Hey all!
Stacy and I just got back from a week on Grand Cayman! We flew out last Friday night doing an awesome
redeye to Charlotte before catching the plane to Georgetown, the main city on Grand
Cayman. Redeyes suck in general but
going to the Caribbean from Portland means you either do a redeye or you have a
layover in Dallas or Charlotte. Neither option
is all that great. We did split a sleepy
gummy for the flight but the flight attendants had their chat group going at
the front of the plane (yes, we were in first class) and weren’t the quietest
bunch in the world. We both got a little
sleep but it wasn’t that great. The nice
thing about all this was we arrived on Grand Cayman at around 11:30 in the
morning raring to go. I have to say
deplaning, going through customs and getting the rental car that was included
in our package took maybe 45 minutes?
For sure the fastest we have ever gotten into a country and on our
way. Nice.
Fun fact: the Cayman Islands are a British territory (or
were) so they drive on the left side of the road. Left is right and right is wrong. On top of that fun our rental car had the
wheel on the right side of the car. I
will admit that I got in on the passenger side multiple times when I was
getting ready to drive through habit and the blinkers/wipers switches were
reversed too so I kept kicking off the wipers when I was trying to turn
signal. Although I was a little worried
about driving on the left side, I think I actually did a pretty good job. No dings on the car anyway, so we will call
it a win.
Leaving the airport we hit the nearest super market along
with the rest of the island. Super busy
but we picked up lunch stuff and snacks and the needed diet coke. Breakfast was included in our package and we
planned on just going out for dinner during the week. We also hit a liquor store to pick up some
gin for me. The super markets don’t even
have beer or wine that I could see.
Another fun fact: the Cayman dollar is 1.25x higher than the US dollar
and everything was in Cayman $$. So
while things appeared a little expensive, once you multiplied by 1.25 they
became pretty expensive. Stacy has a
problem with Starbucks in that she is trying to collect a mug from every place
she goes. Good hobby and nice reminder
of her travels. These mugs are usually
$10. There it was $20. Yeah…cost of living is for sure higher there.
We stayed at Compass Point Dive Resort on
the east end of the island. Its around
40 minutes from the airport and after a few hair raising round abouts where
Stacy was sure we were going to die, it was one road going the rest of the way
so no worries on turning and what not.
Our package was for a week with 6 days of 2 tank diving in the morning
with a rental car and breakfast and an ocean front condo. The dive boats are right there so every
morning we would eat breakfast, grab our gear and jump on the dive boats a few
steps away from our ocean front condo.
Not a bad life. We heard about
this place from Craig and Patty who we met in Grand Turk in February. They own 5 weeks in one of the condos each year
and were heading there the same week so while we were in Grand Turk we booked
the trip too. It was great seeing them
again. Fun times diving.
I will say the dive operation at the resort was
awesome. Really friendly people. They set up your gear every morning and
rinsed and hung it up each evening. They
would switch your tanks over and all the other stuff that you normally do for
yourself. Totally 5 star/thumbs up for
them! The water was also 84
degrees!!! We brought our 3mm wetsuits
cause we knew it was going to be warm but it was so warm we both ended up
diving in rash guards and board shorts. Visibility was great and, for the most part,
the other divers were a joy to be around.
I would say my one gripe is less sea life than what I was
expecting. There were fish, don’t get me
wrong, but I guess I was expecting a denser population?
I dove Grand Cayman back in 2008 or so on my first sabbatical. I stayed on the west end of the island at
sunset divers which is also an awesome dive resort…at least then. I just seem to remember a denser population
of sea life on those dives. It could be
east vs. west end of the island or maybe my memory is playing tricks on me but
while the dives were otherwise great, I was a little let down from lack o’ fish
this time.
We had a pretty good first couple of days diving but after the
first dive day, Stacy went on a 4 mile walk to keep in shape for the Koman 3
day 20 mile per day thing she is doing in November. It was hot as hell and she drank a ton of water
but exercise close after diving I guess isn’t a good idea. After day 2 of diving, Stacy started
complaining about her hip aching like she hit it on something. She laid down for a nap and when she awoke
she complained that it itched a ton. She
had me look at it and it looked bruised but mottled too. A quick google search semi-confirmed that she
had decompression sickness type 1. The
Skin bends. That’s right, my baby got the bends….oh no! She went to the office to ask for advice and
they got her on an oxygen mask and had us head to the hospital to have it
looked over by a doctor. Type 1 is the
lightest of bends but getting bent is nothing to play around with. Symptoms get to be stroke-like when you have
really bad bends so medical attention was a must.
We checked in and the hospital kept her on oxygen while we
waited for a doc to come in and see her.
It was probably an hour and a half before the doc came but he was
great. Really good bedside manner as he
put her through an evaluation. Stacy and
I are going through a diver CPR/first aid course because we dive the Oregon zoo
and its one of their requirements. The
evaluation the doctor put Stacy through to evaluate how bad she was bent was
straight out of the training course we have been taking. It was cool in a this sucks for Stacy but its
neat to see it applied kind of way.
Oxygen is the first thing to do.
What he was evaluating was if she needed to go into a hyperbaric chamber
where they would jack up the pressure to help with getting the nitrogen out of
her. We have dive insurance through DAN mainly because they will pay the $20k bill if
we had to do the chamber but the doctor determined it wasn’t really
needed. He did recommend that Stacy not
dive the rest of the time but called the specialist dive doctor for a second
opinion.
That second opinion was to make an appointment to see that
doctor the next day at 10am. That meant
we had to not dive on Tuesday but it also meant that maybe she would only have
to sit out 72 hours or something like that instead of missing the entire
week. That doctor is THE main dive
doctor for the Cayman islands. Super
nice lady who evaluated Stacy trying to determine why she was bent. We dove together and had pretty much the same
profile but I didn’t have any issues.
Plus we dive using dive computers that tell you how much time you can
spend at various depths to be safe and we didn’t come close to those
limits. Its totally a non exact science
on this stuff and the only thing we could think of that was out of the ordinary
was that 4 mile walk in the heat after the first day of diving which is why I
mentioned it. Foreshadowing….I do it all
in these blogs. The great thing was this
doc cleared her to dive 1 shallow dive the next day and if that went well, she
was cleared to resume the 2 dives per day.
That dive the next day went fine and she was able to dive the rest of
the time. Good ending, but for sure a
scare there for a while.
What else….mostly after diving we would eat lunch, laze
around the condo and then hit the pool with cocktails in the afternoon. Second or third day there my phone died a
tragic death. Not sure what
happened. It may have over heated or
might have gotten some moisture in the USB slot and I plugged it in or
something else. Doesn’t matter cause I
was without a phone and while I had coverage (google fi for the win!) Stacy
didn’t. She had to purchase a package
from Verizon for $10 per day after my phone died to get us around the island and
what not. Good Times.
The resort has a restaurant that was okay but we did that the
first night. There are other places
within a few miles so we had Mexican, Caribbean, another place that had half
priced tacos on Tuesday (that were awesome!) plus a couple others. I had some blackened Mahi that was the
bomb! We stopped at a locals place after
the hospital trip and had their chicken curry.
It had tons of bones so you had to work for your meat, but it was also
the cheapest at around $30 for the both of us.
All the other meals were in the $90-100 range. Cost o’ living.
Grand Cayman has a couple of breweries and a distillery
too!. We did a tour one afternoon after
diving with Craig and Patty. First there
is Cayman Island Brewery who’s flagship beer
is Caybrew for obvious reasons. They are
heavy on the lagers but do have an IPA that was okay-ish and this Mango beer
that was pretty good in a weird mango-ey way.
Worth a stop if you are going to hit the breweries. The other one is called 1981 after the latitude
and longitude of Grand Cayman. Although
their site and their front door said they were open Tues-Sun from 3-9 and we
hit it on Wednesday at 3:08, they apparently changed their hours due to the
slow season and didn’t open till Thursday.
There were production crew there and while they didn’t let us in, they
did bring out some cans of their lager for us to enjoy. So thumbs down on not being open, but thumbs
up for free beer! We also hit the distillery
where they mainly make rum. Super nice
guy who let us do a tasting even though we were ~20 minutes late for their last
scheduled one but it was just okay.
Unless you are super into rums, I would say skip it but that’s me.
All too soon it was time to leave. I guess to pay us back for the quick entry, Stacy
and I were both “randomly” picked for enhanced security screening while we were
leaving. The lady checking us in was
having a hard time printing our luggage tags and boarding passes. It took her around 25 minutes of poking at
the keyboard over and over before she was successful. I suspect something she did triggered both of
us to be “randomly” targeted but on top of having all our things gone through,
the boarding pass for the Dallas to Portland flight didn’t have our TSA
precheck on it. When coming in from out of
the country, you have to go through US customs, get your bags, re-check them in
assuming you are flying somewhere else and then go back through security. They claimed that since we were “randomly”
selected for enhanced screening they couldn’t print precheck on the other
passes. Not sure why American Airlines allows a country to dictate what a boarding pass can have on it that
has nothing to do with that county but that’s what they claimed anyway. I think its because it makes them look like
dumbasses to “randomly” select people who have enough of a background check to
have TSA precheck (and really it’s global entry that also covers precheck) but
that’s just my working theory. The irony
is that Dallas TSA lines close at 7PM and we didn’t arrive until after 8 but it
still doesn’t explain the boarding passes.
To make matters more fun, Karma decided to delay our flight
out of Dallas back to Portland. First it
was ~30 minutes, then 3 hours and then they said fuck it: tomorrow! Luckily we were in the admirals lounge (Stacy
has the lounge access card that is AWESOME) and the lounge people were able to give
us food and hotel vouchers for the evening rather than us having to stand in
the very long line at the American service desk. We went to the hotel for a 5 hour nap before
heading back to the airport for an early morning flight that was also delayed a
bit while they waited for a flight attendant.
To be fair both the pilots and the attendants volunteered to do this
flight to get us back (and a plane into Portland to service the flight our
plane from the night before was supposed to).
We made it back safe and sound yesterday. Tired but reunited with the dogs.
That’s about it other than the photos. I didn’t take my camera on all the dives so I
missed out on some goodness and it took me a couple of days to get back into
dialing in the lighting and what not but I got some decent ones. As always, click to embiggen.
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| An anemone. There was a cool furry crab hiding under it but I couldn't get a photo...or a good photo anyway. Still like the anemone. |
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| Caribbean reef shark. This one has had a bit of color enhancement to bring out the shark better. We had 3 or 4 dives where there were sharks. Pretty cool |
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| Banded coral shrimp hanging out |
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| Fire worm. apparently the spiny sides sting like jellyfish if you touch them...so don't |
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| Green moray eel |
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| This is called a nimble spray crab. Only second time I have seen one and still haven't gotten a great photo. He would skitter back into the rocks if you got too close |
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| Lion fish. They are invasive to the Caribbean so they go on lion fish hunts all the time and make tacos. I haven't had one yet.... |
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| Large crab checking things out. Little washed out but still not too bad |
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| Juvenile drum fish. They are really cool and flit about in at this stage. Fun to watch |
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| Tiny hermit crab on a piece of fire coral |
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| Peacock flounder |
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| Pederson cleaner shrimp. They hang out at fish cleaning stations and sometimes will come out to your finger if you are patient enough |
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| Purple crown sea goddess. Not the most in focus but still a cool looking nudibranch |
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| Scorpion fish. |
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| This nudi is a tritoniid. They exclusively eat sea fans and are maybe half an inch long. This is super zoomed. |
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| A pair of tritoniids on that same fan. The swirly thing above the left one is their eggs. |
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| If you get 2 tritoniids, why not 3? Like I said, they were all over this sea fan. Pretty cool |
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| Remember how I said if you were patient enough the pederson shrimp would come out to your finger? Here is one on Stacy's ring finger. There were a TON of cleaner shrimp in the area and if I hadn't run out of room on my card I would have had an even better photo. Oh well. And there you have it! Great trip with great people and some pretty good warm diving. Love it! Hope everyone is doing well and remember: it's our time, the peoples' time! Jim |
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