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!