Made it to the Caymans!

I am sitting in my room basking in the glow of the lamb korma (with garlic naan) I just had down at the restaurant/bar that is a part of the hotel where I am staying. For the Cayman leg of the trip, I am staying at the Sunset House which is south of 7 mile beach (a beach that is…come on…guess…that’s right…7 miles long). Sort of isolated as far as other stuff to do, but if the rest of the menu is as good as the korma I had tonight, I will be set for the trip!
View from the room:

View of the room:

Travel yesterday sucked. I wrote 2 different versions of a fairly long rant about it yesterday while I was sitting in Miami on a 7 hour layover (that should have been 1) but I can summarize: American Airlines sucks, they left Dominican republic 40 minutes late, we didn’t get through customs until my connecting flight was 30 minutes from leaving and they wouldn’t let me “OJ” it through the airport and made me rebook. I would have to say American Airlines is second only in worst airline award to America Worst (West aka US Air…the single worst airline I have ever had the misfortune to deal with). Anyway, I made it a little later than I wanted to yesterday, but make it I did!

What I did keep from yesterday’s ranting (trust me…it was MUCH longer):
Which brings up GTJTTOTD (that’s Glob Trottin’ Jim’s Traveling Tip O’ the Day for those of you who need reminding): if you were wondering if you would have to go through customs when flying into the US only to catch a connection right back out, the answer is: YES. The reason this is relevant is when I initially started planning this trip, I contacted a travel agent and the flight itinerary she had set up for me involved me going down to the Caribbean and then back to the US then down to the Caribbean and back to the US, etc. I never had a direct flight, or one that didn’t involve coming back to the US. I (okay really Sophia Lee, researcher extraordinaire, during her really short breaks at work [in case her boss sees this]) did research on the smaller island airlines looking for connections and after today, I don’t come back to the US until the trip is over. I will be going from the Caymans through Jamaica to Curacao (no idea if I have to do customs in Jamaica) and then go from Curacao to Bonaire and only leaving Bonaire do I hit the US. So unless you like going through US customs (and you won’t…if you haven’t done them before its all lines and waiting and not fun) try to plan your international trip without layovers in the US…and avoid American Airlines.

Oh a final Riu resort bit that I keep forgetting to talk about. The resort where we stayed had 5 properties (all of them Riu hotels of one kind or another) and ours was the farthest away from the entrance to the resort area. To keep the speeding drivers to a slower pace, they didn’t do speed bumps. That’s so old school. No, they did speed indentations! There were spots in the road where the road would drop down about a brick width and then be flat for a foot or two and then go back up. The major speed indentations had two of these dips so it looked like a 1 and a half cycle square wave for all you geeks out there cough*Nate*cough. It could have been the shocks on every vehicle we were ever in, but they certainly seemed effective. To add to the fun, they had these things about every 100 yards so on the trip from the entrance to where our hotel’s front doors were we had to go over (or down into) 10 or 12 of these things. Fun times!

Back to the Caymans:
Made it in too late yesterday to hit the grocery store to stock up my 4 cubic foot mini fridge and today is Sunday and the grocery store is closed (yeah I couldn’t believe it either). So last night, I bought some Diet Cokes (we are back to “Diet Coke” here as compared to DR’s Coca Cola Light for those of you scoring at home) from the hotel store. They were a dollar apiece…a Cayman Island dollar…which is really $1.25 US. Which brings us to today’s GTJTTOTD (yes it’s a 2fer!): beware the exchange rate! It feels natural and easy to just pay a buck or two for something, but when the exchange rate is 1.25:1 that means every time you spend $4, you are really blowing $5 from your bank account at home. Conversely, its always fun to travel somewhere that has a worse exchange rate. Thailand, for instance, was 40 baht to a dollar. We would be trying to bargain some dude from 60 baht to 40 baht and getting offended about it all when we are really quibbling about 50 cents…but it’s the principal. Anyway, watch out for the exchange rate!

Dove this morning on 2 boat dives. I have a dive computer with my gear here and it said the water temperature was 81 degrees…that’s what I’m talking about! We went down to 90 feet on the first dive and then only around 50 feet on the second one. Saw some really pretty fish including some barracuda and the largest puffer fish I have seen. It wasn’t puffed up but was easily a foot long. I met a dude from Canada, Paul, who was also diving alone so we buddied up. He has done like 200 dives (as compared to my 25), but we actually ended up blowing through air at about the same rate so it worked out pretty well. I didn’t take my camera out today mainly so I could get used to everything here as well as establish with whoever I got paired with that I was reasonably reliable. The visibility here is awesome and I plane to take it out tomorrow.

Did a shore dive in the afternoon with Paul and a dude named Peter (I know…I thought the same thing…Peter…Paul…). Peter is a Bulgarian who in perfect, although accented, English claimed his English was not so good. I told him it was better than my Bulgarian…but he had heard that one before. We went out from the hotel to where there is a little wreck. Saw a turtle and a moray eel there. That was cool. Then, just past the wreck, we dove along the wall (there is a wall that drops off to the Cayman Trench so it goes down really deep. Lots of life on the wall. Makes for good dives). The fish were all over the place. Really vibrant blues are going on here. I hope I can get some good pics!

If you must have a picture of some sea life, here is a little crab that was on the rocks this morning. Hard to get a close in picture cause they would bail when the big bad man approached, but zoom in on the center rock and you will see it:


So far I think the Caymans are giving Thailand a run for the money as far as diving is concerned. I think the reefs in Thailand were more colorful with anemones and what not, but the sea life here is awesome. To be fair, we dove Thailand a little late in the season and they were no longer doing charters to what they said was the best diving (due to rough seas and weather related reasons) so I may just have to end up giving this a tie…we will see.

Well, not a lot else to report. Going to rest up, hydrate and get ready for the dives tomorrow. Then after the dives, I am going to try to hit the grocery so I can get some Diet Cokes for less than $1 CI (that’s how they roll with telling you the price: CI for Cayman Islands dollar as compared to $1 US). I am also going to try to get some sandwich fixin’s so I am not blowing a lot of money on lunches too.

For your closing shot, here is the view of the sunset from the bar where I had dinner:

Cya!