Bless Your Heart

Today we are in beautiful Grand Cayman!

We woke up early and went to the Galley for breakfast. Then we went to the meet up point on the ship to board the tender. The meet up point was at the Roundabout in the middle of the ship.

Virgin is v organized with the tender boats, and we were on our tender with minimal waiting. While we were waiting on the tender boat to leave for shore, we saw a sailor boarding the tender wearing a baseball cap that read “I’m sorry about my husband”!!! SO funny!!!

We walked through the cruise terminal area, consulted our map and set off on foot to find Captain Marvin’s for our excursion.

We walked for an HOUR before we finally found it!!! Captain Marvin’s is in the TINIEST office/store front I’ve ever seen in my life!!! Barely bigger than a telephone booth! And it’s located directly in front of the cruise terminal! We’d walked right past it! DOH! Luckily we were on the first tender and our tour didn’t start until 10 am so we found the store just in time. Whew! We took a short bus to the boat.

Our crew for the day were Aster, JJ, and Fred. All v nice men who are v knowledgeable. We boarded the boat and set off. There were only about 25-30 people in our group. We stopped in V V choppy water so people could snorkel for about a half hour.

It was pretty cold and choppy so I opted out of snorkeling. CSP hopped in the water for a bit, though he had a hard time snorkeling because he couldn’t get a good seal on his snorkel mask because of his beard.

Then everyone boarded the boat again and we set off to our main destination- STINGRAY CITY!!! We were so excited!!! We hadn’t swam with the stingrays in years!

If you’ve never heard of stingray city, it’s a sandbar out near Grand Cayman where the fishermen would stop and clean their catches each day. They’d throw the fishy leftovers over the sides of their boats into the water. The stingrays figured out that if they hung around that sandbar, they’d get fed regularly. Aster gave us squid to feed the stingrays. Stingrays have eyes on their tops and mouths on their undersides and they suck the squid up out of your fist. They gave both me and CSP hickeys on our hands!!!

They are completely wild and are not in captivity in any way. They are so sweet and playful and friendly- the puppies of the sea! JJ would hold a stingray (the large ones are the females) and we could pet it.

JJ would even say to the stingrays “Give kisses” and they’d hold up their faces for kisses!

Soon there were stingrays everywhere so we could hold them ourselves! Fred was in charge of taking photos of all of us and I don’t know how he did it, but he got great shots!

The water was super choppy because of a cold front coming in so I was constantly getting knocked off my feet!

CSP is 6 feet 5 inches tall, so he didn’t have a problem like my short self did!!!

We were able to spend about an hour with the stingrays, then we all got back on the boat to go snorkel up by a barrier reef. It was cold and rough out in the water, so we skipped getting wet again. One guy, we’ll call him Andy, got SO seasick from the boat bouncing around. I felt so bad for him. So did his FIL. So they just laid there on the floor of the boat. But then they didn’t know where Andy’s wife (and FIL’s daughter) went. So FIL (who was probably in his 70s) would just lay there screaming for her! We’ll call her Amanda. So every 2 minutes you’d hear “AMANDA!!! AMANDA WHERE ARE YOU?? AMANDA ARE YOU THERE??” By the 3rd or 4th call for AMANDA!!! I was about ready to snatch her up out of the ocean myself! She had gone snorkeling by the reef but didn’t tell them or they didn’t remember. Oy. LOL

The boat took us back to the dock (which interestingly was in a neighborhood. Like, you’re driving on the bus on a main road, then we turned into a neighborhood, then boom there are the boats. Wild! ). So we got back on the bus that took us back to town to Captain Marvin’s. By the way, they drive on the opposite side of the road in Grand Cayman and gas was running about $5 a gallon. Since we’d seen so much of Georgetown on foot earlier that morning, CSP and I went straight to the tender to get back on the ship. We hightailed it up to the Galley for a late lunch, then went to our stateroom for a nap. Is there anything better than peeling off a wet bathing suit and taking a nap in a nice, cold room when you have a full belly??

Next up…dinner at the fancy restaurant and a v v interesting show!!!