Meredith and I decided to go to Grand Cayman for vacation. Here's the second part of our trip!
(Go back to Part One) Thursday, August 24th On Thursday morning, we got up early and drove all the way over to the west side of the island (where all the touristy stuff is) to check out a butterfly farm that we'd seen advertised. This nice Dutch lady was our tour guide!
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butterfly
Here she is showing us chrysalides from two different species of butterfly!
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butterfly
Here's an incubation box where they pin all of the chrysalides up and wait for the caterpillars to turn into butterflies!
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butterfly
I wouldn't go as far to say that the butterfly farm was "ripshit exciting," but never been before so it was pretty cool to walk around the garden and look at the hundreds of varieties of butterflies.
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butterfly
The huge garden was surrounded by mesh-netting (sort of like a golf driving range) to keep the butterflies from flying away.
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butterfly
After the butterfly farm, we ate some lunch and then later that afternoon after it'd cooled down a bit (who knew that the Caribbean would be so hot in AUGUST? Doy!) we hit the famous Seven-Mile Beach that Grand Cayman is famous for. (Where I sunbathed with my arm up in the air).
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me
beach
At 7:30 that night, I headed out to the diving boat for a night dive!
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boat
I took this (bad) photo of the dive map hoping I could reference it on my camera if I go lost! (We were only diving to a depth of 20', so I'd always be able to just surface if I lost my orientation - but that's for cheaters!)
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boat
map
Dive #6 We jumped in around 8:30. Check out the thousands of little creatures (Tiny shrimps? Krill?) that were swarming around my flashlight and I made my descent into the inky darkness! Spoooooky!
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scuba
Even at night, with only a flashlight to illuminate, the visibility was great!
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scuba
I've only done a few night dives! They're fun, but creepy. Being underwater is already kind of scary and intimidating, but when you're field of vision is reduced to the tiny, directional beam of your torch, it's even more scary. Here's a pufferfish I found and swam with for a while.
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pufferfish
scuba
I spent a lot of right above the ocean floor looking for hidden nooks and swim-throughs where there might be some sleeping turtles (Yes, turtles look for little hidden nooks to sleep underwater in!). I spotted what looked like a swim-through that went underneath a reef and just as I was about to go in head first...
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lobster
scuba
...I almost swam directly into these two HUGE rock lobsters! "We pincha your face!"
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lobster
scuba
Friday, August 25th On Friday we both got up early! My plan was to head out for an early morning dive. Mer's plan (after she was finished wearing a light-fixture as a hat) was to read by the pool.
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meredith
pretty
...I came across a huge sheet of siding from a house! Later our dive master explained that it was debris from a house that had been destroyed when Hurricane Ivan slammed into Grand Cayman in September of 2004.
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scuba
...and I talked Meredith into trying scuba diving again! She had given it a shot during our accidental vacation to Jamaica, but had a lot trouble getting her ears to equalize - which is really painful - and so she was a little hesitant to try it again. But after I told her about the shallow dive at Stingray City where you get to pet, friendly, Muppety stingrays, she decided to give it another shot! Here she is suited up and about to dive in!
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meredith
scuba
Dive #8 In the drink! Mer getting ready to settle into the shallow sand of the Stingray City Dive site.
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meredith
scuba
A whole bunch of them showed up together. Here's a vid of them all gliding on over and checking us out!
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stingray
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Meredith ended up liking the Stingray City dive so much she decided to come along with me for a reef dive the next morning! Suited up!
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meredith
scuba
After a few more passes, Meredith had gotten used to the stingrays and was feeding them and petting them like a seasoned pro! The creatures are so big and heavy (they must easily weigh 100+ lbs!) it takes a while to figure out how to feed them without getting knocked over when they get friendly and swim into you!
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meredith
scuba
stingray
video
Saturday, August 26th Meredith ended up liking the Stingray City dive so much she decided to come along with me for a reef dive the next morning! Suited up!
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me
scuba
Dive #9 This dive was a lot deeper than the Stingray City dive, but Meredith used the rope to descend gradually and equalize her ears...
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scuba
And here's the obligatory photo that you always have taken whenever you go diving with someone you know! (I love this photo!)
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me
meredith
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After our dive, we took a swim in the resort's awesome pool (seen here from the front balcony of our building) and then a lil' afternoon disco nap!
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condo
After our nap, we decided to drive back over to the west side of the island and check out...
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meredith
best
pretty
...a turtle farm! Look how many of them they're are (and this was just one of like 100 different tanks!). We had mixed feelings about this place. About 40% of the turtles raised here are released into the wild. The other 60% are raised and sold to food processors (boo!) because turtle is a national delicacy. But I guess short of turtle-eating being made illegal, at least they're doing something to keep the turtle population thriving and keeping fisherman from overfishing the population.
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turtle
But seriously, how could anyone look at one of these guys and think "Mmmmmm! I bet he's tasty!"
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turtle
Sunday, August 27th Sunday was the last full day of our vacation (Boo!). We relaxed around the resort, and then later that afternoon, drove around to the very southeast corner of the island to read and relax on one of the (totally deserted!) public beaches.
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meredith
beach
The water was amazing! (There was a lot of sharp coral in the shallows so we needed to wear our little swimming booties in order to go in!).
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beach
Around 3pm we decided to pack it up, but not before I tried to take a sweet photo of the two of us together and Meredith made this totally amazing face behind my back. Hahaha. I love how it looks like she's actually licking my shoulder.
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beach
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After the beach I decided to sneak in two more dives - our flight wasn't until late in the afternoon the next day and I calculated that I'd still be safe to fly without having to worry about my heart exploding. (Even though airplane cabins are pressurized, they have much less pressure than sea-level. If you any nitrogen left in your blood that hasn't been aspirated, you might be fine at sea level, but getting on a plane could give you the bends or even a deadly blood embolism!) Anyway, here's a map of my second-to-last dive: Three Sisters!
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map
Dive #10 And again, the water and visibility were perfect!
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scuba
Here's a pic of my depth gauge at my max depth for the dive. Check out the bottom right corner - even though I'm 100' underwater (30 meters), the water temperature is still 87°F! How crazy is that? Anyway, right as we hit the 100' mark, we had a visit from a turtle who was curious about us!
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scuba
This time I managed to get him on video! I love how he causally swims over to check me out before swimming away! (You'll probably also get a kick out of listening to me make noises into my regulator trying to get his turtle-attention underwater! Hahaha).
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scuba
turtle
video
As far as dives go, my last was pretty memorable. Didn't see any turtles, but we went through a bunch of crazy, twisty swimthroughs and I saw...
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scuba
swimthrough
...and ran into two more rock-lobsters sitting on their rock-lobstery shelf! They'd pretty much terrified me during my night dive, but this time around in the bright sunshine, they seemed almost friendly!
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lobster
scuba
And I even got a chance to say goodbye to my friend the seal-faced pufferfish.
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pufferfish
scuba
If you EVER get a chance to dive Grand Cayman, I highly recommend it. Simply incredible!
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me
scuba
About 45 minutes later, I was out of air and it was time to surface. Goodbye, feeshes!
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scuba
After I got back, Meredith and I set out to do some beach-exploring around our resort. We found this huge propeller that had been recovered from a ship that wrecked on a coral reef and had sunk!
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meredith
propeller
Here's a picture of Meredith standing on a little deck that the built for the Queen of England when she visited the island in the 80s.
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meredith
sunset
We spent our last evening relaxing at home and making jokes about playing SCUBA-OPOLY! (We didn't).
Monday, August 28th The next afternoon we packed up and got ready to check out and head to the airport. Sad!
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meredith
sad
Goodbye little scuba bathtub ducky, we'll miss you most of all. (If you're looking for a great diving resort, I highly, highly recommend Compass Point! It's one of the greatest places I've ever stayed!)
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meredith
sad
In the most random coincidence ever, I ran into the people who used to live next-door to us when I was a little kid and we lived down in South Jersey! Melody and Wayne Holbrook were our neighbors and were good friends with my parents. We moved up to North Jersey and they moved away to Chicago and I hadn't seen them since 1985! They were standing in front of us while we were boarding the plane and I freaked them out when I was like "Are you Melody & Wayne?" They hadn't seen me since I was 9 years old! Craziness.
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holbrooks
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