Touring Grand Cayman's North Side & East End

Grand Cayman Travelog #22
Barefoot Beach - Fri, 19 May 2023, 12:30pm

This afternoon we're continuing our driving tour around the far side of Grand Cayman. Here's a map of our route so far:

We left this morning from our hotel on Seven Mile Beach and drove to Rum Point. There wasn't a lot there but we found plenty nearby at Starfish Point. Plenty of sea creatures, that is!

Now we're working our way clockwise around the edge of the island. We stopped for a quick lunch along the way. It's so rustic out here that there aren't more than a few restaurants... so we bought heat-lamp food from a convenience store in the tiny town of North Side... and walked down a slight slope from the parking lot to eat on the edge of the beach!

Our next stop was the Good Mood Swing.



I'm not sure why this is here but we stopped for pictures. And to swing a bit. 😅 I'll have to get a pic of me swinging off Hawk's phone later.

After the swing we continued our drive around to a spot marked Anchor Point Thermal Vents, near Barefoot Beach. It took a bit of hunting even to figure out where to park.



On Grand Cayman's rustic East End beach access trails are often marked with small signs. And parking? Ha. If you're lucky the access trail is a dirt road you can park on. Sometimes it's just a foot trail, and you park wherever you can on the side of the road. Fortunately it's not exactly crowded out here, as you can see in the photo above.

More to come!

Rocky Trail to Barefoot Beach

Grand Cayman Travelog #23
Barefoot Beach - Fri, 19 May 2023, 1pm

As one of the stops on our driving tour around Grand Cayman's remote East End we stopped near Barefoot Beach to see a spot marked as thermal vents. Ultimately we didn't find the thermal vents— they're offshore in the water and are more of a thing for divers or maybe snorkelers— but we did enjoy our exploration near the inaptly named Barefoot Beach.

Why is the name inapt? Well, here's one of the trails to get to it:



Beach access via narrow trail is common on Grand Cayman. The laws are that beaches have to be public, and land owners often provide only the minimum of accessibility through their property. This trail is tougher than most as it's very rocky. The trail passes over very sharp eroded limestone (similar to Hell). In addition there is smashed glass from people leaving trash. This is definitely not a trail you want to walk barefoot!



Embedded in the eroded limestone are corals. There are also loose corals washed up on the dune at the edge of the beach. We found several "brain" corals like the one in the photo above.



We also found a few conch shells. At any beach I've been to before a shell like the one in the photo above would've been an amazing find. Here it's kind of "meh"... because while it's a shell in overall good condition, there's not a living conch still inside it.



Ultimately we made it down to the beach. Beneath one final layer of sharp rocks is soft, soft sand. Perhaps this is what they meant by barefoot beach. It's pleasant out here... though you absolutely have to put good shoes back on to leave!

Trade Show Day 2: An Even Later Evening

Vegas in May Travelog #4
Back at my room - Tue, 23 May 2023, 11:20pm

Day 2 at the trade show has been another long one. Like yesterday I got up well before my 6:45 alarm (jet lag from being in the Caribbean last week), worked in my room until 11, then went down for lunch, then worked the exhibit hall from about 12:30 on. Unlike yesterday the afternoon didn't seem to drag as badly. Don't get me wrong; it was still long and very tiring. But it didn't seem as dull or repetitive.

Maybe part of that was the awareness that tonight I might not have to work the booth until 7pm. See, the exhibit hall hours ran 'til 7pm again, but my company had organized a customer dinner starting at 6pm. And as it was in another casino we'd have to leave at 5:30pm.

Did I even want to go, though? Sure, the dinner was at a nice restaurant, the Martha Stewart associated Bedford at the Paris casino. The thing is, a free $200 dinner doesn't motivate me. If it were the same either way to my company I would've happily spent one-third or one-quarter of that dining quietly on my own. But some customers had dropped out at the last moment, and our organizer wanted to make sure the seats they prepaid were filled. All of us on staff were asked to go. ...Except the organizer. She dined quietly, on her own. 🤔

BTW, we made all the jokes about Martha Stewart's name being on the restaurant. "What are the menu choices?" we teased. "Swimsuit Salmon? Jail bird chicken? Insider steak?"

Humor aside, the food was all good. We had a decent number of customers there; not quite as many as we wanted, but enough for a respectable showing. And the dinner we thought would run until 8 went 'til 9.

After dinner a few colleagues and I took a slow walk back to the casino. We chatted about work along the way. Then, like last night, we grabbed a nightcap at one of the ridiculously overpriced bars in Caesars Palace. Except unlike last night, we finished that nightcap not at 8pm but at 11.

When I got back to my room this evening I decided I needed a shower. I was congested and coughing from the latent smoke in the air. I know from past trips that I'll sleep better if I clean that crap off my skin and out of my hair with a hot shower. So now I'm clean and ready to go to bed... and doing some blogging to help wind down.

Tomorrow's a shorter day... in the exhibit hall, at least. I'll be working 9:45am - 2pm. Then the exhibits close. I'll likely spend a bit after that helping tear down the booth and send home the stuff that needs to be sent home. My flight's not 'til 7:50pm so I'll have time to help. Though as the exhibit hall closes earlier than I thought when I booked the flight over a month ago I might see if I can switch to an earlier flight.