Leaving Central America, we headed northeast across the Caribbean Sea, then bent around to the northwest to dock at Grand Cayman. We were on our last two legs of a 10-day circumnavigation of the Caribbean.

After Panama and the rain forest, we weren’t expecting to be wow’ed by the Caymans. But in fact, these islands are very different from the Central America mainland, and our day-long bus tour gave us a good overview of the British colony.

As we approached the island, this gorgeous sailing ship paced us into the anchorage. I could never see its name/origin, so I have no information on it. Of course it had a motor, but we still enjoyed the visual link to a time of wind-power-only.

At Grand Cayman, there is no dock that would accommodate our steel behemoth. Instead, we anchored off-shore, and took a “tender” to the docks. The Coral Princess carries its own tenders, 50-foot catamaran motorboats that carry around 50 people. They’re lowered on davits, and then we boarded via gangplanks. It was all very nautical. For this stop, so many people went ashore that an additional shore-based tender was deployed (the all-white one). Well over 1,000 people went ashore, so there was some bustling activity for a while.

This was one of the few times we got to see our entire ship in a glance.

As we boarded our bus and headed off for the island tour, the British heritage was immediately obvious. Everybody was driving on the “wrong” side.  

There were some drab iguanas here and there, but my best photo was of this colorful guy in a cage.

The Caymans are famous for rum and pirates, so they are not shy trying to capitalize on these commodities. Tourists are entertained (?) by a variety of temptations and advertisements.

This “crew” of pirates resides outside the Tortuga Rum Co. café. It’s not clear why the sculptor/carver gave the lady such a bored expression. Too many tourists?

One of our stops was at the Wreck of the Ten Sail. This landmark commemorates a dreadful storm which sank ten merchant ships, the crews of which were rescued by the islanders. But the event was in 1794, and 222 years of the sea have obliterated any evidence of it. From a tourist’s point of view, it’s just a placard, a beach, and a reef.

As the tour bus got farther out on the eastern portion of Grand Cayman, the land became less populated, and some appealing shorelines came into view. THIS is the kind of inviting destination that gets people to fly or sail across the ocean.

One spot had some natural blow-holes and was a popular stop. The day we were there, swell and surf were mild to non-existent, but still managed to spout up 15 feet or more. On more turbulent days, the spray can shoot up 40-50 feet.

Some visitors like the place enough to take up residence and live in charming beach-side homes. Until a hurricane like Ivan arrives (2004) and trashes 80% of all the buildings on the island.

Along with death and destruction, hurricane Ivan also blew in a flock of chickens from somewhere. They have since settled on the island in record numbers. They are kept for pets, food, eggs, and they also run feral. Everywhere we went, we had chickens for company.

We took a lunch break at Rum Point, a very nice pausing point on the northeast tip of the island. From there, we could look across and see the other arm of the island in the distance. It’s all really quite a small place – you can drive the whole length of the island in about a half-hour.

Back at the port, we took the tender to the Coral Princess and boarded for our last leg to Fort Lauderdale. I stood on the starboard side and watched the boiling churn of the bow thrusters, moving our 90,000 tons sideways. The nose swept across the George Town shoreline until we were pointed northwest again. Smoothly, we sped up to 20mph and headed for home.

As we headed out into the open sea, the same four-master that came in with us paralleled our out-bound course, but far away and on a different tack. I never learned any more about the mysterious ship.

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We sailed for a full day and night, dog-legging around the west end of Cuba, and awoke to the drab Florida docks outside our cabin window. We were home, but we weren’t quite finished being tourists yet. The Everglades were waiting.

Ah, but first – how about a little entertainment at US Customs? We wandered around a huge building and through meaningless serpentine pathways. Eventually we got a stamp of approval on our passports and officially came back to the US.

Once past Customs, we immediately jumped on – you guessed it – another tourist bus. We were getting to be real pros by this time. We zipped off across Florida. As I recall, the highest landform was a 126-foot-tall “mountain” outside Fort Lauderdale. We were driving across a massive marsh. I had the impression that if I spilled a cup of coffee, it would spread out in all directions until it was exactly one molecule thick. Flatter than Kansas.

A cousin of one of the Cayman iguanas watched us pass by, unconcerned.

Some road-side turtles were equally unperturbed.

First venue of the day was an air-boat ride. These big flat-bottom beasts are powered by an un-muffled V8 engine driving two big airplane propellers. They’re pretty peaceful at idle, but when the pilot wanted to go somewhere, it sounded like a million buzzing bees had invaded my brain.

Our guide took us just a short distance away from the docking area, and had no trouble finding some alligators for us.

In fact, we were able to get grinningly close to a few of them. I well know that alligators don’t regard people as food sources – but I was still pretty happy not to be in the water with them.

We left the wild alligators in the swamp, and went back to see an exhibition by an alligator hunter/catcher from Gator Boys Alligator Rescue. This outfit doesn’t kill them, it saves them. When an alligator becomes human-habituated, much like bears, it becomes a dangerous nuisance. This guy gave us a demo of alligator-catching using a semi-cooperative 8-footer — and told us the true story of losing his right thumb to a ‘gator during an emergency call. Don’t try this at home.

After our tour among the alligators, we took off for Flamingo Gardens, a pleasant little stop where some of Florida’s flora and fauna can be shown off. Not as exciting as the alligators, but nice enough in its own right. We took a nice tram drive around the area, and had some lunch while we watched some really pink flamingos.

All in all, it was a great way to be welcomed back to the States. We headed back to Fort Lauderdale airport for our trip home. Turns out, the weather on the west coast was pretty uncooperative, and we ended up spending eight hours waiting for our flight to depart. Ah, but what the heck. That’s traveling.