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.

Day 5: Shopping in Georgetown and more snorkeling!

We had planned to go to the Turtle Farm today, but when we got there we discovered they are closed on Saturdays and Sundays. Bummer! So we decided to go to Georgetown, the main city, instead to do some souvenir shopping. Georgetown is where the cruise ships come into port, but fortunately there were none there at the time, so shopping was fairly slow and pleasant. We did get a lot of souvenirs and it was fun.

All throughout Georgetown there are painted statues of iguanas, kind of like the Elk in Elkhart County, I guess. We took photos with a few of them.

For lunch we found a local fast food restaurant called Mac Donalds, no, seriously, not McDonalds as in the golden arches, but Mac Donalds, with mostly fish on the menu! They did have the classic standby cheeseburger for Alex and Ben ordered Nachos Supreme, which were loaded with cheese, jalopenos, black olives and scallions. Daryl tried the conch fritters (the rubber band texture is what I can't handle!), and I had a grilled fish sandwich, which was decent, not great.

Then we came back to the condo and did some more snorkeling. We saw another (smaller, but cooler looking) eel, as well as other awesome fish just outside our place! I'm excited I figured out how to "snapshot" off of Daryl's underwater video camera, so now I can post photos of the underwater stuff, too! So here are some just from yesterday's snorkeling off our beach. I may add some later from other days, too, now that I figured it out! Daryl had bought some squid to take out as fish food, so we had a few more fish up close, but really what you see is not unusual, even without bait!

damsel, I think

Blue tangs, I think.

the eel trying to hide behind a rock!

me feeding the fish!

Butterfly

In the evening, we brought our supper (frozen pizza from the grocery store!) down to the beach for an awesome dining experience ... at least the view was unbeatable! We finally had a somewhat better  sunset on thethird evening we tried!

Fourth Day: Blowholes, Rum Point, Starfish and more!

We decided to take a driving tour of the island on the fourth day. Our condo is located on "Seven Mile Beach", on the west side of the island, facing southwest. The "rough", rocky side of the island is the south or south east shore, where there is a lot of volcanic rock. One location not only has rough waves breaking against the rocks, but actual blow holes where the water shoots up through the cavern! It was pretty cool.

The boys kept trying to throw rocks into the hole to see what would happen, it was a fun game! Of course the water then also creates lots of little tide pools in the rocks, where we saw little fish, crabs, snails, etc.

Along our way, we stopped at a place called "The Pirate's Caves" and took a short guided tour including various animals (iguanas, birds, goats, crabs), as well as a cave with lots of bats flying around! We are certainly having a lot of up close and personal experiences with unique animals this trip!

 

 

Iguanas like this run around free all over this island!

Whatever this tree is, it is blooming everywhere on this island, so brilliant!

Then we went to "Rum Point" on the east end of the island, where there is a tourist club, shops, restaurants, a pier, and very shallow water with good snorkeling. We had a great lunch there, Daryl had the catch of the day which was Mahi Mahi, and I had the blackened fish sandwich, which was some kind of grouper and was delicious ... see, I can enjoy fish! Even Ben liked the blackened fish! I gave him a bite and he asked for more!

I thought this was a cute sign!

We did some snorkeling there and were able to see a stingray, a 5 ft long eel, squid, and of course lots of tropical fish. Then we moved on to another beach near there called Kaibo beach, famous for starfish. Sure enough we found 3 starfish easily just by walking in the shallow water.

The boys also had a blast playing on the rope swing hung from a tree there!

 

Back "home" at our condo, we tried again to watch the sunset, but again the sun slipped behind clouds just before it hit the horizon, too bad. It is still gorgeous to be out there on the beach at dusk!

 

 

Then we realized it was a full moon, which was really beautiful, too. Photos did not capture it well enough!

Ben wanted to take some trick photos with the moon, and some of them turned out pretty cool!

 

 

 I hope some of you are able to see this blog now. Sorry it was such a pain to gain access!