Grand Cayman - Part 4

After dinner that night we heard on the news service that a southeasterly storm was expected to hit the Cayman Island group over the next couple of days. You could drop a pin in the resort and hear it drop. Some peoples’ shorter vacations were ruined. Sean and I just looked at each other. I was kind of excited. I had never seen a real tropical storm. Anyway, Sean had his SCUBA class lessons and pool lessons over the next few days, so only I would miss out my snorkeling. (Sniff.) Our vacation was long enough to weather the storm, so to speak.

We went to bed as usual with the glass window louvers open, only to be awakened later by wind swept water being blown against them. The wave tops were actually being blown against the windows and into our room. That is how close to the water we were. We could hear the water hit our building and the seawall. We closed the window louvers and huddled together in bed. We could hear the wind howling outside.

When we awoke, it was cold, grey and extremely windy still, but not raining. I put on my long hiking pants, long sleeved shirt, socks, sandals, Nike warm up jacket and out we went to breakfast. I felt like I would blow away and leaned into the wind. The wave action was so violent and spectacular in the lagoon that Sean wanted to get a picture so he asked me to pose on a piece of flattened coral by the water’s edge. So I did. As I stood there, a big wave came shot up the side of the coral, whoooosh, and soaked me head to toe. Sean got a picture of that. Whoopie. I had to go back to the room and dry my clothes.

It turned out that Sean was the only student at Tortuga Divers out on the East end of Grand Cayman. Julia, his teacher was from England. So, while he was studying, I wandered around the grounds of the hotel/time share complex and beach. Many interesting things had washed up on the beach. I saw a man o’ war jelly fish. I sure hated to think that I was swimming in the same water as that.

The pier at Tortuga Divers on a calm day

I was really hoping to find a conch shell as I had always wanted one. They sold them all over the island, but they were all faded; I wanted one that was bright pink. Low and behold, I found one. It was huge and faced downwards in the sand so that it would not be bleached by the sun. Also, it had the hole in the top that showed that it had been fished and the animal was gone from inside of it. When I turned it over the color was intensely pink. It was so heavy I put my hand inside of it to carry it back. Sean said it was gorgeous. I keep it in my bathroom today.

One of the other stormy days, we went shopping in Georgetown. Everything was pricey. I spotted a pair of tiny 14 carat gold enameled yellow tang earrings that were US$450. They would not budge on the price. What a rip off. I walked out.

By the way, the Cayman Island money was very pretty. Again, a foreign currency that kills US currency in appearance. I brought home a dollar and a ten dollar bill for my photo album.

Stay tuned for Part 5 – After the storm