March 17 - Grand Cayman Island

We celebrated St.Patrick's Day in the British West Indies. The book I'm reading - Caribbean - talks about what an important area the Caribbean Sea was in the growing assets of England, France and Spain. The area was ripe with naval warfare and piracy. That folklore and history was never more obvious than in the Cayman Islands. This picture shows one of many "pirate ships" in the harbour at Grand Cayman.

We managed to avoid any swashbucklers on our boatride from the cruise ship to shore. There, we did a little shopping in the very civilized shops of the port city. This was all in killing time before the highlight of our stop... the wreck and reef snorkel tour.

CaraLee put on a brave face, but it was pretty obvious that her mind was on the trip. She was being a real trooper but she was nervous about the possibility of getting seasick on the ride out to sea and even more nervous about the possibility of an overabundance of fish. She's not a big fan of being touched by wildlife.

Well, it turned out that we didn't have a long trip in the boat and the fish were manageable. Our first stop was over an old shipwreck. It was very cool being able to swim down and actually touch a boat that had been underwater for decades.

Our next stop was where most of the fish were. We tied up over a reef and the yahoo driver started throwing bits of muffin into the water. This - naturally - attracted a LOT of happy fish, which was great for me, but a nightmare for CaraLee. She toughed it out and we had a great little snorkel tour of the reef. We saw some amazing fish. One - in particular - had a head the size of a basketball, but a body only about 3 feet long. The eyes were like tennis balls... very odd-looking. There was a chance that we'd see turtles or rays, but we got skunked.

After we got back ashore, we wandered the shops for a little longer before heading back to the ship. There, we got ready for our second "formal night". Dinner was amazing - as usual - and we followed it up with an amazing show. "Cinemagique" was a musical tribute to all sorts of genres and movies across the generations.

It was a little funny when my wife (and probably every other wife in the place) took at least a little offence at the scantiness of the women's costumes. Then, to the tune of "You Can Leave Your Hat On", 5 male strippers came out and did the "Full Monty" down to their red bikini briefs. Those upset wives turned into whistling wolves as each layer was peeled off. I was so offended. :)

We whimped out and didn't make it to "Grease Lightning" after the Rock & Roll Party. We hit the hay in preparation for our day at sea on the 18th.