More Photos

The weather in Grand Cayman was much better than the forecast and luckily Hurricane Rita missed us.

Early breakfast on Wednesday, and time for pampered ponies. We rode along a deserted stretch of beach in a convoy with only the sound of birds and butterflies and horse hooves.

Turtle farm, which is now in a new building just across the road from the old one, opened very recently; 12th September 2005. This will form part of a new themed complex with Boatswains Beach which will be an all day attraction with a shark tank, marine resource centre, free flying aviary, beach etc. The planned opening is April 06. There is a serious project to preserve and increase the population of the famous Cayman turtles, so there are turtles from newborn to very old in various sizes of tank, and opportunities to hold and study turtles. The newborn turtles start off dark and in time the shells change to the pretty turtle markings of the adult.

With a brief stop at Hell, full of crater like volcanic rock, they named the village Hell. The idea is visit “Hell”, buy a postcard and say postcard from Hell, or I’ve been to Hell and back, and its good for business rather than being a genuine hellhole if you see what I mean.

A visit to the butterfly farm, the 3rd in the Caribbean. This should have been a short visit and only a 10 minute walk from our hotel, but we hadn’t reckoned on Mr.Butterfly, Italian extract and if there is anything to know about caterpillars and butterflies this guy knows it.

Thursday and a visit to Queen Elizabeth II Botanical Park. This was devastated by the hurricane and quite a lot of it has been redesigned and replanted but there is still a lot of work to do particularly in the woodland area. Botanical Park covers a very wide area and consists of a sand garden with various fruit trees and trees that are indigenous to the Caribbean including the Silver Palm the national tree of the Cayman Islands and the Red Birch affectionately known locally as the tourist tree because its red and it peels! There is also a colour garden where plants and flowers are graded by colour, and also there is a programme to breed the indigenous Blue Iguana and then release them when they are strong enough into the wild in protected areas, as many of them perished in the hurricane or were eaten by domestic pets. To raise public awareness of the work in progress there is a Blue Dragon trail where there are numbered multicoloured plastic iguanas on various parts of Grand Cayman.

The afternoon was spent with the amazing Captain Marvin. Captain Marvin still drives his snorkel boat, as he has done for 54 years. He is 89, has 15 children and numerous descendants and he still has an eye for the ladies. We travelled out to Stingray City, which incidentally is a fair way out. . If you snorkel you will be richly rewarded with abundant angel fish and stingrays.

Friday was a very early start at 6am to catch the 18-seater Cayman Airways De Havilland Twin Otter to Little Cayman. The bumpy take off was worth it for the view of Cayman Brac where we made a brief stop and then onto the Little Cayman grass airstrip at Bodden airfield which shares a building with the fire station. Total flying time was about an hour and half an hour on the direct return flight. Little Cayman is step back in time, only 10 miles long by a mile wide with one road, one bank which opens weekly, one shop, one restaurant, the Hungry Iguana, a small police station run by a British couple who really have very little to do as there is virtually no crime, 150 residents and a school which currently has 4 children. All boys plus a reluctant new boy who hasn’t started yet and so doesn’t have the distinctive yellow uniform. We visited the small but very local museum. The new aquarium was opened by Prince Andrew but wasn’t open so that promises to be an added attraction for next year.

There is something for just about everyone. It is very casual and laid back and has warm, friendly people and good food and because the islands are small you get the feeling that its one big, happy family where everybody knows everybody else.