Renting a Car the next 2 Days

Grand Cayman Travelog #15
GCM Airport - Thu, 18 May 2023, 11am

Here's where we shift gears on our trip to Grand Cayman. The president's club portion of the trip is over today. Most attendees are heading home. A few of us are staying on, though. On our own dimes. Because that means no more pre-organized trips like swimming with stingrays and the bat cave with an underground lake we enjoyed the past few days, we're shifting gears back to our norm of self-guided touring. We've rented a car.

We piled on a 10am shuttle bus to the airport with several of my colleagues. They were all carrying full luggage. Hawk and I had one small bag between us. (I was carrying my computer in case something went wrong with the rental arrangement that required replanning.)

The shuttle driver kindly offered to take us to the rental car offices after dropping everyone else at the airport. He warned that it was far away and hard to walk to from the airport. It was... across the street. And not some monster, 10-lane street with speeding cars and trucks but a little two-lane. With a crosswalk. I guess Grand Cayman gets a lot of tourists who are happy to traipse around big resorts hotels but throw a fit if asked to cross a street somewhere.



I mentioned above having brought my computer in case I needed to replan if something went wrong. Well, something did go wrong. The rental agency's computers were down. The one person working there was able to find my reservation on a printed list, though it took her four attempts flipping through the sheaf of papers. My reservation was the second one listed, on the first page. 🙄 But I guess she appreciated my patience, and/or my decision to buy all the optional insurance, because she upgraded me at least 2 car classes. We've got a Kia Cadenza for the next few days. It's a full-size car and it's way bigger than we need.

One weird thing I've noticed right away about this car is that the driver's seat is on the left, like a car sold in America— or Canada, Germany, France, et. al. But driving in the Cayman Islands is done on the left side of the road— like in the U.K. It's nice that sitting in this car is familiar; I won't have the problem of opening the wrong door to enter! But that doesn't help with driving, as I'm sitting on the opposite side of my vehicle from most other drivers on the road.

We're Going to Hell. Then We're Going to Lunch.

Grand Cayman Travelog #16
Hell - Thu, 18 May 2023, 12:30pm

This morning we picked up a rental car so we could do some self-guided touring today and tomorrow. But where would we go? One of the tour coordinators we'd chatted amiably with the past few days, who was still at the hotel because now he's working with another company that's running a president's club (there are signs), offered a suggestion when he saw us walking through the lobby to our car.

"Make sure you go to Hell," he suggested.

"Yeah, that's our plan," I answered. "We're going to Hell now. Then we're going to lunch."



Hell is a spot a few miles north of our hotel, on the northwest end of the island. It's an officially named place in the Cayman Islands. How official? There a Hell, CI post office here.

But what draws people here isn't just the post office, with its ability to send postcards officially date-stamped "HELL". That is only part of the allure. 😅 It's the jagged rocks in this area that gave it name that people come to see. Thus we pulled our car into the small parking lot aside a few families and minibuses to see it ourselves.



Don't remove Hell rocks! ...What are they going to do, though? Send you to hell? You're already there. 😂



So, what is Hell? Hell in the Cayman Islands is a small field of very jagged rocks. They look a bit like volcanic rock, which is one explanation for how the place got its name. A British official visiting the island long ago is said to have exclaimed, "My God, this is what Hell must look like!"

Actually the rock is limestone and dolomite. It was eroded into these jagged shapes not by wind or rain but by being eaten away by algae. The algae dissolves the calcium in limestone (limestone is calcium carbonated, CaCO3) leaving mostly dolomite. Scientifically this process is called phyto-karstification.

After touring the relatively small field of rocks we walked back out to the gift shops and post office. We bought a few postcards with pictures of Hell and mailed them to religious relatives so they'd be date-canceled as officially from Hell. 🔥😈🤣

After Going to Hell We Went to Lunch

Grand Cayman Travelog #17
Near Hell - Thu, 18 May 2023, 2pm

I was serious when I told the friendly tour guide earlier today, "First we're going to Hell. Then we're going to lunch." We visited Hell, Cayman Islands (and sent our parents postcards from Hell's post office) first on our self guided tour this afternoon. Then it was time for lunch.

We picked out a small cafe nearby on Grand Cayman's West End. The area is very lightly developed compared to the busy Seven Mile Beach district. Here's it's mostly small houses, with the occasional low-rise condo complex shouldering in, and the restaurants are all so small you'll miss them if you blink. In fact we had to hunt around to find the one we chose for today. Even with a signboard on the street it was hard to find! (It was hidden at the back of another building.)



We sat at one of 5 small tables on the covered porch and enjoyed views out over the Caribbean. Gentle sea breezes made it quite a nice place to sit, unlike at our hotel on Seven Mile Beach where it seems it's always hot and humid.

Hawk ordered two local-ish dishes, "cocofritti" and breadfruit. Cocofritti is like calamari fritti but with strips of fresh coconut instead of squid. The cafe was kind of a vegan/pescatarian place so they had interesting things like that. And breadfuit is a local fruit that's in season on the island this time of year. It has a taste and texture similar to plantains. ...Which, if you don't know what those are, means it's like a cross between a potato and a banana.



My lunch was a pair of blackened fish tacos with guacamole and chipotle aioli. There are some fried potatoes on the plate as a side.



After lunch we walked out on the quay next to the cafe. The rocks here on the shore are similar to those at Hell. They're highly eroded and sharp, though maybe not quite as crazy-sharp as in Hell. These rocks also have some coral fossils in them.

Home from Cayman Islands, Leaving Again in 17 Hours

Grand Cayman Travelog Ω
Back home - Sat, 20 May 2023, 10pm

I'm jumping ahead in my blog series to post one in real time. As of my previous blog, about going to lunch after going to hell, I'm about 48 hours behind.

Tonight's Saturday night, and we've just gotten home from Grand Cayman. We walked through our front door at 9:30pm. As always it feels good to be home. But I won't be here for long.... 17 hours after getting home I'll be heading out to the airport for my next trip! I'm headed to Las Vegas for 3 days for a business conference.