August 21, 2006

Cayman Islands Vacation: Part Two

Meredith and I decided to go to Grand Cayman for vacation. Here's the second part of our trip!

(Go back to Part One)

Thursday, August 24th

On Thursday morning, we got up early and drove all the way over to the west side of the island (where all the touristy stuff is) to check out a butterfly farm that we'd seen advertised. This nice Dutch lady was our tour guide!

Here she is showing us chrysalides from two different species of butterfly!

Here's an incubation box where they pin all of the chrysalides up and wait for the caterpillars to turn into butterflies!

I wouldn't go as far to say that the butterfly farm was "ripshit exciting," but never been before so it was pretty cool to walk around the garden and look at the hundreds of varieties of butterflies.

The huge garden was surrounded by mesh-netting (sort of like a golf driving range) to keep the butterflies from flying away.

There were strands of fermenting fruit hanging up all over the place that the moths and butterflies were going nuts for.

meredith — Meredith taking pics of the lilypads.

I bet you didn't see this one coming...it's a BUTTERFLY!

After the butterfly farm, we ate some lunch and then later that afternoon after it'd cooled down a bit (who knew that the Caribbean would be so hot in AUGUST? Doy!) we hit the famous Seven-Mile Beach that Grand Cayman is famous for. (Where I sunbathed with my arm up in the air).

At 7:30 that night, I headed out to the diving boat for a night dive!

I took this (bad) photo of the dive map hoping I could reference it on my camera if I go lost! (We were only diving to a depth of 20', so I'd always be able to just surface if I lost my orientation - but that's for cheaters!)

Dive #6

We jumped in around 8:30. Check out the thousands of little creatures (Tiny shrimps? Krill?) that were swarming around my flashlight and I made my descent into the inky darkness! Spoooooky!

Even at night, with only a flashlight to illuminate, the visibility was great!

I've only done a few night dives! They're fun, but creepy. Being underwater is already kind of scary and intimidating, but when you're field of vision is reduced to the tiny, directional beam of your torch, it's even more scary. Here's a pufferfish I found and swam with for a while.

This guy glided right under me and scared the shit out of me. Literally. As in I actually almost soiled my drawers underwater.

I spent a lot of right above the ocean floor looking for hidden nooks and swim-throughs where there might be some sleeping turtles (Yes, turtles look for little hidden nooks to sleep underwater in!). I spotted what looked like a swim-through that went underneath a reef and just as I was about to go in head first...

...I almost swam directly into these two HUGE rock lobsters! "We pincha your face!"

Friday, August 25th

Dive #7

If you're not the kind of person that likes looking at pictures of stuff underwater, you are most likely *hating* this entry.

...I came across a huge sheet of siding from a house! Later our dive master explained that it was debris from a house that had been destroyed when Hurricane Ivan slammed into Grand Cayman in September of 2004.

Dive #8

A whole bunch of them showed up together. Here's a vid of them all gliding on over and checking us out!

scuba ˆ stingray ˆ video

Here's a vid of Mer feeding one for the first time

scuba ˆ stingray ˆ video ˆ meredith

After a few more passes, Meredith had gotten used to the stingrays and was feeding them and petting them like a seasoned pro! The creatures are so big and heavy (they must easily weigh 100+ lbs!) it takes a while to figure out how to feed them without getting knocked over when they get friendly and swim into you!

scuba ˆ stingray ˆ video ˆ meredith

Saturday, August 26th

Meredith ended up liking the Stingray City dive so much she decided to come along with me for a reef dive the next morning! Suited up!

Dive #9

This dive was a lot deeper than the Stingray City dive, but Meredith used the rope to descend gradually and equalize her ears...

It was another perfect, sunny day with great visibility and bath-like water temperature (85° water = no wetsuit!)

me, meredith — And here's the obligatory photo that you always have taken whenever you go diving with someone you know! (I love this photo!)

After our dive, we took a swim in the resort's awesome pool (seen here from the front balcony of our building) and then a lil' afternoon disco nap!

...a turtle farm! Look how many of them they're are (and this was just one of like 100 different tanks!). We had mixed feelings about this place. About 40% of the turtles raised here are released into the wild. The other 60% are raised and sold to food processors (boo!) because turtle is a national delicacy. But I guess short of turtle-eating being made illegal, at least they're doing something to keep the turtle population thriving and keeping fisherman from overfishing the population.

But seriously, how could anyone look at one of these guys and think "Mmmmmm! I bet he's tasty!"

Here we are a little further back in the part at one of the smaller tanks that was filled with younger turtles.

Sunday, August 27th

The water was amazing! (There was a lot of sharp coral in the shallows so we needed to wear our little swimming booties in order to go in!).

After the beach I decided to sneak in two more dives - our flight wasn't until late in the afternoon the next day and I calculated that I'd still be safe to fly without having to worry about my heart exploding. (Even though airplane cabins are pressurized, they have much less pressure than sea-level. If you any nitrogen left in your blood that hasn't been aspirated, you might be fine at sea level, but getting on a plane could give you the bends or even a deadly blood embolism!) Anyway, here's a map of my second-to-last dive: Three Sisters!

Dive #10

And again, the water and visibility were perfect!

Here's a pic of my depth gauge at my max depth for the dive. Check out the bottom right corner - even though I'm 100' underwater (30 meters), the water temperature is still 87°F! How crazy is that? Anyway, right as we hit the 100' mark, we had a visit from a turtle who was curious about us!

This time I managed to get him on video! I love how he causally swims over to check me out before swimming away! (You'll probably also get a kick out of listening to me make noises into my regulator trying to get his turtle-attention underwater! Hahaha).

scuba ˆ turtle ˆ video