Last day: Pelican, swimming with sea turtle, rainbow, and heading home!

On the day of our return trip, Alex woke up early, too, and decided to join Daryl and me on our morning beach walk. As I had told him, there is always something new to see! Well this morning it was a cool pelican, who did not seem to mind us walking by him so close at all! We even watched him catch something out of the water in front of him and gulp it down!

Alex practiced his handstand on the beach. Then, he almost stepped on a flounder in the shallow water!


After we went back and Ben was awake, Daryl and I went snorkeling one last time, and I am so glad we did, because we saw a sea turtle up close. It was grazing on the sea grass in fairly shallow water, and did not seem to mind us watching it from straight over head. When the turtle had to surface for air, it got really close to us, but kept a safe enough distance that it was out of our reach. We watched it for quite a while it was really fascinating!

 

Then we also saw several flounders as well as this other fish, which Klaus will have to identify for us! Obviously some of these creatures are very well camouflaged, making them hard to spot.

When we got back to the pool area and rinsed our snorkeling gear one last time, it started to rain lightly, then a little harder, but while it rained, the sun was still shining. I was looking all around for the rainbow and Daryl teased me, saying: "what do you want, a perfect rainbow over the ocean?" I replied, "Yes", and guess what, God gave us a beautiful rainbow right over the ocean ... ask and you shall receive!

What a great parting gift to remember the beach!
After we gave away our leftover food to some other American tourists, we headed back to the airport.

Grand Cayman Airport!

 

 We could see Cayman Island very well from the air, also Cuba as we flew by it. 

The island from the air

Cuba

 

In the Gulf, approaching Texas we were shocked to see many large brown oil spills in the water ... so sad!

No, not an island, an oil spill!

Everything on our return trip went very smoothly. We got to sit together in our original seats. We got to zip through security at Houston airport in the fast track lane with mostly airline crew members because we has no checked bags, while other passengers stood in a serpentine line reminiscent of Cedar point ride lines! I knew we took only carry on luggage for good reason! We had time for a nice supper at the airport, then got into O'Hare on time at 11:45 pm. The boys slept a little on the plane, but were exhausted. They did so well walking for what felt like miles to find the bus terminal to catch the shuttle to the Hyatt and retrieved our car. We got to Diane's house after 1:30 am, to bed around 2, long day!

 

 

 

Monday: Sea turtles, Caymana Bay and Dinner at Macabuca!

This morning, Daryl and I were up early, as usual, so we decided to go for a walk on the beach before the boys got up. It was really pleasant in the early morning and we had fun watching a little crab running up and down the beach and getting tossed around by the waves.

When we got back, a guy at the pool asked if we had seen the sea turtles that were mating right on the beach just on the next property south! Unfortunately, we had walked north and had missed this! However, it made us hopeful that there actually were sea turtles in the waters right around us, so we went and grabbed the boys and the snorkeling stuff and headed out. We showed the boys some of the better reefs a bit farther out. Ben used the air mattress to help with endurance and a sense of safety. We did see the stingray again, as well as lots of awesome fish and squid. We also picked up a really pretty (empty!) conch shell as a souvenir!

Alex is like a fish in the water himself, often free-diving way down deep to get a better look at something!

On our way back in to the shore, I did spot a sea turtle, but it was swimming away from us so fast, we only got a brief glimpse of it.

So then we got ready and headed for the Cayman Turtle Farm, which had been closed when we tried to go on Saturday! We had wristbands for free general admission that were part of our package deal from the Dolphin Cove. When we got there we asked if we could upgrade from the general admission to the full park admission (which included some other features, like a freshwater swimming pool with a slide and waterfall, also a saltwater lagoon where you could swim and snorkel with the turtles). The lady said sure, we could upgrade for $20 extra per person. Well I had looked it up on line and I knew that the difference in price was actually $10 more for adults and $5 more for kids, but she had some kind of story about the wristbands we got from the Dolphin Cove package were only worth less, blah blah blah ... total rip-off, which kind of turned me off the whole thing. We wound up just doing the general admission parts of the park and it was still fun! There were tanks where you were allowed to pick up the turtles (washing your hands before and after!). Ben and Alex even decided to kiss them ... stingray city got them started and new they are kissing all the creatures!

 

In the afternoon, after having lunch and a little down time at the condo, we decided to go to Caymana Bay, an upscale shopping center with restaurants, a golf course, etc. We spent some time at a bookstore, walked out onto a small island in their bay with cool palm trees.

We also climbed an observation tower for a nice view of the island. All along the stairwell of the observation tower was a really beautiful mosaic depicting underwater themes, very pretty!

 A big Disney cruise ship was in the port at the time.

In the evening, our last night in Cayman, Daryl and I decided to leave the kids "home" with pizza and popcorn and the Disney Channel, and we went out to a nice dinner.

We ate at Macabuca, an outdoor Tiki Bar which is part of a really ritzy restaurant called Cracked Conch. I loved the setting with tables out on a pier overlooking the sunset over the ocean. On Monday nights they had a buffet special with chicken  and rib barbeque, fish, conch fritters, all kinds of salads and sides. It was delicious, as was the Mojito I drank!

 

They also have a dive shop there and while we ate, people were going night snorkeling with flashlights! That will have to be on the to-do list for our next trip!

Sunday: Cayman-style church, parasailing, and stingrays!

Since it was Sunday, Alex and I decided to check out a local church to see what it might be like here on the island. Just 1.5 miles up the road, there was a church called Wesleyan Holiness Church, so we visited there. Everyone was extremely friendly, several members approached us before the service started and welcomed us, asked where we were from, etc. One guy just had a daughter and grandbaby move to near Muncie, IN! She had attended Ball State earlier and moved back there.

 

 

Their worship service was very lively, to say the least! The worship songs were mostly familiar, same as we sing back home, but there were a lot of extra "Hallelujah" and "Praise the Lord" exclamations, during the singing, praying, and the sermon! One lady became really excited (I'm not sure that's the right word ... maybe it was more like catching the Holy Spirit!) during a song and just went on and on with the "Hallelujahs" over and over! Also, the pastor invited everyone who wanted to to come to the front and join him for a prayer. About 1/2 of the congregation did so and everyone said their prayers at the same time out loud! The pastor was the loudest, so you could hear him over the rest, but there was a lot of murmuring of prayers everywhere! The pastor was very intense during the sermon, and if someone did not reply "Amen" or something like that right away, he wondered if we had all fallen asleep, and kind of prompted us to be more interactive! It was fun! He went over the usual time and at one point looked at the clock and exclaimed "Oh, we'll be on Mountain Standard Time today, it's only 11" (instead of 12!). After the service we had to wait around for a little while for Daryl to come and get us, and 3 or 4 people asked if we needed a ride! Very friendly people!

We had lunch at another local favorite food stand, Heritage Kitchen. Again, the grouper I ate was really good (pineapple grouper), the kids had barbeque ribs, Daryl had Cayman Style Mahi, also very good!

A lot of things are closed on Sundays here, so we did not really expect to do much but hang out at the pool and beach, but then we saw the parasailing boat out. So we called and sure enough they were running! We booked it and their own boat taxi picked us up on our own beach 30 minutes later! The little boat took us out to a bigger boat where we did the parasailing. We went up in two doubles, first Daryl and Ben, then Alex and I! It was an unbelievable experience, wow! First of all the water was so incredibly blue, even a different shade of blue yet than what we had seen close to the beach, like an intense royal blue. Then we saw a sea turtle swimming just a little way out from the boat. Unfortunately I had my camera inside of the waterproof case and could not get a good photo in time (it is hard to zoom with the case on).

Ben and Daryl taking off!

On the way back down, they dip you in the ocean,

 then lift you back up before you land on the boat!

My toes looking straight down!

Self portrait ... good thing I had a wrist strap on the camera!

look at the variety of blues in the ocean!

This shows how high up we were from the boat pulling us!

From the air we saw another turtle (Ben and Daryl saw 3!), along with the beautiful shore line, beaches, boats, and the blue ocean, all the fantastic shades of blue!

We are really doing it all this vacation! So many wonderful memories being made! We hope the boys will appreciate it; there have been a few times they would have preferred to stay in the condo and watch TV or play iPod and Kindle, instead of go out to the beach! I guess I'm on the laptop doing this, though, too, so I understand. We all need a little down time!

In the evening, Daryl and I went out snorkeling again, just off our beach. We went out a bit farther and found amazing reefs, including several varieties of sting rays and a multitude of awesome fish!

Here are a few random shots from our condo, Daryl opening a coconut, one of the iguana we see all over here, etc.

Our condo is on the very top left.

These iguanas and chickens are the most common road kill you see on the streets here!

Yummy, fresh coconut milk!

Our condo with the Cayman flag in the middle.