 2pm and we hadn’t eaten anything since the cookies this morning.. We went to the buffet for lunch.

At 5.15pm there was a Circus Parade on the promenade. We wanted to have a look, just like 2000 other people, so we didn’t see much. But the music was nice! 😉 We went back to our room and enjoyed the view on our balcony until we were going for dinner.

We had a reservation in the Main Dining Room at 7.45pm. Again we ate way to much..

We were too late for the evening shows, so we just had a drink in the bar. We already started planning our roadtrip of next year. Exciting!

At 10.15pm there was a 70’s show on the Promenade. We just catched a glimps of the village people dancing on the Promenade. Funny!