Grand Cayman 2018 (page 2 of 10)

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Day 2

Everyone slept well after a long day yesterday. It’s a three level condo. Mike and Greta are at the top level, where they have a loft-type bedroom and bath. Jim & Trina are on the 2nd level, with an in-room bathroom. There’s also a spare bathroom and a spare bedroom & washer/dryer. The main level has a kitchen/dining room/living room & walk out onto a patio that I next to the pool.

Mike & Greta did a short walk and then we rang in the day with scrambled eggs & bacon. Afterwards, we headed down to some shops to pick up some diving needs. Jim needed new sunglasses as he’d broken his old ones upon arrival. He also got himself a full wetsuit. Greta got a sunglasses cord & some mask defogger since we bought some in MN but immediately lost it before getting home.

We tried to stop for lunch at a place called Bananas, but it was a “restaurant & lounge” and based on the large pictures outside, appeared to be perhaps a strip club or something close to it – not exactly where we wanted to go for a quick lunch. Across the parking lot was The Paladar, which Greta has seen earlier on Google , when researching if there were any Cuban restaurants on the island. We headed in and there were just a few tiny tables. The menu was hand written and it turns out about half of it was not available. The owner came out & said that he buys his food every morning, but his car was broken down & he couldn’t get out today. So we figured out what was available & ordered. Jim & Trina shared an order of chicken fajitas. Mike & Greta shared an order of Garlic Shrimp. Both orders came with 2 fried plantain patties, rice, a citrus slaw & black beans. Everything was VERY GOOD.

At 1:30 that afternoon, we headed out for our first dives. We drove about 1.5 miles down the road with all our equipment (rented from Stingray Watersports) and met up with a boat on the public dock. Pierre & Dominic were great. Pierre took us diving, while Dominic stayed above board on the boat. Mike & Greta are certified up to 60 feet and Jim did the scuba discovery course, so he kept with the Pierre; Trina stayed above with Dominic and snorkeled. There are supposedly 365 marked dive sites around the Cayman Islands so that you can dive in a different spot every day out of the year, although there are more than that. On our way out, we were often escorted by flying fish – that was amazing to see them so close. They usually aren’t as close to the reef as they were that day, so we lucked out on that account.

La Mesa was the first dive site. As it name indiciates, there’s a table-top area with a reef about 20 feet down. We could swim above the table top & then along the sides. The water was very clear and we could see many various fish.

The 2nd dive site was the Wreck of the Ora Verde, which was a banana/marijuana boat that hit the reef in the 80s, then towed out and sunk to make the reef. The water was a little cloudier here (it was a windy/wavy day) but we could see parts of the boat strewn across the bottom, tossed above from various storms over the past 30 years. We saw two sea turtles, which was very cool, plus many other amazing fish. There was an archway of parts of the old ship you could swim under and there was a massive (to us) Goliath Grouper hovering underneath. It was about 75-80 pounds! They can get MUCH larger but are rather rare so we were lucky to see him. Mike and Greta did a few poses on bicycles at that site. Apparently, years ago, a Dive Master’s main possession was a bicycle. Once he left the island, tradition was to ride the bicycle off the end of the boat & see how far along the bottom he could ride it – so there were a handful of old bikes down there waiting for us to see.

Once we got back, we rinsed out all our gear & hung it up outside and cleaned up. Mike made a quick run to the liquor store for a few items (very expensive), we watched the videos of the dive & then headed out for dinner. Calypso was recommended by Dominic and was not too far away. It was described on-line as “cozy and casual”, but that probably meant “resort casual” and not the t-shirts/shorts we were all wearing. They didn’t mind though but we’ll have to look into that a bit more closely next time. The dinner was great. We had a round of beers. Mike/Greta/Jim shared a tuna sashimi appetizer. We all had fish. Jim had blackened grouper, Trina had blackened mahi-mahi, Mike had a garlic butter snapper with shrimp and Greta had the Grouper with spinach & crab meat. It all was very tasty and a great way to end the day.

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