Wednesday – April 14

Up early for a 7:00am pickup for a two tank Scuba trip.  Kind of hard after a travel day and a two hour time shift but well worth it.  The dive boat was a large platform catamaran that they just drove up on the beach to pick us up.  Our first dive site was a reef/wall combination called the Sand Slope.  Apparently some years ago the Grand Cayman Tourist Board shot some publicity pictures with a diver on skis on this sandy slope about 60 feet under water in an attempt to lure people to come here rather than go skiing in the winter.  One couple arrived from Canada with skis and really wanted to do it.  They got upset when informed it was just a publicity stunt and the ad was pulled forever.  (At this point would a Canadian joke be appropriate?)  

We jumped off the boat and descended  to the reef bottom at 50 feet.  We then worked out way down to about 100 feet to see the creatures there.  I can’t really tell that there is much difference between 50 and 100 in either the way it feels or the sea life.  In all levels there were interesting and beautiful fish.  Lots of colorful corals and sponges provide a fabulous background for the fish.

The second dive was a much shallower reef dive.  We dropped in to about 25 feet and never went below about 45.  Again, color and interesting shaped fish.  One of the more interesting things on this dive was a sea turtle that came swimming by.  He had a medium size fish directly underneath.  The fish wasn’t cleaning him, more like just using him for a moving shade screen.  After the dive, they just drove the boat up onto the sand directly in front of my hotel.  I hopped off and walked right in.  Now that is the way to dive.

In the afternoon we decided to take a drive around the island.    We started of going to the west in an attempt to visit the Turtle Farm and the town of Hell.  After our visit, I can tell you that Hell isn’t all its made out to be.  At least the Hell here on Grand Cayman is really just a small area, perhaps an acre of very strange looking rocks.   From there we tried to go to the Turtle Farm.  Unfortunately, there were four cruise ships in port today and the Turtle Farm was zoo with more buses than could find parking.  We decide to come back another day. 

Similar to Kauai, there is no way to drive across the Northern side.  Kauai has a mountain range, Grand Cayman has a swampy bay.   We drove around the East end to a beach area called Rum Point.  Other than being far from civilization (and some might consider that a benefit) it is a perfect, sandy, calm beach.