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!